Whitney: All hail nostalgia rock, the source of middle-aged mayhem
If you’re easily startled or around small children, be careful with what I’m about to tell you. My plan is to just put it all out there and deal with the consequences later.
So here goes: I’m buying tickets to see
Fleetwood Mac at the Premier Center.
Hello? Are you still there?
I know what you’re thinking. This is a band that hasn’t put out a relevant album in 30 years and embarked on this tour without artistic leader Lindsey Buckingham. Tickets cost more than the asking price for Badlands Pawn and the main attraction is 70-year-old Stevie Nicks, who is a long way from the edge of seventeen.
But I’ll be there through the encores, just like I’ve dutifully attended concerts by Paul McCartney, Elton John, Paul Simon, the Eagles and Bob Seger since the Denny opened in 2014. I’ve traveled to other venues to see the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, to name a few.
This “nostalgia rock” genre is derided by self-appointed arbiters of musical purity, many of whom are friends or colleagues. They sneer at the cash grab from fading artists and the craven consumerism of middle-age attendees, who gleefully flood Facebook with stage-lit selfies.
(Full disclosure: Premier Center general manager Terry Torkildson scolded me on Twitter during the Eagles show for taking too many pictures.)
The purists absorb live music in darkened clubs with artisanal beer and a cover charge, watching emerging artists perform while nodding sagely at between-songs banter. To be quite honest, that was me once and it’s one of the coolest things in the world.
But life moves on. My children, willing to tolerate "Dad's music" in their youth, morphed into pop music maestros, sending my car’s soundtrack careening from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to the Hits 1 rotation on Sirius XM.
“Doesn’t anyone play instruments anymore?” I’d ask rhetorically, in between the Weeknd singing something about the weekend. When my son wondered one day if Elvis Presley was a member of the Beatles, I started pondering all the wrong turns my life had taken.
Then I reached an epiphany: We should approach musical preferences the same as religion. If it makes you feel good and you’re not trying to force it on other people, rock on. It’s the overbearing spreading of one's gospel that makes things messy.
Music can’t unlock heaven, but it offers a stairway. It reawakens our youth, sparking flashes of recognition. As a Detroit native, the guitar intro to Seger’s “Night Moves” summons memories for me of high school mischief, a connection that might seem silly to those from a different sphere.
My wife and I chose the Beatles song “In My Life” as the first dance at our wedding reception. We wanted it for our church ceremony, but it was rejected because John Lennon refers to “all these friends and lovers” in a passage someone found immoral.
Every time we hear it, our eyes meet and we’re back in a Holiday Inn City Centre ballroom, encircled by well-wishers as we go for a twirl.
Sometimes the most enduring memories come from concerts themselves:
-- Standing 10 feet away from Mick Jagger as he shakes his hips on an auxiliary stage as the Stones slay
Winnipeg’s Blue Bomber Stadium.
-- Seeing Jackson Browne grab his guitar to perform “Jamaica Say You Will” after I called out the request at the Washington Pavilion.
-- Walking among the human sprawl at Canterbury Park near Minneapolis for a double bill of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, with a slightly confused Dylan botching the shared encore.
-- Soaking in the vibe at Soldier Field as the Grateful Dead take the stage at sunset, keeping everyone in their thrall until Chicago police in riot gear clear out the parking lot at midnight.
If these nods to nostalgia make me more dinosaur than Dinosaur Jr., I can live with that. Watching Elton John belt out “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” in Sioux Falls was like a night at CBGB for me.
Besides, knowing and appreciating the history of rock music is part of the appeal.
Classic Rock 101 tells us how Yoko Ono’s presence fractured the Beatles’ “Let It Be” sessions; how the Stones infamously hired Hells Angels as security at Altamont and paid them in beer; how Dylan went electric at the Newport Jazz Festival; and how hard-drinking Who drummer Keith Moon drove his Lincoln Continental into a hotel swimming pool.
I’ll approach
Fleetwood Mac with the same fascination (Mick Fleetwood hates Lindsey Buckingham! The song ‘Landslide’ is about drugs! Christine McVie has daddy issues!) as we await the band’s Oct. 24 appearance.
I’ll apologize to friends such as Jeff Zueger, who runs the White Wall Sessions, and Bob Keyes, former Argus Leader music critic, for my shameless adherence to the past.
But there’s only so much you can do, right? Time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I’m getting older too.
https://eu.argusleader.com/story/new...ger/844828002/