Greta Van Fleet and the insatiable need to rock

There’s little doubt the 80s rocked, but sadly both the word “rock,” whether as a noun, verb, adjective, or possible adverb form along with the genre itself fell out of favor in the early 1990s for reasons that remain entirely unexplained – perhaps until now.

There’s little doubt the 80s rocked.  If the 70s were defined by the “boogie woogie,” a two-word phrase that brings to mind disco dance parties and an overall freewheeling style, the subsequent decade chose a simpler, harder, sharper, even more versatile term to describe the prevailing state of mind:  Rock.  As in “I Wanna Rock,” “We Rock,” “Rock, Rock ‘Til You Drop,” and “Rock Now, Rock the Night” to quote song titles from Twisted Sister, Dio, Def Leppard, and Europe respectively.  This, of course, barely scratches the surface.  Ozzy Osbourne wouldn’t stop rocking all night until the lightning struck again.  Queen confidently declared, “We We Will Rock You.”  At the same time, Europe’s usage of the term is perhaps the most illustrative of the many forms these four simple letters can take, from adjective to verb and everything in between depending on the context, which of course must be rocking in and of itself.  “Rock Now, Rock the Night,” for example, uses the word in its verb form in two different ways in a single song title.  The first cause indicates the time at which an individual will rock, but the second suggests what they will rock the night itself.  Therefore, we can assume that almost anything can safely be rocked, similar to Def Leppard’s simpler take on the theme, “Rocket.”  Europe, the hair band made famous by the ballad “Carrie,” also aspired to “Let the Good Times Rock” in general, which is technically a love song because love can also rock, the same as anything else.  In summary, a person can rock in and of themselves, they can rock something, or something can just plain rock.  Whatever the case, there’s only one other four letter word I can think of with so much versatility and power.

Sadly, both the word “rock,” whether as a noun, verb, adjective, or possible adverb form along with the genre itself fell out of favor in the early 1990s for reasons that remain entirely unexplained.  One night we were rockin’ like Dokken, another underrated 80’s hair band for the record, but we woke up the next morning with the generations long hangover that is the grunge movement.  The unapologetic, in-your-face fire that defined rock for more than a decade was suddenly replaced with non-stop whining, bitching, and moaning.  Bands that used to pride themselves on melting your face off with their heavy licks and pounding rhythms, reveling in the glory of being a rockstar, flaunting their fame, fortune, and prowess with the opposite sex, gave way to what was essentially the opposite, sensitive, socially conscious, and downright boring as a result.  During this same period, the overall concert scene became more uptight and restrictive as townships and then entire states banned smoking, started ejecting attendees for smoking marijuana (how times have changed in that regard), and limiting liquor sales after a certain hour.  Ticket prices also increased dramatically, transforming what were festivals of screaming fans engaged in borderline debauchery to far more corporate affairs, carefully controlled and modulated even as the performers pretended to a faux credibility as serious artists, poets with more enlightened concerns than mere entertainment.  Not long after, critics and music industry insiders harrumphed that rock was dead, while doing everything possible to kill it themselves, pretending an entire era of music no longer existed and that fans no longer craved the simple joy of purely rocking out.  Reader’s Digest asked “Is Rock Dead?” as recently as 2022, noting “What happened to rock music? With pop and hip hop dominating the charts, it feels like the time for bands is over.”  They cited three reasons for the decline, none of which make much sense below the surface, the rise of streaming, risk averse record labels, and closing venues.

In the interim, astute observers noted an obvious problem with this assumption, one which has now been with us for two decades.  Rock might have been dead on the radio and new rock bands might have been few and far between in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but on the touring circuit at least, rock and roll was alive and well, the concert scene dominated by older acts from Bruce Springsteen to The Who.  Somehow, bands that couldn’t get a new song played on the radio if it were the last CD in the world, sold out almost everywhere they went and headlined the highest grossing tours in the world year after year.  In 2001, the highest grosser was U2, followed by Paul McCartney in 2002, the Rolling Stones in 2003, then again in 2005 and 2006.  The Police took the top spot in 2007, the Eagles in 2008, U2 again in 2009, and Bon Jovi in 2010.  Over the full decade, only 2004 had a pop act in the top spot, and even that was Madonna followed by Prince, not exactly fresh, new talents.  This complete domination of the traditional concert market was accompanied by the rise of a new festival scene, where heavily rock influenced jam bands like Dave Mathews and Phish prospered, gathering a rabid fanbase, without the aid of radio play outside a few rare tracks.  Therefore, aficionados such as myself still had plenty of options to engage in the something resembling the transcendental musical experience that is a kick-ass concert, but there remained something missing, obvious in the increasingly gray hair of these seminal bands and their aging fans, myself included:  No one lives forever, and as amazing as Bruce Springsteen and his fellow Baby Boomer rockers were on tour in the 2000s, the music industry – neigh the rock industry – needed someone and something new even as the critics and the industry itself assured us this would never happen.  Rock was dead, after all.

Last week, it was up to the emerging, young, and immensely talented rock band Greta Van Fleet to prove the so-called experts completely and totally wrong as usual.  Simply put, Greta Van Fleet isn’t supposed to exist in today’s world, a quartet composed of three brothers, two of them twins, and a close friend from rural Michigan who have through a strange quirk of fate ended up carrying the torch for an entire genre.  Their sole purpose on Tuesday night was to rock a crowd of 20-somethings, those who are supposed to have no interest in this sort of thing in the first place, in the traditional no holds barred, balls to the wall mode, selling out the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia and reveling in every moment.  To describe Greta Van Fleet as a traditional rock band is an understatement.  Watching them live – complete with three guitar solos and a drum solo – one could be forgiven for believing they were somehow transported back to an alternative reality version of the late 1970s, one where they dominated the scene instead of those that went onto become legends in their own right.  They dress, act, look, and play the part, relying on that unique blend of potent music, screaming vocals, and mystically inspired but borderline nonsensical lyrics so common to the era.  They perform without the aid of backing musicians, vocalists, fancy props, or highly choreographed stage shows.  Instead, they simply play their hearts out with the occasional cannon firing in the background, because as perhaps AC/DC put it best, “For those about to rock, we salute you.”  So convincing are they in this regard, the most common criticism is they sound too much like Led Zeppelin, or are nothing more than Led Zeppelin copycats.  Rolling Stone, in their infinite wisdom, reviewed their second album, The Battle at Gardens Gate, this way, the band sets “themselves apart by playing Seventies classic rock that seemed wholly unburdened by distance, irony, cultural point-making or even self-awareness. They just really, really liked making songs that sounded like Led Zeppelin (with some Rush thrown in there, too)…Greta Van Fleet are just as guilelessly impassioned on their second record. You would think that maybe at this point they would have moved on to ripping off less obvious Zeppelin songs. Nope. Their stairway still goes directly to heaven: ‘Broken Bells’ bustles in your hedgerow with such gusto that it’s not hard to imagine GVF finding themselves on the business end of a whole lotta legal action.”

Left unsaid:  This is the same publication that loathed Led Zeppelin at first.  Their now laughable review of the legendary band’s first album noted, “Jimmy Page, around whom the Zeppelin revolves, is, admittedly, an extraordinarily proficient blues guitarist and explorer of his instrument’s electronic capabilities. Unfortunately, he is also a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs, and the Zeppelin album suffers from his having both produced it and written most of it (alone or in combination with his accomplices in the group).”  They described classics such as “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” as “very dull in places (especially on the vocal passages), very redundant, and certainly not worth the six-and-a-half minutes the Zeppelin gives it.”  “How Many More Times” featured a “jazzy introduction [giving] way to a driving (albeit monotonous) guitar-dominated background for Plant’s strained and unconvincing shouting (he may be as foppish as Rod Stewart, but he’s nowhere near so exciting, especially in the higher registers).”  Zeppelin, of course, went on to become the gold standard against which all other rock bands are judged, usually to be found quite lacking in comparison, and therefore comparisons directly to Greta Van Fleet can only get one so far. 

There is no doubt the band has been inspired by Zeppelin and other seminal 70s and 80s acts, both in their music and their conception.  Josh Kizka is a born screamer, belting out notes in Plantian fashion.  Jake Kizka is a natural guitar thrasher, laying down thick, meaty riffs with abandon, and certainly schooled in the blues based rock of Jimmy Page.  Sam Kizka plays the bass, the keyboards, and even the melatron as did John Paul Jones.  Danny Wagner seems to beat the drums into submission, the same as John Bonham.  These are obvious comparisons to be made, not the least of which being these boys can truly put on a show and perform live perhaps better than they sound recorded, captivating fans and transporting them to concert nirvana for a period.  Jake Kizka in particular may be the best live vocalist I have ever heard, and I say this having attended hundreds of concerts. Unfortunately, many of these comparisons are otherwise cheap at that.   What else should we expect a hard rock band lead by a high pitched screamer to sound like?  Generally speaking, there are only three musical directions for an emerging band to take:  They can follow the Zeppelin path into 80’s hair metal or harder Metallica style metal, or the Bruce Springsteen path into more traditional rock and roll.  Outside of pop or another musical genre entirely such as R&B, what other sounds are there or could there be, especially when many of these same publications didn’t like the original Zeppelin sound to begin with?

Ultimately, surface comparisons give way to an underlying connection that is far more meaningful and instructive in my mind.  Sonically speaking, Greta Van Fleet may sound like Led Zeppelin to a point, but stylistically and culturally speaking they capture a far more important magic than any simple guitar riff.  The true magic of Zeppelin and other great bands is not simply in their music, as impressive as that may be.  It’s in the attitude.  The take no prisoners, give no fucks, we’re going to do it the way we want to do it, and you are welcome to come along for the ride.  Greta Van Fleet is refreshingly unapologetic, writing and performing songs the way they want to, not confined to create in a space defined by critics.  At least so far in their career, it has not been for them to worry about “irony, cultural point making, or even self awareness,” the trappings our cultural betters use to determine whether someone is safely in on the joke with them or out on their own, outside what they define as a culturally safe space, doing it their way and no one else’s.  Greta Van Fleet, at least in my opinion, has succeeded where critics claimed they might fail specifically because they refuse to conform to another’s sense of what rock should be.  Instead, they have tapped directly into its primal source and connected with an entire generation of younger fans, each carrying inside them an insatiable desire to rock the same as Generation X and older, but one that has been entirely unfulfilled until now.  This new generation of concert attendees brings their own spin to the experience – huge on social media, many dressing up in imitation of the band – but the experience they are ultimately partaking in and reveling in is the same as it was 50 years ago.  They might not have known they craved it in the first place, had something hidden in them that needed to be unlocked and could only be realized by four men with a mission to rock your face off on stage, strutting around as if they owned the world and everything in it, but it was there all along just waiting for someone to discover.  Last Tuesday, playing their biggest series of venues yet after making the leap from 4,000 and 5,000 seat halls, to arenas three and four times as large, Greta Van Fleet discovered this for a sold out crowd and, if the non stop ovations and constant clamor was any indication, they will not forget because deep down inside, everyone wants to get rocked.  As the reviewer of a subsequent show in Cleveland put it, “If rock is dead, someone forgot to tell Greta Van Fleet.”  Someone forgot to tell their fans as well.