Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock

by Steven Hyden

Loving classic rock has always been an act of faith: albums as sacred texts, live concerts as quasireligious rituals, and rock mythology as a means of self-discovery.

There are several stages of grief. First, denial. (“I will pretend that any Rolling Stones album released after Tattoo You doesn’t exist.”) Then, anger. (“Why did I waste my money on Bridges to Babylon? In what universe was Mick Jagger singing over Biz Markie samples a good idea?”) And then bargaining. (“If I sell Steel Wheels and Dirty Work, I can use the money to buy the latest Dylan box set, because owning eighteen versions of ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’ will prevent me from hyperventilating.”) What’s left is acceptance. Acceptance is hard.

Fans called it Led Zeppelin IV, as opposed to Led Zeppelin 4, because Zeppelin albums had the weight of Super Bowls.

There are two unwritten laws about Led Zeppelin IV, and the first is that your favorite track must come from side two. The other law is that Led Zeppelin IV is too popular to be your favorite Zeppelin album; this is why rock critics who try too hard always make a case for In Through the Out Door being Zeppelin’s best.

The Dark Side of the Moon operated on the body clock of a teenager with mononucleosis.

Led Zeppelin represented an ideal of what I wished I could be, but Pink Floyd depicted what I actually was—gloomy.

For a while, I hated “Hotel California” so much that I talked myself into believing my own cockamamie theory about how the song’s decadent SoCal patois was indirectly responsible for the nineties ska-punk abominations of Sublime. After all, isn’t pink champagne on ice just a gateway drug for 40oz. to Freedom?

I like having a finite number of songs. I find meaning in filler and dodgy experiments. I live for plumbing the soul of a single artist attempting to make a singular statement, even if that statement is “Dennis DeYoung is afraid that killer robots from the future will murder rock ’n’ roll.”

Sgt. Pepper is to Magical Mystery Tour what Is This It is to Room on Fire—the first Strokes album gets all the hype but the follow-up that everyone always dismisses as crap is actually stronger. Maybe Julian Casablancas was the walrus all along.

What we’re talking about here isn’t music but mystique. And mystique isn’t organic, it’s invented—by music critics, older brothers, and rock documentaries. It comes from someone telling you that something is great and describing it in a way that convinces you that it’s great before you even hear it.

I never want to stop being surprised by “Visions of Johanna.”