‘Classic rock’ is a rather fusty old oxymoron, but then the term ‘classic’ is applied these days to chocolate bars and that most in-demand of consumer undurable, lavatory paper, so I suppose one shouldn’t complain. Covid-19 will probably be remembered as a ‘classic virus’ one day not too soon, when there are other more baleful new-wave viruses with spiky hair pogoing around. ‘Classic rock’, meanwhile, is a term applied to the sort of chest-beating rawk that people of my generation admire: the Who, Bad Company, Blue Oyster Cult insisting, in timely fashion, that we should embrace death, and Lynyrd Skynyrd informing us, with unforeseen irony, that they can fly, free as a bird.
The classic keyboard player Rick Wakeman, once of the classic rock band Yes, has curated a triple album of classic rock from that most magical (for me) of decades, the 1970s. It’s called 70s Rock Down and was released in CD format last month on the new label Xploded TV. Why on CD, given that so much music today is simply digitally downloaded? Because Rick and the team are well aware that Dad, or Granddad, is sick to the back teeth of having to ask the kids how to download stuff. We are the generation that likes something solid in its paws. So, 60 tracks designed to ease this vulnerable section of the population through the latest lockdown; hence the title. All of those aforementioned bands are included, along with Deep Purple and Status Quo and —well, we’ll come to the rest in a minute. But one genre is wholly absent, as I point out to Rick during an early-morning phone call.
‘Where’s the punk, Wakeman? Did 1977 not happen in your universe?’
There’s a weary growl down the phone. ‘I get pilloried for hating punk, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.
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