Rock and roll is dying from a chronic onset of terminal nostalgia.  The patient, riddled with a cancer of malignant self-obsession, is just a year past the half century mark, but as consequence of its misspent youth appears already much older.    The sex and the drugs and the celebrity and the spectacle cragged the face of rock and roll like the Mississippi delta, now much too young to look this damn old. With only a cursory review of the nominations for the 51st Grammy Awards, the diagnosis becomes obvious.

Robert Plant.  Paul McCartney.  James Taylor.  The Eagles.  Bruce Springsteen.  B.B. King.  Pete Seeger.  Emmylou Harris.  Joan Baez.  From the nominations alone, it is not clear if the recording industry is celebrating the success of 1979 or 2009.  Every other person up for an award this year gets the discount for the breakfast buffet. If the Grammies are intended to be reflective of the current state of its industry, rock and roll looks like its ready for a glass of Metamucil and an early bedtime.  Jesus fuck, these people are old.

The natural impulse is to say it wasn’t always so.  Rock and roll is supposedly forged in the fiery tumult and chaos of youth.  It is the soundtrack of fast times and poor decisions; the arrogant, invincible anthem inspired by the firm juvenile grip of the world by its very balls.  Rock and roll is supposed to be Buddy Holly and Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain, frozen in their early twenties by tragic idolotry.  When did being old become so popular in popularmusic?  When did rock and roll have a retirement home?

Surely it had to have happened in the last thirty years.  Only in the last decade have we seen the expiration of the first rockstars to die of old age.  The professionals who now control this business of music grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and The Beatles.  As the first millionaires made from making music start to see their last sunsets, it is natural to assume that they try to hold on to the glory of their youth.

Data: Recording Industry Association of America

The statistics suggest they have been successful.  Looking at the two awards for artists in a non-genre specific field – the coveted Album of the Year and Record of the Year – age is king.  Since 1978, over 80% of the recipients of those awards are beyond over 30 with only three twentysomethings getting Record of the Year since 1984.  Nearly two thirds who win are middle-aged (30’s and 40’s), with almost exactly as many awards to artists over 50 as 29 and below.

The anecdotal evidence is also damning.  Ray Charles won posthumously at 74 the year American Idiot was released.  Steely Dan stole top honors from Eminem.  Bob Dylan’s tranwreck retirement tile Time Out of Mind was heralded above the Radiohead masterpiece OK Computer.  The year Jagged Little Pill was released fully six of the seven nominees for Album of the Year were over 50.

It’s not imagination – Grammies are given to Grannies.  But is this prediliction the product of aging pioneers?  Or is it something popular music was born with?

The very birth of rock and roll was not accurately reflected by the Grammy Awards.  Roy Orbison’s landmark Lonely and Blue was released the year Bob Newhart took top honors.  The Beatles were not even nominated for A Hard Day’s Night the year Barbara Streishand was the recording industry’s banner talent.  And the year Bob Dylan finally put out some of his own songs on his Freewheelin’ LP, a fucking Kennedy impersonator made the Album of the Year.

If its own awards are any indication, youth is imaginary in the manufacturing of rock and roll.  For fifty years now the Grammy Awards is supposed to be the most important night in music, yet has the astonishing capacity to celebrate only the inconsequential.  Seemingly always a generation behind anything that matters, the Grammies were born as Benjamin Button, only it seems they will never grow young.

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