All language subtitles for HISTORY OF ROCK N ROLL Vol. 10 -The Undrtgtound (1995) eng

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In the '80s, rock had irony, flash...

and more sex appeal than ever.

By beaming rock videos
around the world...

MTVbecame
music's first global network...

and created
a powerful new corporate medium...

complete with wild imagery
and calculated self-censorship.

At the same time,
inner-city youth were improvising...

a controversial medium of their own
in the form of rap.

By the '90s, the scene had come full circle
with alternative rock.

The new wave
would become a big business...

but only by climbing up
from the underground.

Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n'roll.

You'll never look at music
the same way again.

When MTV started, we were naive,
idealistic, and hopeful.

We thought, "This is it. Everything
Devo'd thought and been talking about...

"what we'd wanted to happen
is happening."

We want to create this thing called MTV,
a new attitude.

We were going to be
the first TV network ever...

to sell the network identity
as opposed to selling its programs.

Television used to be called
a vast wasteland.

That was before Music Television, MTV.

MTV felt very revolutionary then.

MTV was very much in everybody's face,
and there wasn't much on it.

We'd be in an airport...

and people were coming up
to all of us and going:

"Hey, where's your top hat?"

Or, '"Where's your motorcycle? '"

"What are you talking about?"

"We saw you on MTV."

And this became the thing...

that changed MTV's relationship
with the music business.

When the artists started hearing
everybody say, "I saw you on MTV..."

they started saying,
"Saw me doing what?"

"I saw the video
where you were doing this."

They thought, "I never saw that."

For months, we were going,
"We gotta see this MTV."

And the groups then got involved
in the creative process.

We went to Warner Bros. And said,
"We're gonna do a video to Whip lt. '"

They said, "Why? The song's already
charting. What do you need a video for?"

And we said,
'"We just think we should do one.

'"We want to have this girl,
and Mark's gonna whip her clothes off. '"

Of course, they said, '"Absolutely not. '"

So we did it anyway with our own money.

This was the image of men and women...

as corporate advertising
likes to portray them.

Your all-American,
Budweiser kind of guys and girls...

the good-looking jocks and jockesses.

We were to appear on the Lily Tomlin
special the week this was finished.

She said,
"Do you have a video for this song?"

We proudly said, "Yes, we do."
We sent it, and she canceled us.

We thought people would see the irony
and sense of humor.

I thought it was pretty obvious
we were doing satire.

In those times, it seemed fun to do videos.

There weren't too many of them,
and it was fun to see yourself on TV.

The first video we made,
Our Lips are Sealed, in the car...

we thought, "What is a video?"

We just didn't take it seriously at all.

We went driving around the city
and jumping in fountains and things.

We thought it was ridiculous
that we were doing it.

Little did we know that, that medium
became such an important part of music.

At the end of '81 is when
we started touring with The Police.

We opened for them, and that's really
what blew the lid off of it...

when our record went to number one
and theirs was still at number six.

- Sorry, but, you know...
- The opening band.

In those days, it was very different.

You could make an album, two albums.

The record company
would still be behind you.

It wasn't such a fast turnover as it is now.

There was much more...

The record company
believed in development then.

It wasn't about, "If you have two singles
and don't get your video on MTV...

"then you're finished."

At first, the general consensus
was that I would never be a pop star.

They wanted to release Do You Really
Want to Hurt Me. I was against it.

'"This shouldn't come out as a single.
This will be the end of us. '"

And I was wrong.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
was something sincere...

that I'd written from a real-life experience.

It had black and white minstrels in it,
and black guys painted black.

For some reason,
MTV decided that they couldn't show that.

MTV in the early years was bullshit.

I didn't understand it, never watched it,
didn't care about it.

So, we have Kurtis Blow with The Breaks.

We have Melle Mel and
Grandmaster Flash with The Message.

And they couldn't get arrested on TV.

Rap not only had a problem
with television...

it had a problem with radio
and black radio.

Here you have a community...

that had nothing
to represent themselves. Nothing.

Everything was somebody else's
expression of reality and society.

So we were forced to take that,
mutilate it...

and give it back as our expression now.

At that time,
breakdancing was a real big thing then.

This is where you would have two males,
or two females...

or a male and female
compete against each other.

Graffiti was a thing for all the artists.

Graffiti is not an art...

but I can sure as hell tell you that
that's a crime.

You could just jump the fence.
It was like a schoolyard fence.

You could go into the yards
and put your name up...

then wait for the train to go by,
and that was your finale for the day.

"Wow! My name is traveling
all through New York city."

Hip-hop is the umbrella.

Hip-hop is the way you move your body.

It's the way you talk, the way you think,
the sensibility.

It's the way you...

Whether it's graffiti, popping and locking,
breakdancing, and everything else...

it's the sensibility.
And it's one of the richest sensibilities...

that's come along in a long, long time.

You had your solo rappers,
Kurtis Blow and Melle Mel.

But then you had the Furious Five,
Treacherous Three, Double Trouble.

So this is how two MCs would do it
at the same time.

But the first guy on a B-Boy rapping tip...

What I mean by "B-Boy,"
you know, over breakbeats with a DJ...

and cutting it up.

The first guy that fascinated me
was Melle Mel, because he was clear...

he had a good voice,
and he rhymed on beat.

And his DJ was fascinating.
DJ Flash was incredible.

I had come up with...

a mixing technique
which I called the Quick Mix Theory...

where I was able to take
two copies of the same record...

on two different turntables...

and repeat the climactic part of the record
over and over again.

And this was around 1979,
where I kind of saw this guy do it.

I said, '"This guy's got it right.
This guy's doing it right. '"

When we heard a rough draft
ofThe Message...

the lyrics were quite dark.

We felt, '"Why would the world
want to hear something like this? '"

It was like an explosion.
You would hear it on BLS.

You turned the dial two notches,
you'd hear it again.

Turn the dial to the left, four notches.
You'd hear it again.

It was all over the place.

I was shaken up, a little scared.

I grew up listening to my influences...

like your James Browns,
your Sly and the Family Stones.

But to hear my own record like that,
it was...

I want my MTV!

We were playing probably about the same
percentage black videos as white videos.

The same number of black artists
as white artists had produced videos.

Sorry, MTV, but I got to tell people this.

I'm in New York. It's 1981.
I get a phone call.

"Don Letts, we want to interview you.

"You're the man
who makes the Clash videos." Fine.

I go to MTV. I show up in the offices.

Everyone's looking at me funny...

like I should have used
the tradesmen's entrance or something.

Somebody comes down, calls me
into an office, sits me down, and says:

"Don, you have to understand...

"that we have a little problem here."

What he was saying
is he didn't realize I was black.

He went on to tell me that, at that time...

the policy of MTV...

was to cater to a Midwest white audience.

Therefore, they weren't really
playing black videos.

He even gave me an example
of how strict this rule was.

He cited Wordy Rappinghood...

which was a cartoon
with animation video.

But he said, "That sounds too black,
so we don't play that."

We could not get Billie Jean on MTV.

CBS threatened to pull their roster
unless MTV started to play black artists.

I think the story that went around
was Walter Yetnikoff...

who was the legendary sort of...

pound-the-tables head of CBS Records...

I think what happened was
Walter told Michael...

that MTV didn't want to play that video.

"I went and told them, 'You play
this video, or I'll burn you down."'

With the big threats,
and made himself look good to Michael.

When they started playing
Michael Jackson's video...

they considered that a great achievement.
But if you're black...

you remember Michael Jackson from 1969.

So maybe it was a big turnaround
for white America...

but for black America, and for myself,
I wasn't thrilled.

That was the beginning
of music television, I think.

And it was Michael Jackson,
Thriller, on MTV.

MTV and Michael rode each other to glory.

This is a rock 'n' roll museum.

You guys don't belong in here.

Somebody had to take the banner
to the next level.

And it had to be a group
that was willing to do something...

that would be a milestone,
not just another record.

When I saw Run-D.M. C...

I said, "This is how
it's supposed to be done."

Those boys are def! They are def!

We put the record out, Sucker MCs.
We did a lot of praying.

When we put this record out, Sucker MCs,
nobody had a rap album out.

We just wanted our record to play...

like some of the records
on the big radio station.

MTV came along as everything
was rolling right into place for us.

Everything was falling into place.

We couldn't stop it
from falling into place after a while.

Then MTV, we got a call from Russell.

Something called MTV added us,
it's really big to them.

"What's MTV?" Gather that together.

- We didn't know MTV.
- Didn't have cable in Hollis.

But they're very excited at the office...

that we're gonna get regular rotation
with Rock Box on MTV.

'"You don't understand how big this is. '"
'"Okay, I'll tell D.

'"D., we got added on something called
MTV. They're very excited about this.

'"This is a big breakthrough. '"

So we saw that they're happy,
so it must be something big.

Raising Hell was big.

Everybody wanted to wear the black Levis
and the black sweatshirt.

Everybody else thinks,
besides rock 'n' roll...

"Okay, it's time to go on stage.
Give me my wardrobe.

"I need my sparkles.
I gotta look good for the people."

When people actually
just want to see you in your jeans.

They want to relate with you.

Bruce Springsteen wears his jeans,
and you go out on stage.

Walk around all day. It's time to go
on stage. Keep walking up to the stage.

That's what they wanna see,
so that's what we did.

We brought
what we was in the alley rapping.

Time to do the show. '"Turn the camera on.

'"Let's do the same thing
we were doing in the alley. '"

They said, '"That's real, what I want. '"
We did what we were doing.

We took the beat from the street
and put it on the TV.

My favorite rap album of all time,
hands down:

Run-D.M.C., Raising Hell. 1986.

I remember I was in a record store,
staring at this record.

I couldn't believe it.

I'd known the guys for three years,
but I kept flipping it around.

I stayed in the store for an hour.
I said, "This is how rap's supposed to...

"Rap is really bigtime.
This is how it's supposed to be."

We were getting ready
to make a rap record...

over the beat Walk This Way.

Before rap records were made,
we would rap over Toys in the Attic.

I was getting ready to rap over
the first three seconds of the record.

With them loud guitars coming, I'm mad.

I'd lose 10 seconds
at the start of the record.

If it ever got to him singing,
there's a problem, I'm mad at the DJ.

Rick Rubin walked in and just took over.

'"Let's really make the record over.
Let's call these guys. '"

Which weren't doing well at the time,
'"Let's make Walk This Way over. '"

Joe and I flew in,
and there were these three guys...

doing this thing called rap,
which was relatively brand-new.

Rick said, '"Just kind of play along
and get a bass. '"

So I played bass on it,
and it kind of built this track up.

They came in and rapped it.

They rapped whatever words
they thought they were, which was cool.

He was mad at it for a while.

He was mad at the fact that,
'"Oh, my God, the rap... '"

Everybody was like,
'"Run-D.M.C. Made y'all rap. '"

For a while, they were a little hurt by it.

Everyone was saying that rap is just a fad.

As a matter of fact, hip-hop,
the whole thing, is a fad...

and it's gonna die soon.

People were saying,
no way was rap gonna work.

Even though I didn't like it much at first,
I knew then that it was gonna work.

A lot of r&b artists back in the days
used to say all kind of things.

"It's not music."
Rock-'n'-roll artists, as well.

I don't think it's the highest form
of music that you can make...

because you're using
someone else's melody.

I just took offense to that.
I said, "No, it's more than that."

They still say things like,
"It's not music. It's garbage."

Rap's short for "crap."

Rap was computerized rot.

"If Hitler was to make a song,
it would be rap."

I first designed Public Enemy
in the footsteps of Run-D.M. C...

who I think, and still think,
are the best rap group ever in rap music.

So I designed my group after them,
and I said:

"After studying Run-D.M.C.,
I can't go wrong."

We recorded Criminal Minded.

That album was all about
introducing the new style.

That's all it was about, the new style.

We are taking over the new style.

We came with a different ball game...

of consciousness, self-knowledge...

But also, on a musical end,
we came with a faster tempo.

The biggest difference in It Takes a Nation
of Millions to Hold Us Back...

is that the beat range
of a lot of rap records...

were 98, 96 beats per minute.

And here I come with hip-hop, reggae...

and 16-bar rhyme styles...

Like, that's it, that's all, solo, single,
no more, no less.

And at a time when people was going,
"He's this, I'm that."

"Throw your hands in the air, just clap."

And our stuff was more like
109 beats per minute.

The kids was just going crazy
for this style.

All right, all right!

- Who the hell are you?
- We're the band.

The band? Where's your instruments?

What the...

We only play rock music here!

Yo, why you dissing, man?

- Rock 'n' roll!
- Yeah, dude. Like, I think we're the band.

The first white rap that got across to me...

was the Beastie Boys, because they came
from the same environment.

Them guys, they were some bugged-out...

gentlemen.

The Beastie Boys outraged audiences
as the opening act for Madonna...

on her 1985 Virgin tour.

In 1990, she outraged executives at MTV...

who banned her Justify My Love video.

There are all sorts of artists...

who are using music
in a not-so-central way.

Something else is the center
of what they're doing.

For example,
the highly controversial Madonna.

People don't like her...

because she seems to use music
as part of the package for herself.

I say, "Why not?"

If that's what she wants to do, why does
music have to be the center of it?

Why can't lifestyle be the center,
and music be part of the presentation?

I like Madonna.

But, for me, she went a little overboard...

for me, my limit.

I felt like, after a while,
she just wanted to shock people.

That's all she was interested in,
shocking people.

All the people that have stood out,
stood the test of time...

are people that have had
more than just their music.

When video came about
and we saw the groups making videos...

that were basically them bouncing around,
we decided not to do anything like that.

The English have this uncanny knack
of packaging...

giving something a look, a style...

and making it into more than just a sound.

I think much more so than the Americans.

So I wrote the actual script
for the video ofSweet Dreams...

as a kind of surrealistic, short,
three-and-a-half minute film...

largely influenced
by Salvador Dal�'s L'age d'or.

And the idea of a cow...

coming and disturbing the reality
of a boardroom meeting...

or vice versa, a boardroom meeting
being in the middle of a field of cows...

to show the actual sort of uselessness
and the stupidity...

of people making decisions
that think they're altering the world.

But in America,
we speeded up a whole process.

We didn't go there
and tour for years and years...

'cause MTV kind of did it for us.

I think it sped up the process.

It didn't replace road work.

At the time,
I remember discussions with my buddies:

"We don't have to tour anymore.
We'll just make a video."

It certainly helps...

to have your video
played 20 times a day on TV.

The trouble with being a visual artist...

is that the visual aspects of one's art...

generally leave their marks
more graphically...

than the more musical form
of what you do.

I originally disliked MTV quite a lot...

because I thought it was a real safe play...

and I still think it does play safe
in many ways.

But I think that it's undeniably created
a forum...

for some of the most interesting film
and video work...

that's been done in the last 10 years.

It's like a lot of things today
are forced on you...

in your ears, in your eyes...

whether you walk down the street
with neon signs...

music blaring in lifts, in restaurants.

A lot of the time, MTV can be like that.
It's just like wallpaper blaring at you.

But every now and then,
there's a great filmmaker or great group...

that has a great thing on,
and it's worth it for that.

Video is the worst thing
that ever happened to music.

It's taken a lot of magic out of music.

What the video age
and MTVhas killed off...

is this whole thing about how now a song
is this visual.

The great thing, in the early days...

was you could just sit there
and hear these songs...

and make up your own images
and find your own things in it...

and let your mind wander.

And artists that are
not particularly over-talented...

but because they look the part,
become stars.

Fortunately,
we came in before that started.

Would you get someone like me now...

that doesn't look like a million dollars?
No. I don't think you would.

If they're on television all the time,
you've taken some of the thrill of it out.

When I was a kid and David Bowie
was playing at Lewisham Odeon...

it was a big thing.
It was six months of waiting...

and it was exciting.
Now you just turn on your TV.

It's like, "David Bowie. Yeah. KISS."

I've seen things on MTV
that have just made my eyes go like this.

They're shockingly original
and fabulous things.

Some of the best video makers now...

can do things in a four-minute pop video...

that they would never, ever be able to do
in any other forum.

I'm thinking, for instance,
of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Rock 'n'roll is sexuality personified.
It's attitudes.

It's all the things your parents told you
don't do, you can do.

It's the freedom to express yourself.
It's a good time. It's being alive.

It expresses the times.

It's a way of... It's a magazine, newspaper
that's the truth.

If you listen to rap today,
it's all about the truth...

which is all we all want,
just give me a little bit of truth.

Middle America might be saying,
"Not in my backyard."

They would never see
what was going on if it was up to them.

Out of sight, out of mind,
seems like their credo.

As Americans across the country began to
accept rap as a reputable form of music...

the West Coast rappers joined in with
an even harsher view of the inner city:

Gangsta rap.

This is what this guy,
this child has seen all of his life...

but when you put a beat to it
and put some rhythm...

you say you don't want to hear it.

You understand me? But he's only
telling you what he was raised around.

This is what is in his environment...

and he's expressing it the only way
he or she knows how to express it.

Well, you know, N.W.A.,
Niggers With Attitudes...

when I heard their first album...

Straight Outta Compton,
I thought it was brilliant.

They said things outwardly...

on tape, on a record,
that people would only think.

Some things that you say and do...

go a long way
to influence those that listen.

And unfortunately, I feel,
my opinion only...

that it has only resulted in
a lot of negativity...

within the black community.

It's not negativity. It's niggativity.

It's niggative.

And they represented it
for the West Coast.

They actually single-handedly
put the West Coast on the map.

Ice-T was doing it.

Ice-T was the forerunner.
He was like John the Baptist.

I created the crime line.

I was the first person to really rap
about crime.

More than the attitude in '"gangsta rap... '"

it's become a thing where a lot of the guys
from the West Coast...

where what's going on
in the neighborhood...

is blended with
that particular type of music.

In sales...

these guys go Platinum and Gold...

like we breathe.

Rap is going
in so many different directions now.

It's a versatile music.

A lot of white kids are learning
a lot about black people...

because of hip-hop, you know?
We all get to learn about each other.

Hip-hop is like the CNN for the youth.

You don't start a band to save the world,
you really don't.

You start a band for all the wrong reasons.

Just to make a big noise.

And roar at the world.
That's where it starts.

And later on in life,
you develop a conscience.

When you begin to get real popular...

you have to be careful
that obviously there's not a dilution...

into some very simplistic terms
of what you're doing.

America's future rests
in a thousand dreams inside your hearts.

It rests in the message of hope in songs of
a man so many young Americans admire:

New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen.

Tonight in this city,
there's people going hungry.

There's old folks whose social security
checks don't get them through the month.

There's people
who've been hit by unemployment.

People who the trickle-down theory
of economics ain't trickling down to.

At the time, part of the idea was
that I wanted the band to come out to be...

a bit of an alternative voice...

to the image of America...

that was being presented
by our Reagan administration.

In a way, the communication
has affected so many things.

In music, and even the Berlin Wall,
and perestroika and glasnost.

It's been very powerful,
and people see what's going on.

The information between videos and films
and music and everything else...

when people absorb this,
how powerful it is...

the changes, it pulls the walls down.

And it wasn't Interpol or the CIA
or anything else...

that turned all this stuff around.

It was music, video, films,
and information.

I think rock 'n'roll is very powerful.

It's a tool
for bettering the world these days.

The conveyances
that give us rock 'n' roll...

are contributing more
to the change in society than rock itself.

MTV, for instance, a channel
which conveys rock 'n' roll to us...

actually instigated a whole method
of trying to involve youth...

with changing politics and voting.

What's up? It's real popular in rap
right now to diss the establishment...

or complain
about the establishment's faults.

What needs to be popular
is getting y'all out there to vote.

Know what I'm saying?

Trying to change the world
with rock 'n' roll...

is kind of a funny thought.
I don't think you can.

I don't think it has any power
to change the world.

It only reconfirms or reaffirms to people
where they're at.

One nice thing it does is brings people...

that feel disenfranchised and lonely,
together.

The whole idea that we could change
the world musically...

with good thoughts, positive energy,
good vibrations...

we could write songs that would make
people love, not hate each other...

we could put an end to war and violence
by just positive thinking...

was really a wonderfully innocent idea.

It didn't quite work,
but it was a great idea.

To change the world,
you must get out there and change it.

Music won't change it. Music changes
the way you live in the world.

It changes the way you see it,
but it doesn't change the world itself.

I just remember Salt and myself
in a studio at the time...

and we were watching the news...

and Magic Johnson
just came through the TV:

'"I'm HIV-positive. '"

And we just sat there, fell,
like, "Oh, my God!"

And it just hit us. And from that day on,
it was like, "Oh, my God..."

You know what I mean? A lot of people...

That's home to us. That's, like, close.
That's the circle we hang in. That's young.

We need women to pick up women now,
especially with all the...

You know, how the guys diss the women...

gangsta calling women hos and bitches
and things like that.

We kind of counteract that
with the things that we say.

Even political songs become pop songs
after they're old.

It seems to be that self-consciousness...

is what suffocates...

the kind of creative spirit in anything...

but especially in rock 'n' roll.

Look what you've done to me.

You've made me very famous,
and I thank you.

I know you like your pop stars
to be exciting...

so I wore these.

Between stadiums, excessive indulgence...

the growth of the media, the audiences,
and record sales...

rock 'n' roll became big business.

I think U2's popularity
is founded on several things, actually.

One is that they write great songs.

Two is that they work extremely well
as a band.

But I think most importantly...

people sense
that their commitment is real.

Not many things travel well
around the world because of language.

The one thing that travels well
is rock 'n'roll.

I remember in the Himalayas...

up at Namche Bazaar,
which is the last element of civilization...

before you enter into
Everest base camp area, Khumbu valley...

it's up around 16,000 feet.
It is the highest point of any civilization.

This was the model
for Shangri-La, that old, ancient movie.

I remember walking into
a little box-room, like a warehouse area...

where they stored rice and grain,
there was a picture of Duran Duran.

In the last six years,
I've been in 35 countries...

many of them over and over again...

on every single continent,
in the name of rap.

People say, "Do they like rap in China?"

I say, "What do you think
I've been there for?"

Like I went over there to play ping-pong,
or some shit.

People thought it would probably
spread east to the East Coast...

maybe somewhere down south.

Did I think it was going to
go to Australia, Africa...

England, and Paris?

I don't think so.

Hip-hop started here, you know,
in one place...

and it's all over the world now.
You got Japanese MCs...

and all peoples from all nationalities,
rhyming on the mike.

I've been to India
and seen an Indian rap group...

rapping about things happening
in that village.

There are cultures in the world
that are disappearing.

To some people, it's very important
that they be preserved.

How does that fit in with a system...

where in every country of the world now...

people want to watch MTV
and play rock 'n' roll?

How are the young people gonna realize
the value of their own music?

What I'm excited about right now...

is that rock 'n' roll, at this point,
is mutating.

It's turning into something else.
In fact, the term "rock 'n' roll"...

is over.

And I'm just excited to be at that point...

where the ground is giving way.

I can really feel it just about to go
under our feet, and I just want to let go.

You know, I want to go with it.

I think that's there's been
a bit of a revolution...

in popular rock 'n' roll
in the last few years...

with the success of Jane's Addiction
and Nirvana breaking the ground.

And I think that people were just sick
of listening to crap on the radio.

Bands left over from the '70s
still putting out albums...

and that's what the radio stations
were eating up...

and kids were like,
'"This does not relate to me.

'"This is not my generation of music. '"

And so radio stations picked up on it.

Lollapalooza picked up on it,
and here we are.

I think what I look for in bands
more than anything is attitude.

I think that America has a really good,
thriving rock scene, you know.

People who have got something to say...

something other than, you know...

clich�s.

The reason I chose Lollapalooza
as the title for the concert...

is because when I looked it up,
this was the exact terminology:

'"Something or someone
great or wonderful. '"

Two: "A giant-sized lollipop."

It's like this alternative rock thing.

I don't know how many times I've heard
that word thrown around, "alternative."

It's, like, alternative to what?

The media has really sucked up all of it.

It's the main genre of music...

that's really popular right now.

When I think of alternative music...

I think of just something different
from what's happening in the mainstream.

This is about as mainstream
as you can get. Not that it's bad.

You have a kind of multicultural event...

that's designed to open people's eyes up...

to new sorts of music
they wouldn't have heard before, and stuff.

This is great, and...

I'm not sure
if it's exactly happening that way...

and I'm not really sure
if this generation's eyes...

particularly want to be opened up.

It's the only thing of its kind
in the United States.

Kids just want to blow off some steam
and come to the big rock show.

It is all about...

bonding together in some way...

and rebelling against
the older generations...

and everything around it.

But I just don't see
where the rebellion actually is.

I might be a bit pessimistic,
but I think that rock 'n' roll is dead now.

Rock 'n' roll is dead?
What a silly statement.

Rock 'n' roll has now become
a conformity...

which is completely anti-nature
to rock 'n' roll.

Therefore, it's dead.

Rock 'n'roll, when it starts calling itself
rock and roll...

that's when it has its problems.

When you have rock 'n'roll groups
talking the same thing over and over.

When the music expands,
that's when it tends to do better.

Same thing with rap.

A friend of mine who works in computers
and high-tech industry...

said that for him, he saw a 21st century...

where people,
to escape the high concept...

and the agonizing realization...

that we no longer understand
or control our technology...

would want to go home
and touch something made of wood.

And I think that is kind of the place
that rock is taking.

Things like grunge, for me,
and Eric Clapton and rap...

have a small, comfortable feel about them.

They are almost tribal.
They're things that you can touch.

They're made of wood.

You can't kill rock
because it will always exist.

As soon as you assume it's dead,
up pops Nirvana or some other thing.

They'll try and sell it...

but the underground is always...

ten steps ahead of the lawyers
and accountants.

And so there will always be rock 'n' roll...

or hip-hop
or whatever underground music.

Now it's rock 'n' roll.

Now it's amazing to see black people
do rock 'n' roll.

"You're black,
and you have a rock 'n' roll group? Wow."

That's what happens when the rebellion
leaves the music.

It becomes Americanized.

I think that it's inevitable
for music to become watered-down.

It's inevitable.

But the point of keeping it rebellious...

is to keep people's awareness alive...

as long as you can.

I've no idea
what the future of rock 'n' roll is.

Nor am I really interested.

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