How do you define success for a rock group? The nature of the ladder is very clear at the bottom: the rungs are marked with “playing competently in the same key,” “playing for money for the first time,” “becoming spiritual leaders of a local music scene,” “having a national hit single” … it is all easy to work out. At the top, though, the standards are no longer technical and commercial. They become historical.
Above the level of “mere” successful hit-makers, there are artists whose core discography, or even their entire career in the studio, becomes part of a larger cultural story — the Led Zeppelins, Black Sabbaths and Kinks. And there’s a level above that, at which a group’s individual tracks become the subject of extensive study, entire mini-literatures — where even B-sides and cast-offs attract interest, and every move, every day, is extensively documented. That level’s pretty much Bob Dylan and the Beatles.
Colby Cosh, “The improbable media journey of The Tragically Hip”, National Post, 2016-08-22.
May 6, 2018
QotD: The hierarchy of success for rock groups
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