What defines classic rock?

I asked my Amazon Alexa device to play music of the genre for me, and her first three songs were from The Rolling Stones, Blue Oyster Cult and David Bowie. The next three were from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Looking Glass and Aerosmith. I knew every song by title and artist. Many of you likely would, too.

But what really defines classic rock? The Guardian published a great article on the subject in 2020, asking if it is “a sound, an era, or just any old track with guitars on it,” noting how the genre continues to be “a slippery one to define.”

The article asked if classic rock is linked to popularity or a certain era? Is it a genre in itself, or, as time plods on, has classic rock merely come to be defined as any old track with guitars on it? They added qualifications like being “guitar-led,” being “intrinsically linked with the adolescence of boomers,” “an amalgamation of the anthems of one’s adolescence,” and even “marketing as a means of repackaging music that is no longer deemed to be directly relevant by those of a younger generation.” Ouch.

For a more local angle, I asked a friend who knows the subject better than anyone I know: the man who introduced me to classic rock in the early 1990s as co-host of the KGGO morning show “Lou & Larry,” Lou Sipolt.

Lou told me, “Classic rock is the good stuff from the mid-1960s, 1970s and 1980s, in my mind. Artists who established themselves during that time period are also grandfathered in to having newer material considered from a classic rocker as well. Once the artists earn the title, they should always be able to wear that badge proudly.”

Best-selling writer Charles Cross told American Songwriter that nostalgia born from one’s youth also plays a major force in classic rock’s popularity.

“If we looked at the charts [today], there isn’t a rock act in the top 50,” Cross said. “So, rock is not the dominant genre in music and has not been for some time… Rock itself indeed is dead as a commercial genre, in terms of recorded record sales. But in terms of radio, rock radio is still a very successful format.”

And thank goodness for that. And Alexa. And Lou. Rock on.

Have a magnificent Monday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman 

President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305
www.thedailyumbrella.com

View Shane Goodman's archived columns from past issues here.

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Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.