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Jumping on different band wagons

Glenn Gamboa | DROPS

March 11, 2007

In 1984, there was no musical middle ground. You had to pick sides, and you had to do it with a with-us-or-against-us intensity that really hasn't been seen since.

On one side of this epic struggle was Van Halen, led by David Lee Roth, who was almost always shouting as he high-kicked and pelvic-thrusted his way across the stage in something skin-tight, and Eddie Van Halen, a guitar virtuoso whose skills were unchallenged but still needed to show them off the way Christina Aguilera sings these days, doling out 20 rapid-fire notes when one would do.

On the other side was a motley bunch of insurgents, led by R.E.M., whose front man Michael Stipe would obscure his face with his long, curly hair and would sing beautifully, even if exactly what he was saying was open to interpretation, and whose guitarist Peter Buck preferred a pleasing, pretty jangle instead of finger-shredding pyrotechnics.

Hailing from Los Angeles, Van Halen provided the anthems for Reagan America, a perfect party soundtrack overflowing with porn models, hot teachers and fast cars - every excess with no consequences.

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On the other hand, R.E.M., hailing from college town Athens, Ga., built brainy, poetic musical scenarios brimming with beauty and emotion, steeped in faith and longing for something better - of pilgrimages and perfect circles, talking about the passion.

Van Halen had the complete support of the music establishment - mainstream radio couldn't play them enough, MTV revved up the videos for "Jump" and "Hot for Teacher" seemingly nonstop. R.E.M. had broad support, too, becoming college radio's first big discovery and the darlings of the underground. There was an underground in place before R.E.M., but no other band had previously united nontraditional, "left-of-the-dial" radio stations, homemade, photocopied magazines and local late-night community access TV shows behind them.

R.E.M. personified the concepts of "indie-rock" and "alternative." They were the "alternative" to Van Halen.

"R.E.M. came in from the margins," says Warren Zanes, vice president of education and public programs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. "They were defacing the idea of rock personalities. They might not have set out to do it, but they were responding to the seeming bloatedness of Van Halen. They were the antithesis of Van Halen."

With that odd, symbiotic bond, it seems only fitting that R.E.M. and Van Halen are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the same night - as a sign of rock and roll's "big tent" mentality and an example of how time heals even the most intense cultural battles.

"It makes the most important point, I think," Zanes says. "Rock and roll is not a singular thing. By its very nature, it's a hybrid. It will take in anything. Rock and roll goes around eating music."

Stipe says R.E.M. never held anything against Van Halen. "As a musician, I tend to appreciate the work they put into making music," he says. "And Van Halen created one of the best anthemic songs of the '80s with 'Jump.'"

And while he may acknowledge that some of the band's fans may have seen Van Halen as the enemy, Stipe didn't. "My musical taste is much broader than that," he says.

Zanes, however, readily admits he was on the R.E.M. side in the '80s. Back in those days, he was the guitarist for the Del Fuegos and like many indie rockers and their fans, he was rebelling against Van Halen and mainstream rock.

"You can never define yourself by just saying what you are," he says. "You also define yourself by what you aren't. In the '80s, we pointed to the mainstream and said, 'We're not that.' The indies need that thing that they aren't to help them arrive at what they are."

That goes for fans, too. "Since the '50s, we have used the music we like to explain ourselves," Zanes says. "When people tell you what music they like and what they don't like, they're telling you who they are. I'm 41 years old with a wife and two kids, and still when I tell you what I like and don't like, and you tell me what you like and don't like, we'll know if our friendship has a future."

Of course, that kind of conversation today wouldn't have the same impact.

Rock, like pretty much every other type of pop music, has fragmented into countless micro-genres, each with a fervent but small following. Few contemporary bands can manage the name recognition of Van Halen in the '80s - or R.E.M. for that matter. And even fewer music fans, outside of those in the industry, even bother keeping track of bands outside their genres of choice.

Too often these days, when someone reveals their favorite band - whether it's Arcade Fire or Hinder or Fall Out Boy - it is met with a resounding "Who?" With fewer and fewer rock radio stations - mainstream, alternative or otherwise - and the lack of a central video music channel, the connection of liking or hating the same band is increasingly unlikely.

Fans and musicians who fought in the Van Halen-R.E.M. culture wars brokered a peace long ago, as it became more and more common to hear both bands back-to-back on retro radio. (As Zanes says, "You put any human being in a car and play them [Van Halen's] 'Running With the Devil,' and they're going to turn it up. And even if they don't know the words, they're going to try to sing along. Any human being.") Most have too many pressing, real-life concerns now to worry about what choosing their favorite rock star means about their personality and their priorities.

The generations that have followed are more likely to be busy cocooned in their personal iPod playlists, checking out new songs from the profiles of their MySpace friends and their Last.fm neighbors, to engage in any sort of "us vs. them" pop-culture battle. After all, when there is so much music of "us" to be absorbed, why bother finding out anything about "them."

Is that an improvement? Hard to say.

Should we worry about it? Ow. Might as well jump.