by Phil Planet

Created on: November 06, 2008   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

"American Pie" was an all time classic which was written by Don McClean in 1972, In that song he sang the words "The Day The Music Died", Even though I was a rock fan there was something in that statement that was a little bit haunting, Was it because it was something we all thought would never happen? Whoops a goose just walked over musics grave.

I have been in a musician most of my life, although I have never made mega money it always supplied a kind of famine / feast kind of living, I have seen it metamorphose into various cults and crazes, I started playing in bands about 1968 and in them days nearly all the top bands such as The Stones, Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, I could go on forever and that is without even mentioning some of the monster acts which were coming out of the USA.

What did nearly all these acts have in common? If you think about it they mostly came from working class backgrounds, The other thing they all had in common was that they could all churn out massive world wide hits, classic songs that are still around today either in there original states or cover versions, Just think of all the successful UK / USA bands or artistes from around that time and then try and think of the classic hits they had, You would be thinking for a long time.

Most would agree that the classic hit song is a thing of the past, Nearly all the so called hits in the charts nowadays are just like tins of beans rolling off the production line, Mass produced rubbish to be consumed for a week or two and then thrown away, Why has the music business gone like this? Did it happen when we all started using computers? The answer is yes but computers are only a part of the cause.

Let me explain, If we go back to sixties again and imagine our working class heroes, In them days it was seen to be cool to be playing and touring with a band, People imagined that life out on the road was glamorous, I did it for years and yes it was fun but it was not glamorous, It was hard work, no sleep, out on the road for days, in short hard knocks and dirty socks, It was this kind of life style that moulded these guys into hard nosed rock and roll stars, The same guys wrote them classic songs in the backs of Ford Transit vans on the way to the next gig, You just had to be a tough outfit or you would be eaten alive.

So where am I going with this? Well as I said computers are only partially to blame for the lack of classic songs nowadays, the reason for this is that computers allow people who already

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