Dad Rock, Is It Real?

After having some fun with my friends on Facebook exploring the merit of 80’s crap but strangely good songs featuring Jefferson Starship’s We Built This City, I thought we should acknowledge another great musical export from the San Francisco Bay area. Then I thought about genres and some less well-regarded forms of rock than others. Now some would say that labelling music like this is bad but the human brain loves compartmentalising so I am going with it.

In fact my very first post on my blog was about Yacht Rock and how I was outraged that one of the favourite bands, Steely Dan was included under what I saw as a rather insulting genre title. But now I see that I should have not only defended Steely Dan but also some of the other artists who seem to fill that Spotify playlist. Sure a lot of them were schmaltzy and sugary but at least they could write their own songs, play their instruments [in most cases expertly] and supply their own quaver in their voices when it came to the emotional bits.

I mean if someone wants to point out his relationship issues with Escape [The Pina Colada Song] and have a hit with a song with perhaps the worst synthesiser break ever, who am I to judge. Maybe I am just getting older and arguing about this stuff is, in these difficult times, counter productive.

So I now give full credit to Rupert Holmes, Toto, Christopher Cross, Doobie Brothers, Boz Scaggs etc. Rock on, gently.

Now we have that done lets talk about Dad Rock, arguably the worst name for a rock music subgenre since the 70s Kraut Rock [If you don’t know what I mean look it up but let me just just say three words - German, 1970s, synthesisers.

The trouble with Dad Rock is I don’t think it exists or at least not in the way Kraut Rock does. The best way I can explain Dad rock is that it is like your everyday heavy rock but just turned down a bit with a little more soul or blues elements like a saxophone, or harmonica. And you can sing along, that is very important to be able to sing along and tap your feet too.  

The thing is that artists seem to drift into this genre and then drift out but never start and stick in it. For example look at mid period Bruce Springsteen or John Cougar Mellancamp or the supermarket favourite Status Quo.

So does this mean if you hang around long enough and play enough gigs in wineries you too will drift in to Dad Rock world? And is that the end of the world anyway? Is Pearl Jam Dad rock now? What about the Hoodoo Gurus?

Hell musicians want to play music for all their lives and hopefully make money doing it. I say comme si, comme sa.

In the end I am just not sure that there have been many artists who have totally bypassed slim fit and gone to relaxed fit denim from the get go. But I think I would include Brian Adams, The Little River Band, REO Speedwagon and one other.

There was one artist who was Dad Rock from the get go, proudly and exuberantly so. I am talking about the mastery of Huey Lewis and the News. Now if you haven’t been keeping up with what has been going with Huey since I don’t know, lets say about 1991, I can tell you the has been doing the golden oldies circuit, living a semi retired rock star life on a ranch etc. But in February there was new news about Huey and the News [Had to be done].  They released a new album but there is a sad end to the story. Huey now has Meniere’s disease, which basically means he is rapidly going deaf and as a result his music career is now over. What can be crueller for any musician/singer than to be unable to hear?

Now personally I find this tragic as I reckon Huey was one smart dude who played to his strengths, made some ok coin and had a good time doing what he loved. And in fact I think he realised that he was so uncool that he actually was cool.

Also there are some really interesting things about Huey that I did not know till I started researching [I know, I use the term loosely] all things The News. He was in England in 77 when the first wave of punk had just blown through and Stiff records was going strong with performers like Elvis Costello and Ian Dury and Huey played on and produced records with Dave Edmonds and Nick Lowe.

FFS he played harmonica on one track on Thin Lizzy’s awesome Live and Dangerous album!!! No shit.

Huey Lewis and The News are also the feature of an extended essay within the text of Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 book American Psycho and the subsequent film. I am saying that being featured in one of the most controversial and thought-provoking novels of the last fifty years is indisputably cool. And I should point out the News did their bit live and in the videos with their matching mullet lites, dad clothes, tight musicianship and comedic backups.

But lets talk about Huey’s hits, all of them masterpieces of mid tempo, toe tapping sing along Dad rock - Do You Believe In Love, The Heart of Rock and Roll, If This Is It, I Want A New Drug, Power OF Love, Stuck With You and the best of the lot, the self referential Hip To Be Square.

The film clip was great, you can pub dance to it, it’s not too loud, its not too flashy, you can do the drum fills on the car steering wheel while driving to work, if you have half a voice you can stay in key, its Freaking Dad Rock at its best and that is why Huey Lewis deserves our applause and our sympathies. He invented his own genre, mastered it and is now reluctantly moving on. So Dads, next time you have had one glass of red too many and your kids or even better the dinner party guests are rolling their eyes, finish the night with Hip To be Square at a neighbour friendly volume and have a toast to Huey.