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Indian Express

The rock and roll flame may be on simmer, but it can never die down

I was eight years old, maybe younger, when I heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana. It was my first taste of rock and roll, and it opened my soul to a sound I didn't know existed. I remember jumping up and down in the living room with my brother as Kurt Cobain screamed in the backdrop of wailing electric guitar on VH1. I think it's safe to say that I knew the kind of music I would be obsessed with for the rest of my life before I knew that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. My deep fascination with this raw, uncut genre only grew in my teen years — not just because of my inclination, but because of how it influenced the culture around me. I remember my dad listening to Pink Floyd and Dire Straits at house parties with his friends. I remember teenagers around me taking guitar lessons, modelling their entire personalities after the legendary Axl Rose. I even remember begging my mom to buy me my first band t-shirt when I was just 11 years old — an oversized, grey top with the album art of The Beatles' 'Abbey Road' printed on it. In the early 2000s, independent music burst onto the Indian scene. As the obsession around rock and roll grew, so did the local bands, who may have started out with Led Zeppelin covers but soon found their own sound. It seemed that the thirst for rock could never be satiated — until today, when the craze seems to have died down. Nearly two decades later, the sound and soul of a genre, which once breathed second life into some of the biggest music movements of the time, seems lost. But for the veterans of the genre, rock and roll will survive as long as the spirit of rebellion is alive. In a candid conversation, legendary musician Subir Malik reminisced about how his band Parikrama, considered to be the biggest rock band of Asia at one point, used to play hundreds of college shows up until the 2010s. IITs and IIMs had a deep rock and roll society. Fast forward a decade, and almost no college hosts a rock night anymore. 'College kids in the early 2000s were listening to Floyd and Zeppelin, which is why they related to Parikrama's music. But after 2012, the sound shifted, and local rock and roll bands went into a deep decline,' Subir said. The 55-year-old musician, who founded Parikrama with his younger brother and college mates in the late 1980s, explained how the shift in the digital age is one of the major factors why the genre was subdued in the mid-2010s. 'One major reason behind this decline was the shift from a guitar base to a synth base. Another core reason is that earlier five or six musicians used to sit together with their instruments and compose a song. Now, with technological advancements, a kid with a laptop can sit and write and compose a whole song from his home,' Subir said. Raaghav, a budding music producer, helped me gain a deeper understanding of this technological shift. While the influence of rock and roll remains entrenched in the music we listen to now, he said, the shift is somehow justified. Young musicians would rather invest in a good laptop or a home setup than in bulky hardware like expensive electric guitars and massive amps. An amateur producer can now sample music off YouTube, rip any international music mixing software at zero cost, download beats from the infinite music platforms available now, or even make his own using a portable sound board attached to his personal computer. The reliance on software and soundboards, while more cost-effective, put an end to the raw sound of the typical 80s rock and roll. The shift to appliances from instruments produced clean, precise music, friendly for streaming and aesthetically pleasing, just as the demand for a 45-second drum solo in an eight-minute record came crashing down. The change became apparent to me during a nostalgic visit to my school in Noida, where students from different walks of life only united over one front, our annual music festival. It was the one event which was ours — loud, brash and steeped in personal rebellion. We used to cover the walls of the school with graffiti while blasting Megadeth songs in the corridors as teachers took a backseat. It is one of the few core memories I hold from my school days. To relive the past, I went back to my school fest a couple of years ago. I was ready to vibe once again, but what was once an ode to rock and roll was now a celebration of pop music. The shift from Megadeth to Maroon 5 caught me off guard. Not just the artists, but the tone of the event had changed. Teenagers now wore vintage band t-shirts off of Shein just for their aesthetic value, and the burn of rebellion behind rock and roll now simmered at a low flame. Don't get me wrong, people are still deeply passionate about the music they listen to, but somewhere along the way, the 'how' changed. Now, we don't wait for albums to drop; we just discover new music and artists through trending Instagram reels. We skip intros, loop the hook, and judge a track on the basis of the first 30 seconds. Rock and roll, with its messy solos, long buildups and unabashed energy, doesn't fit the format anymore. The time when each track demanded your attention, not your algorithm, is long gone. Now, long guitar solos are mostly limited to reels with a nostalgic filter on them. Rock and roll is more of a mood board than a movement, and honestly, I miss the noise. In a long conversation, Subir took me on a trip to the 90s and 2000s rock and roll scene, explaining with vivid passion how Parikrama, along with other big Indian rock bands, changed what the genre meant. How the youth of India saw rock and roll music as a wave of rebellion and a symbol of anti-establishment sentiment, which runs deep in the heart of every 20-something who chose to pick up a guitar once in their life. So, is rock and roll gonna survive the current paradigm shift in music? His response was simple, 'Of course it will.' He elaborated, 'After a pause of nearly a decade, Parkirama was invited to perform in seven top colleges across the country, a clear sign that the demand for the genre is still there. In fact, I attended a music festival a few years ago, dedicated solely to rock bands, and I was shocked to see the entire crowd filled with youngsters, most of them in their early 20s.' 'It is surely making a comeback, and the signs are there. In fact, you see a similar style of music in a lot of mainstream Bollywood tracks, a good example would be the Dil Dhadakne Do album. In fact, when it comes to the live scene, all the headliners in big music fests in India, be it Lollapalooza or Zomaland, are rock bands,' he said. Iconic guitarist Randolph Correia, who founded the iconic band Pentagram alongside Vishal Dadlani, is certain that rock and roll will never fade out. 'Music evolves, and almost everything we hear today i.e. modern music, comes from or has some relation to 50s, 60s, 70s rock and roll. Energy cannot be destroyed, it transforms and that's the world we live in today. Rock and roll ain't dead. It's on your phone and streaming services and it will keep haunting you for the rest of your life,' he said. My take? I believe that rock is something which is passed down from generations, taking up a new shape with every passing year. What Deep Purple was to my father, a band like Arctic Monkeys is to me. But will the generation after me embrace the genre with the same open heart that I did? The pattern of dissent that rock and roll follows — my dad's metal house parties as an escape from the suit-and-tie life; my siblings and I watching late-night televised concerts on V1H; and a bunch of kids reclaiming the school grounds at an annual music event — might never be replicated again, but the hope remains that its soul will survive for ages to come.