Rolling Stone 'greatest' list heavy on nostalgia

By Josh Shaffer
Knight Ridder News Service

Whistle a tune by the band Love. Go ahead. Try "Bummer in the Summer."

For the final test, hum a bit of Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica." Anyone who can do all three is either approaching retirement or an avid reader of Rolling Stone.

In its latest issue, rock's oldest and dustiest magazine tallies the greatest 500 albums of all time. No genre save classical is spared from its consideration.

To say the least, the list is heavy on baby-boom nostalgia. No album since 1980 appears in the top 10. Only one since 1990 (Nirvana's "Nevermind") cracks the top 100. The Beatles show up four times in the top 10. Most punk rock and rap artists don't show up until the list is deep into double digits. Hasn't Public Enemy made a greater sonic impact than Love?

And it's not just young musicians who get snubbed. Jazz scores three mentions in Rolling Stone's top 100. Country gets zero. Are Louis Armstrong and Hank Williams inferior to ... uh, those guys in The Zombies?

Regardless of taste, these rankings assert either that '60s and '70s rock produced untouchable greatness or that everything else since gets forgotten. Or that Rolling Stone is woefully stuck in the past.

Any "greatest" list, though, is bound to spark argument. And the more ambitious the list, the more bile spewed.

Judging by the flames shooting out of music fans' computers, Rolling Stone's list is a classic.

"Personally," writes Detroit music fan Andrew Hopko in response to an Internet query, "I'm growing quite tired of having the brilliance of 'Sgt. Pepper' or 'Highway 61 Revisited' always thrown in my face."

To be fair, this list asks for the greatest albums ever — not greatest music. And in that category, "Sgt. Pepper" is unrivaled. Before it, albums were mostly songs thrown together on the same round piece of vinyl. A few were earmarked for hits, and the rest were thrown in for filler.

"Sgt. Pepper" turned the album itself into an art form in which songs could flow into each other, build on a theme and make a larger statement. Taken by themselves, most of the songs aren't memorable in the same sing-along way that "Help" or "Yesterday" are.

But together, they're like the movements in a symphony.

To be unfair, Rolling Stone got famous covering '60s rock. It will always be known for music of the Vietnam War-era counterculture. John Lennon graced its first cover.

The editors are careful to explain that they polled more than 100 musicians and critics of all ages, including Britney Spears and several members of The Strokes. Still, some of its choices are suspicious.

"Critics at many publications are often old farts remembering the 'good old days' of their youth," writes Cary Willis, a former disc jockey and music critic in Louisville, Ky. Chances are, he said, the album that critics remember from the night they first had sex "has more meaning to them than the album that came out last year."

Fans have posted dozens of messages on Rolling Stone's Web site protesting omissions.

"No Flaming Lips?" writes one. "No Ween? Are you kidding me?"

"Should there really be four Beatles' albums in the top 10?" writes another.

"Rap/Hip-Hop has been just as influential and prominent in music as rock 'n' roll," writes a third.

Plenty of contemporary musicians show up on the list: Radiohead, for example. But they are buried so deep that including them seems gratuitous. Who, after all, can name 500 albums — much less rank them?

The thing about the '60s is that everybody heard the same music. Motown and The Beatles and The Mamas and The Papas floated out of everyone's radio.

"Everyone knew about the Beatles and everyone knew about the Rolling Stones because you saw them on Ed Sullivan," says Mary Ann Watson, telecommunications professor at Eastern Michigan University.

They also had the fortune to be great musicians in memorable times, during the war in Vietnam and the civil-rights movement. It was a time that begged for social commentary, and rock 'n' roll was the perfect vehicle. People listened to those songs, Watson says, and the lyrics made sense.

Now, thanks to niche marketing, a band can sell a million albums and go largely unheard outside a certain demographic. Jay-Z makes Rolling Stone's top 500, though he is comparatively low on the list. How many fans of Def Leppard, another Top 500 bottom-feeder, can rhyme along with Jay-Z?

"We're just a fragmented culture," Watson says.

Still, teenagers know classic rock. Record-store owners say 15-year-olds show up to buy "Dark Side of the Moon" on vinyl.

"It's strange not having a musical generation gap, like I had with my parents," writes Winston Barclay, assistant director of arts center relations at the University of Iowa. "My kids feel no compunction about listening to Pink Floyd or the Beatles or even Simon & Garfunkel. ... So there must be some musical values from that period that are proving to be of enduring appeal."