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The places to start looking for rock's real trouble are the ones that used to be the sources of its renewal: radio and records. What sells is what the radio plays, but the radio plays only what sells and, often, what sells out. Styx, Foreigner, AC/DC, Journey, REO are variously typical of what Columbia Records Executive Peter Philbin calls a "Madison Avenue approach to rock 'n' roll," a cunningly anonymous cruise down the mainstream. Telling any of these groups apart is like passing the Pepsi challenge: Even if you see any difference between them, what possible difference does it make?
Bands like REO manage to outsell Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the Who by swapping individuality for corporate style: heavy guitar chords and sappy strings, music by rote, lyrics by reflex. Says one major record executive: "In the 1960s, commercialism and the heart of rock were pretty much the same. In 1982 the commercial center and the soul of the music are different. It's no accident that these bland, faceless groups with no defined image, no personality, no boldness have the largest-selling albums. They're the easiest to sell."
Certainly they are the easiest to get on the radio—"AC" radio, that is, music biz vernacular for "adult contemporary" stations, whose regimented play lists have turned Fogerty's song for everyone into ditties for anyone. On the '60s Top 40 radio, it was possible to hear Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, the Beatles, the Four Tops and Bob Dylan all in the space of an hour. Nowadays, says Neil Bogart, president of Boardwalk Entertainment Co., "they play music for the 14-to-18 audience, the 30-to-35, the 50-to-60, or for white, black, chicano. And only two out of five stations are willing to play new records."
The results of radio stations' demographic polls can be racist, in fact if not in intent. With some crossover exceptions like Michael Jackson and the Commodores, the place to hear black music on American radio now is either soul or oldies stations. And they play even less white music on black radio. Says Jon Landau, the onetime rock critic who now manages Bruce Springsteen: "The cross-fertilization between black music and white music that created rock has greatly diminished." But, argues Atlantic Records Chairman Ahmet Ertegun, "radio doesn't play according to what its prejudices are. Radio plays according to results."
Jerry Wexler, Ertegun's former partner who helped produce some of the best soul sides ever cut, offers a more sweeping reason for the languishing rock culture. Contrary to the shared assumptions of the Woodstock generation, he insists, "rock isn't the best possible tool for insulting your parents or establishing the fact that you are a free person. Kids are too cool for that now." Certainly the music is cool, not in Wexler's hipster sense, but in mean degrees. A go-for-broke performer—someone who, like Springsteen or Pete Townshend, has the temerity to believe that rock not only matters, but matters deeply—is working out of a hot center that no longer exists. Such an attitude even a decade ago would have been a way to reach for the listeners. Now, if it does not turn them off, it certainly limits them.