Another day, another veteran rocker mourning the “death” of rock—this time it’s Twisted Sister’s Jay Jay French sounding the alarm.
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However, French actually argued pretty well that his favorite genre of music is six feet under during a recent chat with Sean P. McKenna on Rimshots With Sean for Barstools & Bandtalk.
The guitarist and founding member of Twisted Sister referenced the role of music in his youth to support his argument that rock is dead.
“People say to me, ‘What makes you say rock is dead?’ Well, here’s my take on that. When I was 17 years old back in 1969, all my heroes — Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Floyd, Hendrix, Dylan, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane; you name it, you name ’em all — none of them were older than 27. Now think about this for a second. The greatest rock artists in the history of the world, when I was 17, were no older than 10 years more than me. Most of them were 25 to 27,” French reasoned. “Well, I say, name me a 27-year-old rock star right now. And nobody can name one.”
“So when you tell me, ‘Rock isn’t dead.’ Man. It’s all over the place,” French added.
Jay Jay French Says the Standard “Rock Act” Is “Over”
While French knows full and well that there are still rock bands, he feels they don’t have the same cultural impact they once did.
“I’m not saying that there are no rock bands. I’m just saying that the collective psyche that dictates current music trends and sociological impact of music, it’s not showing up in the rock world in terms of mass acceptance,” he continued.
“What is showing up in the music world? Hip-hop, huge. Country, huge. Female pop artists, huge. You can rattle off 20 rappers under the age of 25, you can rattle off 20 female pop singers under 25, you can rattle off country artists by the ton. You’re not rattling off rock musicians,” French opined.
“It doesn’t mean, clearly, that no one’s creating it,” he told McKenna. “It just means that the body of what we constitute as the standard rock act — two guitars, bass drums, lead singer, blah, blah, blah, blah — is, for the most part, by and large, over.”
That said, French feels rock music lives on, just not as a reflection of the youth.
“I don’t look at it and go, ‘Oh, why can’t it come back?’ I go, you had a 55-year run. I mean, hell, what doesn’t have a 55…? Big Band had a 20-year run and jazz had a 20-year run. They had 20-year runs. Disco had a seven-year run. Then it all kind of comes as a niche product. Does it mean disco’s not around? No, disco’s around for certain people who like to listen to disco music. You can find the channel and listen to it all day long, but it’s not impacting the world. Same thing with jazz and classical music. It’s always gonna sell, there’s always gonna be a body of people out there buying it — wonderful — but the youth of America is not absorbing it and saying, ‘This is reflective of who we are.'”
You did good, rock music… RIP.