The Winner's History of Rock and Roll Part 3

it was Jeff Beck

Other than the comment about Bon Jovi fans not knowing about Keep The Faith and These Days (which was probably exaggeration for effect), and the references to "Jon Bon", I thought this was a fair characterization of the band and its impact on the music industry.

Jon tells a great story about that: Beck shipped his guitar from England to the studio in Los Angeles. Jon and his crew dared to open up the case and look at the guitar, but nobody dared to touch it. So they just closed it up again and waited until he arrived the next day!

haha class!

you can hear that richie was influenced greatly by him!

In hopes of getting a clearer picture of Hyden's agenda, I read his previous two "Winners" articles and did a background check:
Hyden will turn 36 this year. He was nine when Slippery and Master of Puppets broke out, and admits to being thirteen when introduced to Led Zeppelin via an album that had been released six years before he was born. Even worse, he chose to base his Kiss article on a documentary that was made about them in -- WAIT FOR IT!!! -- 1977!

Hyden says he "started caring about rock right around the time that Pearl Jam and Nirvana came and went as go-to cultural shorthand for disgruntled kid-dom" (hyperbole much?). Since he could have participated in the ascendancy of only two of his seven bands, he is forced to rely on researching record charts and the work of the then big-time music journalists with whom he so shamelessly wants be associated -- Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, Jon Landau. He seems to think that fans hung onto every word they wrote (Zeppelin fans didn't give a damn any more than BJ fans do), and that any band that did not eventually shake loose their noncommercial roots should be considered an artistic failure. Also, look at the illustrations for each article: Only Jon is made to look like a cartoon character with two different hairdos! And what's up with this?
He's just playing the same old critic's game of damning BJ with faint praise, like the concert reviewer who wrote "When Bon Jovi are this hot, they're smoking" instead of "Bon Jovi were smoking hot." I seriously doubt Hyden would be caught dead describing any of Bruce Springsteen's lyrical characters as "imaginary" -- it certainly wouldn't earn him a place among his rock critic "gods!"

Hyden has also written a "critical analysis and personal reflection on '90s alternative rock." Hopefully he did it well if only because he witnessed it. But while I sincerely give him credit for missing the target only once in naming his "holy seven" (there would have been no Linkin Park if there had been no Limp Bizkit, and no Limp Bizkit if there had been no Rage Against The Machine), the Winners History of Rock And Roll is a project that Hyden was not qualified to undertake.

Because Hyden's personal perspective was too remote and his personal agenda too sycophantic, I therefore concur with Becky's diagnosis that his articles are underripe and long-winded. Hyden uses the term "mainstream rock" -- technically, there is no such animal. Rock music has always had counter-culturalism and rebellion at its core, consequently making it pointless to judge it via pop culture's standards.

Nice to hear someone else's opinion but as many have said, research takes you only so far... most fans on here have lived the band and so he doesn't stand a chance!

Still, when a journalist makes a comment like WSYCGH being a Jovi attempt at BITUSA, they are just being lazy.

One thing it did bring back to me was the fact that music is cyclical and all it needs is a pretty-boy band to come along and play guitar music right now, the kids will lap it up and everyone else will follow.