Rock is dead. Rock remains dead. And we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? We have options. 

The cultural dominance of a few Springsteen-level rock stars, flanked by identifiable niche subcultures and scenes, has given way to the fluid mode of music appreciation. Punks can listen to metal, metalheads can listen to rap without utterly insulting it, and the “poptimists” have emerged fully victorious over the “rockists,” at least for now. (If they can kill the right to safe and legal abortions, then I suppose “Disco Sucks” raliies might come back, too.) My niece listens to “kawaii metal,” two tastes that go together like peanut butter and hot sauce for me, but certainly a more interesting combination than was easily attainable when it enhanced one’s social status to over-appreciate Radiohead.

Rock is really most sincerely dead, at least as anything but another fun niche, and I like to think Lou Reed would enjoy pissing on its grave. Not the radioactive asshole he was in real life, by all accounts, but the spirit of rebellion and radical honesty he represented in his work, the voice of the wounded and defiant underdog that Andy Warhol helped coax out of him. 

“Rock and Roll” is from the Velvet Underground’s 1970 LP Loaded, more of a ham-and-egger stoner-rock record than the stuff the band made before John Cale’s departure. But lyrically, spiritually, and libidinally, it celebrates the sense of freshness and possibility that all those lost souls, hungry ghosts, tortured artists, and tender perverts like me felt when we heard The Velvet Underground and Nico for the first time. It’s a fun, propulsive song, and, more importantly, it suggests that, “despite all the amputations,” the misfits of the world can find meaning and community through the passions they feel ignited by music and art. For those reasons, I think that Lou Reed would be fully on board with kawaii metal, and “Rock and Roll” remains a bristling testament to that sort of defiant optimism.

Thus, it endures better than Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll,” which is nevertheless among the band’s most fun and propulsive hits. Like “Communication Breakdown,” it’s less fussy than some of their more complicated fare, more angsty and yet more straight-ahead, not unlike Black Sabbath’s (far better) “Paranoid.” It finds a killer hook and rides it to the end, which Jimmy Page wasn’t always capable of doing. 

Zep’s “Rock and Roll” is a song about a couple of perennial topics. Before it referred to music, “to rock and roll” meant “to fuck,” and so the “it’s been a long time” refrain could refer to a sex drought, a subject that’s been covered many times in song (if not definitively until 35 years on). It’s also a song about nostalgia, which never gets old. Writing a song about longing for the past is like writing a holiday song – if it hits and you keep the rights, you’ll never have to worry about money again.

I prefer the Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll” to Led Zeppelin’s because I think self-pity and nostalgia are both psychological quicksand. I want to know how you feel right now. And I still think that by feeling into the passion that fuels our anger, by dancing with ourselves and creating the conditions for our own red-chakra-rooted liberation, we can save ourselves, or at least the sexy parts of ourselves. And I don’t think we necessarily need a soundtrack of drums, bass, and guitars to do it, although rock remains one of life’s many pleasures you should remain free to enjoy as you will.

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