The music industry needs another hero

A RECENT column I came across got me thinking back over the years... I was born in 1944 and have witnessed several decades of pop music and it really struck a chord with me when the writer mentioned that his children were no longer in the target audience for pop music. This subject has been bothering me for some time.

The writer hit the nail on the head with ‘target audience’.

The music industry is no longer looking for an icon like Elvis

Presley who represented the youth of America. The music industry is telling the audience what they should listen to and I have noticed that there is, among the youth of today, an urge to be ‘cool’ and that means to fit in with current popularism, whether the music or fashion is good or bad. Baggy jeans are a classic example.

My parents were spinning 78rpm records on the gramophone during the early 1950s and I listened to beautiful sounds from Frankie Lane, Guy Mitchell and Slim Whitman.

It took a while to get used to the advent of rock ’n’ roll but, as I grew up, I realised that my life was represented in the music.

It wasn’t the music companies that brought about this awakening, it was coming from the audience that was looking for something but not sure what, until a truck driver from Memphis shook teenagers up when he walked into the Memphis Recording Service in 1954 and produced the classic recording

That’s Alright.

Rock ’n’ roll lasted approximately five years and not a lot has happened since, apart from some nice ballads from the likes of Ray Charles, Joe Brown, Roy Orbison and Gene Pitney.

There was a lull in the late Sixties and early Seventies until Dire Straits changed the course by bringing the melody back in along with a driving beat, excellent guitar paying and intelligent lyrics on

Swing, a track that was included on their first album alongside other great recordings – for me, it was and still is the only album where every track is a winner.

Musicians such as Chris Rea, Robert Palmer and The Waterboys also helped to make the 1980s interesting. I have deliberately not mentioned The Beatles, because ironically they changed the face of pop music in the late Sixties with their Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

What the music industry needs now is another hero.

Barry Chapple Cornwall