Rock and Roll Legends are fading into the rearview Mirror

Bar Reunion in Rock and Roll Paradise

The end of an era is close. More and more Rock and Roll Legends are fading into the rearview Mirror. My generation lived through a special creative time; an era that may never come around again. Much like the Renaissance gave birth to cultural art icons like Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, all in a relatively short timeframe, probably never to be recreated, The Era of Rock and Roll created a musical highlight in time, so intense that it truly moved global cultural and even political directions. Rock was all about blowing up the institutions. Searching for truth in a new way. Being the other and going down the road less taken. The sixties were all about growth, testing limits. The youth were quaking, and the establishment didn’t like it. And what drove the youth was the music, it was the tribal drum, radio was far more important than television, music was not compromised, it embodied truth, and everybody listened.

Rock ‘n’ roll as a genre is vast and hard to pin down with any specific definition, but many music historians point to the 1951 album Rocket “88” by the Delta Cats (also known as Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm) as the first rock ‘n’ roll album. This record, pressed at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service, achieved a special sound thanks to a mishap on the way to the studio: An amp fell out of the band’s car, and to repair the damage, they stuffed brown paper inside. The resulting distorted buzzing sound in the guitar, along with the driving boogie melody from Ike Turner’s keys, helped build the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll. Sam Phillips’ renamed Sun Records studio continued to record Black rhythm and blues musicians through the early 1950s, but a young Elvis Presley recording at the Memphis, Tennessee, studio further progressed the genre of rock ‘n’ roll.

For more than 40 years rock music guided our sense of values, what was original and creative and what was waste, what was cool and what was not. The electric guitar was cool. Rock and Roll was driven by the advance of the electric guitar. It demanded attention, even if only because of the volume and reach. It guided the best educated, revolutionary generation in history into adult hood.

But when our generation and our rock and roll heroes turned into corporate brands, too overly self important and self indulgent, Rock lost its driving creative influence and handed the reins over to new genres like Rap, Hip Hop and Electronic Dance Music (EDM).

By the 1990s, as one generation handed the musical torch to a new generation, rock had been bent and bullied into new music genres, promoted by different music distribution platforms and rapidly advancing entertainment technology outlets, and we kind of turned away from rock as if it were a youthful indiscretion.

And then, as history usually goes, we turned old enough to remember the power of rock in our younger years and we created niche markets for rock to live in, at least for the remainder of our years. As we are in the third decade of the 21st century, I am noticing that a lot of young females guitarists across the globe are picking up the rock and roll torch, aided by online marketing resources such as youTube, Patreon and Vimeo video channels. It gives me hope for the future of rock and roll. But for now it’s still a derivative of what we did passionately more than fifty years ago. Give it time and hopefully they will make it their own and select new directions for rock and roll.

This website serves mostly as a tribute to our rock and roll heroes, and also a bit as a reminder to all of us baby boomers and rock music lovers, who picked up a guitar or kicked a drum in our formative years, and gained an understanding of how music transformed us and became the global language of love, peace and understanding. It was a special time. Thank You.

Johan Ramakers