We’ve argued the question of finite talent over and over again and when it comes to big starts. Guys like the Stones who haven’t written a dedcent song in decades, or U2, who haven’t written a decent song this decade. Or Prince, Clapton, Springsteen: major, majot rock stars who can’t do it in the studio any more, it seems like a mixture of arrogance and self-deception.
I mention Clapton but Clapton is different because, really, he was always a musician first.
Perhaps a look at Bob Dylan, a songwriter first, might make things clearer.
Dylan does something these other guys don’t do when it comes to song wqriting: he false back on form. He will take the skeleton, sometimes the lyric, from other songs, and re-model them.. This is nothing new. He did it on his first two albums and since Love And Theft has found inspiration in what came before,. Great swathes of lyric are rehtought and the sounds from dance hall to ancient folk ballads are the keletons here they way they weren’t even consided on the Stones A Bigger Bang a coupla years back.
A step back to a simpler approach to recording would certainly help U2: just because you have every toy in the world doesn’t mean you can’t be happy with a bat and ball. U2 need to think about simple songs to the exclusion of all else. Raising the ytrack level does not an anthemn make.
Springsteen? Better get somebody willing to tell him when his writing is crap.
All of these fellows are making their bucks by touring stadiums and they are all great on stage though, again, U2 have to get out of the way of their techno kicks.
But if Jagger wants to record seriously again he has to stop dioing patchwork albums and sit down and write a clutch of great songs -speciically lyrically which are dreadful.
In the end, Dylan is hungry for music, and everybody else are fat cats, so while Dylan is still playing with form and content, other aging rock stars are not listening to the cash register hard enough.Their new albums are just an excuse to buy a beer in the middle of a three hour concert.