Radio Fodder, 1975-79
Trends is Banality
One reason it’s hard to tell whether classic rock as we had known it since ’65 or so had really gone to hell in a bucket after ’75 was the evolution of FM radio. From my own experience, several trends guaranteed that classic rock would seem pretty out of touch, stale, boring, etc., when compared to the punk and new wave of the era.
1. Dinosaur Rock—FM kept playing new stuff by bands that had been hanging around since the ’60s … which made them ancient by rock standards. The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. While these bands could still surprise you (The Who By Numbers), there was a sense of diminishing returns as the decade rolled on.
2. Nostalgic Rock—Lots of folks got real excited about Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty around mid-decade (1970s), as though these guys—deep voiced, real men—were the saviors of a dying form. Most of the music and even the lyrics, however, seemed firmly grounded in yesterday.
3. Rock Redux—One thing that helped the AOR format keep growing was a slew of new bands that reduced rock to its most banal elements. Foreigner, Van Halen, Boston. In their hands, rock was either turned into cheesy pop dross or reduced to the grand themes of partying and getting laid.
4. Mainstream Rock—It was hard to tell whether bands like the Eagles, the Steve Miller Band, and Fleetwood Mac embodied or created mainstream pop-rock in the mid-to-late-‘70s. Everything sounded pretty good … but also pretty predictable.
5. Southern Rock—Southern Rock had elements of Rock Redux and Nostalgic Rock … and in the hands of a band like Lynyrd Skynyrd, something worse. The tuneful, gritty music was laced with a cultural conservatism that was disguised as Southern pride. It gave the music an unpleasant (and aggressive) edge that worked against many of the things that rock originally seemed to aspire to.
That doesn’t cover everything … I’ve left out the double album phenomenon (Kiss, Peter Frampton, etc.) and the occasional addition of pseudo-new wave bands (the Knack, the Cars) to playlists. The point is, the classic rock/AOR format seemed to be chocking off the growth of a form (and the personal growth of its listeners) by promoting fairly safe, predictable stuff.
