I once saw Gene Siskel there. One of my favorite things about "Mean Girls" was that the prize at the dance for something or other was a gift certificate to Walker Brothers.
Good management makes a big difference in the rock world. For instance, The Yardbirds were poorly managed by Giorgio Gomelsky. Even after hit records they were still touring American on a bus on the Dick Clark circuit. Jimmy Page, a veteran studio musician, joined the Yardbirds and realized right away they were poorly managed and poorly paid. They fired Gomelsky and hired Peter Grant. The Yardbirds did peter out- leader Keith Relf was recently married and didn't want to tour any longer- so Page brought Grant with him to form The New Yardbirds in 1968 which quickly was renamed Led Zeppelin. Grant's management and the musical talent of the Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones made them wealthy. The members of the Yardbirds- with the exception of Eric Clapton who left the band after their first hit in 1965-never made it rich although the band is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Incidentally, Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja was asked by Page to be the bass of The New Yardbirds. He declined. Dreja didn't like the rock lifestyle- he neither drank or smoked- and he became a photographer. John Paul Jones became the bassist of the future Led Zeppelin and is worth about $100 million today.
And John Paul Jones might have been the difference between success and massive all time great level success. He was no mere bass player so any inference one might draw that he lucked into that $100 million is unfounded and scurrilous! (according to one expert)
I am not inferring that Jones did not earn his success. I have little musical ability but I have read that Jones was an excellent bass player on par with John Entwistle. I was more thinking about Chris Dreja. He could have been part of the biggest rock band of the 70s and he might be worth $100 million. But he blew it.
I'm going a step further...it's possible that sans Jones, the band would not have been nearly as successful so that other guy didn't necessarily miss out on 100 million
I was in a close-knit writer group that included a guy who had a novel published with one of the big 5 from about 2012 until covid and a variety of other things wrecked it. One of the long-standing members was a black lady who had more self confidence in her work than the rest of us put together had in our own.
The quality era of any rock or pop artist is remarkably short, often less than a decade.
The artist with the longest span that I listen to is Van Morrison from early nineteen sixties to the mid 1990s.
And the classic rock and soul era I don’t really notice much of the difference in this pattern between black and white artists.
21st century artists of all races seem to be a bit better at staying at or near a creative peak. I get the impression they actually do less drugs and management of course is a lot more professional.
You see this pattern in sports as well where talent is identified a lot younger, better coached, and actively kept away from bad influences.
Reminds me of Frasier Payne's classic on X: Every "rock historian" says stupid shіt like "Yeah, Zeppelin was good but they owe everything to Ol' Jіggаbоо Jackson who tied a shoelace to a stick in 1915."
Funny thing is, despite my active participation in music, I've never much grokked genres. It's like my version of face blindness. So when I finally went back to investigate all the great blues music that this derivative crap I mistakenly thought was great came from, I wasn't exactly underwhelmed, more like whelmed.
In no case was the rock version not a million times better.
The reason that rock critics contemporary to Led Zeppelin's rise hated them so much was purely because the critics were hipsters who loved the music of their youth (maybe 5 to ten years earlier). How dare these british howling monkeys take the authenticity of the blues experience and make it fun and complex and irresistible to unsophisticated teens?
Of course, the venerated music ultimately depends on which kids grow up to be music critics.
Is there a posthumously released album that had a greater impact than Robert Johnson’s “King of the Delta Blues Singers” (1961)? 23 years after his death it had a direct influence on Dylan, Clapton, Rolling Stones, Led Zep, etc. Comparable to the English poet G.M. Hopkins (first collection of his poetry released in 1918, 29 years after his death).
"Artists aren’t timeless, they are very much the product of their times, as the entire field of art history exists to demonstrate. And young popular musicians are less timeless than any. "
That's a double edged sword I think. The biggest hits of 1949 were songs like "Riders in the Sky" and "Some Enchanted Evening". Twenty short years later Hendrix was wailing through the national anthem at Woodstock.
By comparison the big hits of 2005 were from the likes of Kanye West, the Black Eyed Peas and so on. In other words, music that not only sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday but in fact is often from the same artists--still active twenty years later. By 1969 Perry Como had been banished to niche status by changing tastes.
The period from 1945 to 1975 was one of tremendous social change in the United States, at a pace and scale we are unlikely to see again within our lifetimes. Obviously that was reflected in the arts.
If you're a fan of American cinema you probably have a soft spot for the 1960's and 1970's (Chinatown, Annie Hall, Network, etc. etc. plus many minor masterpieces such as Cutter and Bone, Night Moves, etc.). And on top of that there was the film noir movement of the 1950's.
By contrast the rate of change today seems stagnant by comparison. Listening to what was popular in 2005 I can't really pin down anything that differentiates it from the music of today. What criteria would be used for cinema? Which actor is playing Spider Man in one of the endless remakes?
Robert Mitchum, smoking a cigarette under a fedora in stark black and white, is clearly of a specific time and place. Maybe it's dated but on the other hand nobody would argue that the setting is generic--it has character.
Steve: You may have misremembered the Sly & the Family Stone single you bought in either late 1969 or early 1970. (I bought it then, and I'm a few years younger than you.) The B-side was "Everybody is a Star," not "Everyday People," which came out in 1968 and was Sly's first number one single. "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" was the second; 1971's "Family Affair" was the third and last #1.
It's possible that Epic reissued the two #1 hits as a two-sided 45 in the "Memory Lane" series -- blue background with yellow floral accents -- but that would have been later in the 1970's or even the 1980's. The single you and I bought had the yellow Epic label with the "Epic" logo in a black dotted oval.
Overall, a great post: Sly Stone was prodigiously talented -- he could sing, write songs, lead a hot band, play virtually any instrument and operate a recording studio. Sort of like Prince, except that Prince was also a virtuoso guitarist and could write perfect pop songs for other artists. He was a unique talent, combining Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix and Sly with the songwriting chops of the great Motown hit factories, like Holland/Dozier/Holland, Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong or Smokey Robinson.
The new documentaries aside, why would anyone juxtapose Sly Stone and Led Zeppelin? A better comparable for Sly is the other great rock act to come out of the Bay Area in the late '60's: Creedence. Each was tremendously successful for a few years before the wheels fell off. For Creedence, it wasn't drugs, but a combination of an insane work schedule (six studio albums in three years, 1968-70) and infighting generated by the disparity of talent between John Fogerty, the band's singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer, and the other three members. In Fogerty's next venture under the name of the Blue Ridge Rangers, he played every instrument, overdubbed all vocals (kind of like Todd Rundgren) and effectively made an album all by himself.
You make an excellent point about the importance of sound management. Peter Grant did a great job for Zeppelin, at least until the coke got to him. He personally meted out punishment to bootleg album sellers, and shielded the band from the press, concert promoters and, most importantly, anxious record executives. (Zep's contract with Atlantic gave the group full control over every aspect of its records, including the cover art: even the artist-friendly Ahmet Ertegun was dismayed by the cover of the untitled fourth album, the one now known variously as "Led Zep IV," "Zoso," and "the one with 'Stairway to Heaven.'" But Peter Grant, acting on Jimmy Page's instructions, put his foot down, insisting on an album cover with no picture of the band, no title, nothing to identify it as Led Zeppelin's newest LP. Somehow, fans figured it out.)
The term "generational wealth" used to apply to families like the Kennedys or Rockefellers, where vast wealth accumulated a century ago ensures that subsequent generations never need to worry about making a living. More recently, it is being used to describe upper middle-class families where the parents' home ownership and accumulated savings provide their children with an inheritance, generally not enough to live off, but a tremendous help. This phenomenon is far more prevalent among whites than blacks; hence, during the Great Awokening, it was identified as a racist advantage that whites enjoy. Therefore, Reparations are owed.
Joe Kennedy's wealth made it so that his posterity needn't work. Depending on how you define work, the last Kennedy to work was either Bobby, who worked for Joe McCarthy, Joe Jr., who died trying to blow up a V-2 rocket base, or Jack, who saved a couple of men from the only PT boat to be rammed in World War Two.
The more I learn about the CIA cultural psyops of the Fifties and Sixties (MKUltra, JFK's murder, the Great Society, etc) the more I believe the mindset of black folks like the Vanderbilt lady is a manufactured consciousness of which she is unaware because she's been stewing in it since the day she was born. Anybody can go on youtube and see documentary film of street life in Harlem NYC in the 30's and 40's and see middle class black people dressing and living the same as middle-class white people. Evil operators in USFEDGOV bureaucracy decided to make black folks a client population--served by a big crew of well-indoctrinated sociologist bureaucrats. The festering bureaucracy of sociologically manufactured rot has injected its hatred (disguised as compassion) into every level of what used-to-be a cohesive American culture.
The successful version of Sly Stone’s funk/rock/blues fusion was Parliament-Funkadelic and George Clinton. Plenty of drugs there too but they lasted a long time and definitely had their say. If Sly had lasted I’m not sure how transformative he would have been given that P-Funk existed and was having their impact.
If anything they still don’t get enough credit for their genius today, in part because the studio work on some of their 70s albums wasn’t great. Live you can appreciate that songs like “Cosmic Slop” are overwhelming blues masterpieces equal to the best of Led Zeppelin, on record it sounds kind of tinny and underpowered.
P-Funk still performs, George Clinton being kind of a black Keith Richards. They have been hugely influential for decades by way of hip-hop, modern funk, and various funk-rock-jazz hybrids.
I get Rachel Dolezal vibes from Ms. Lordi. She looks whiter than Kamala Harris and "Emily" is not a name you ever see black women have.
I used to see George Clinton back in the day in Chicago but my favorite concert was when they opened for Primus on New Years day 1991. That was a hell of a concert.
P-Funk (minus George Clinton) played the small student center at my college 20 years ago, it was an absolute blast. In the gym or stadium it wouldn’t have worked as well, but in the hall where a few hundred students could dance all packed together, it was incredible.
I saw them several times live back thirty years ago in the early-mid 90s when they were still doing large venues with a lot of the original lineup. A little inconsistent but at their best they were hands down the best live rock I’ve ever seen. Saw them again about a decade ago, still solid I guess but it wasn’t at all the same…
Becoming Led Zeppelin is a decent watch, if perhaps a bit longer than necessary. I saw it in IMAX with my son, but I don’t think it’ll lose much if you watch it at home. The early live performances featured are intense.
Robert Plant’s had a great run in the last 20 or so years by repeatedly teaming up with great musicians (especially Alison Krauss) and largely embracing his nature as a great interpreter of other songwriters’ music. He made a second album with Krauss, and my son and I saw them on tour three years ago. Plant still sounds great (though not 20 anymore, of course). The last song of the regular set was a fantastic reinterpretation of When the Levee Breaks, during which my son turned to me and said, “holy shit.” You wouldn’t regret seeing them.
The blues was a massive cultural innovation born out of black Americans in the south. Then, in the 1960s the epicenter of that innovation moved to England, and between 64 and 72 it became something new. And so what? If you don’t want to influence your audience, don’t bother building one.
As for this crank in the WaPo - if anyone remembers anything about 70s music in 50 years it’ll be Zeppelin IV, so I’m not inclined to think much of some angry dullard’s notions about relative “contributions.”
Interesting nugget from Stone's memoirs that touch on something you've written about before. Sly & the Family Stone's first album, "A Whole New Thing," was commercially unsuccessful but one group of people loved it: musicians. Sly simplified things for his next album, which was "Dance to the Music," and his career rocketed upwards.
My first single: Hall and Oates’ “Rich Girl,” plus one oldie: “Admiral Halsey/Hands Across the Water” (isn’t that how it’s titled?)
"Rich Girl" was inspired by a rich guy-- the heir to the Walker Bros. Pancake fortune.
Before I read that I never would have guessed there was a Walker Bros. Pancake fortune.
A very ambivalent and fraught site in my pubescentdom
I once saw Gene Siskel there. One of my favorite things about "Mean Girls" was that the prize at the dance for something or other was a gift certificate to Walker Brothers.
Good management makes a big difference in the rock world. For instance, The Yardbirds were poorly managed by Giorgio Gomelsky. Even after hit records they were still touring American on a bus on the Dick Clark circuit. Jimmy Page, a veteran studio musician, joined the Yardbirds and realized right away they were poorly managed and poorly paid. They fired Gomelsky and hired Peter Grant. The Yardbirds did peter out- leader Keith Relf was recently married and didn't want to tour any longer- so Page brought Grant with him to form The New Yardbirds in 1968 which quickly was renamed Led Zeppelin. Grant's management and the musical talent of the Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones made them wealthy. The members of the Yardbirds- with the exception of Eric Clapton who left the band after their first hit in 1965-never made it rich although the band is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Incidentally, Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja was asked by Page to be the bass of The New Yardbirds. He declined. Dreja didn't like the rock lifestyle- he neither drank or smoked- and he became a photographer. John Paul Jones became the bassist of the future Led Zeppelin and is worth about $100 million today.
And John Paul Jones might have been the difference between success and massive all time great level success. He was no mere bass player so any inference one might draw that he lucked into that $100 million is unfounded and scurrilous! (according to one expert)
I am not inferring that Jones did not earn his success. I have little musical ability but I have read that Jones was an excellent bass player on par with John Entwistle. I was more thinking about Chris Dreja. He could have been part of the biggest rock band of the 70s and he might be worth $100 million. But he blew it.
I'm going a step further...it's possible that sans Jones, the band would not have been nearly as successful so that other guy didn't necessarily miss out on 100 million
Another great read - your substack is on fire. Always interesting.
I was in a close-knit writer group that included a guy who had a novel published with one of the big 5 from about 2012 until covid and a variety of other things wrecked it. One of the long-standing members was a black lady who had more self confidence in her work than the rest of us put together had in our own.
The quality era of any rock or pop artist is remarkably short, often less than a decade.
The artist with the longest span that I listen to is Van Morrison from early nineteen sixties to the mid 1990s.
And the classic rock and soul era I don’t really notice much of the difference in this pattern between black and white artists.
21st century artists of all races seem to be a bit better at staying at or near a creative peak. I get the impression they actually do less drugs and management of course is a lot more professional.
You see this pattern in sports as well where talent is identified a lot younger, better coached, and actively kept away from bad influences.
Reminds me of Frasier Payne's classic on X: Every "rock historian" says stupid shіt like "Yeah, Zeppelin was good but they owe everything to Ol' Jіggаbоо Jackson who tied a shoelace to a stick in 1915."
ahahahahahahahaha-
Funny thing is, despite my active participation in music, I've never much grokked genres. It's like my version of face blindness. So when I finally went back to investigate all the great blues music that this derivative crap I mistakenly thought was great came from, I wasn't exactly underwhelmed, more like whelmed.
In no case was the rock version not a million times better.
The reason that rock critics contemporary to Led Zeppelin's rise hated them so much was purely because the critics were hipsters who loved the music of their youth (maybe 5 to ten years earlier). How dare these british howling monkeys take the authenticity of the blues experience and make it fun and complex and irresistible to unsophisticated teens?
Of course, the venerated music ultimately depends on which kids grow up to be music critics.
Is there a posthumously released album that had a greater impact than Robert Johnson’s “King of the Delta Blues Singers” (1961)? 23 years after his death it had a direct influence on Dylan, Clapton, Rolling Stones, Led Zep, etc. Comparable to the English poet G.M. Hopkins (first collection of his poetry released in 1918, 29 years after his death).
"Artists aren’t timeless, they are very much the product of their times, as the entire field of art history exists to demonstrate. And young popular musicians are less timeless than any. "
That's a double edged sword I think. The biggest hits of 1949 were songs like "Riders in the Sky" and "Some Enchanted Evening". Twenty short years later Hendrix was wailing through the national anthem at Woodstock.
By comparison the big hits of 2005 were from the likes of Kanye West, the Black Eyed Peas and so on. In other words, music that not only sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday but in fact is often from the same artists--still active twenty years later. By 1969 Perry Como had been banished to niche status by changing tastes.
The period from 1945 to 1975 was one of tremendous social change in the United States, at a pace and scale we are unlikely to see again within our lifetimes. Obviously that was reflected in the arts.
If you're a fan of American cinema you probably have a soft spot for the 1960's and 1970's (Chinatown, Annie Hall, Network, etc. etc. plus many minor masterpieces such as Cutter and Bone, Night Moves, etc.). And on top of that there was the film noir movement of the 1950's.
By contrast the rate of change today seems stagnant by comparison. Listening to what was popular in 2005 I can't really pin down anything that differentiates it from the music of today. What criteria would be used for cinema? Which actor is playing Spider Man in one of the endless remakes?
Robert Mitchum, smoking a cigarette under a fedora in stark black and white, is clearly of a specific time and place. Maybe it's dated but on the other hand nobody would argue that the setting is generic--it has character.
Another great read/“‘stack!” Two things:
“Sugar Mountain” is a helluva b-side wow.
That Godfather garden scene reminds me of “Mafia!” (Aka Jane Austen’s Mafia!) which is an under-appreciated movie. It’s just stupid enough.
Steve: You may have misremembered the Sly & the Family Stone single you bought in either late 1969 or early 1970. (I bought it then, and I'm a few years younger than you.) The B-side was "Everybody is a Star," not "Everyday People," which came out in 1968 and was Sly's first number one single. "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" was the second; 1971's "Family Affair" was the third and last #1.
It's possible that Epic reissued the two #1 hits as a two-sided 45 in the "Memory Lane" series -- blue background with yellow floral accents -- but that would have been later in the 1970's or even the 1980's. The single you and I bought had the yellow Epic label with the "Epic" logo in a black dotted oval.
Overall, a great post: Sly Stone was prodigiously talented -- he could sing, write songs, lead a hot band, play virtually any instrument and operate a recording studio. Sort of like Prince, except that Prince was also a virtuoso guitarist and could write perfect pop songs for other artists. He was a unique talent, combining Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix and Sly with the songwriting chops of the great Motown hit factories, like Holland/Dozier/Holland, Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong or Smokey Robinson.
The new documentaries aside, why would anyone juxtapose Sly Stone and Led Zeppelin? A better comparable for Sly is the other great rock act to come out of the Bay Area in the late '60's: Creedence. Each was tremendously successful for a few years before the wheels fell off. For Creedence, it wasn't drugs, but a combination of an insane work schedule (six studio albums in three years, 1968-70) and infighting generated by the disparity of talent between John Fogerty, the band's singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer, and the other three members. In Fogerty's next venture under the name of the Blue Ridge Rangers, he played every instrument, overdubbed all vocals (kind of like Todd Rundgren) and effectively made an album all by himself.
You make an excellent point about the importance of sound management. Peter Grant did a great job for Zeppelin, at least until the coke got to him. He personally meted out punishment to bootleg album sellers, and shielded the band from the press, concert promoters and, most importantly, anxious record executives. (Zep's contract with Atlantic gave the group full control over every aspect of its records, including the cover art: even the artist-friendly Ahmet Ertegun was dismayed by the cover of the untitled fourth album, the one now known variously as "Led Zep IV," "Zoso," and "the one with 'Stairway to Heaven.'" But Peter Grant, acting on Jimmy Page's instructions, put his foot down, insisting on an album cover with no picture of the band, no title, nothing to identify it as Led Zeppelin's newest LP. Somehow, fans figured it out.)
"The B-side was "Everybody is a Star," not "Everyday People,""
That definitely sounds like a mistake I'd make.
Yes, Creedence might be a better analogy than Donovan.
"Family Affair" might be one of the strangest #1s ever. Sounds like a dry dirty fart of a song.
The term "generational wealth" used to apply to families like the Kennedys or Rockefellers, where vast wealth accumulated a century ago ensures that subsequent generations never need to worry about making a living. More recently, it is being used to describe upper middle-class families where the parents' home ownership and accumulated savings provide their children with an inheritance, generally not enough to live off, but a tremendous help. This phenomenon is far more prevalent among whites than blacks; hence, during the Great Awokening, it was identified as a racist advantage that whites enjoy. Therefore, Reparations are owed.
As sailer says, it's literally the equity in your home that they're referring to with the word
Joe Kennedy's wealth made it so that his posterity needn't work. Depending on how you define work, the last Kennedy to work was either Bobby, who worked for Joe McCarthy, Joe Jr., who died trying to blow up a V-2 rocket base, or Jack, who saved a couple of men from the only PT boat to be rammed in World War Two.
The more I learn about the CIA cultural psyops of the Fifties and Sixties (MKUltra, JFK's murder, the Great Society, etc) the more I believe the mindset of black folks like the Vanderbilt lady is a manufactured consciousness of which she is unaware because she's been stewing in it since the day she was born. Anybody can go on youtube and see documentary film of street life in Harlem NYC in the 30's and 40's and see middle class black people dressing and living the same as middle-class white people. Evil operators in USFEDGOV bureaucracy decided to make black folks a client population--served by a big crew of well-indoctrinated sociologist bureaucrats. The festering bureaucracy of sociologically manufactured rot has injected its hatred (disguised as compassion) into every level of what used-to-be a cohesive American culture.
The misuse, or new use, of the word "generational" is really getting annoying.
I blame Juan Soto.
Not to exaggerate, but Soto might be a generational bad outfielder, perhaps the Frank Howard of his generation.
You're not helping!
;)
The big victim of the racial reckoning was the black public image. They gave up cool in favor of this completely contemptible sour grapes.
The successful version of Sly Stone’s funk/rock/blues fusion was Parliament-Funkadelic and George Clinton. Plenty of drugs there too but they lasted a long time and definitely had their say. If Sly had lasted I’m not sure how transformative he would have been given that P-Funk existed and was having their impact.
If anything they still don’t get enough credit for their genius today, in part because the studio work on some of their 70s albums wasn’t great. Live you can appreciate that songs like “Cosmic Slop” are overwhelming blues masterpieces equal to the best of Led Zeppelin, on record it sounds kind of tinny and underpowered.
P-Funk still performs, George Clinton being kind of a black Keith Richards. They have been hugely influential for decades by way of hip-hop, modern funk, and various funk-rock-jazz hybrids.
I get Rachel Dolezal vibes from Ms. Lordi. She looks whiter than Kamala Harris and "Emily" is not a name you ever see black women have.
I’m aware they still perform but they’re kind of just a shadow of what they were forty or fifty years ago…totally understandable of course!
I’d actually take their stuff well over Led Zeppelin, but didn’t want to offend any sensibilities lol…
I used to see George Clinton back in the day in Chicago but my favorite concert was when they opened for Primus on New Years day 1991. That was a hell of a concert.
P-Funk (minus George Clinton) played the small student center at my college 20 years ago, it was an absolute blast. In the gym or stadium it wouldn’t have worked as well, but in the hall where a few hundred students could dance all packed together, it was incredible.
I saw them around that era in a 1,000- sized venue and it was incredible.
https://www.stevesailer.net/p/sly-and-the-family-stone-vs-led-zeppelin/comment/98974156?r=2pxzv&utm_medium=ios
I saw them several times live back thirty years ago in the early-mid 90s when they were still doing large venues with a lot of the original lineup. A little inconsistent but at their best they were hands down the best live rock I’ve ever seen. Saw them again about a decade ago, still solid I guess but it wasn’t at all the same…
I saw an iteration of Clinton/Parliament/Funkadelic in the early 2000s.
They played nearly three hours of every style of 4/4 music and it was remarkable.
Clinton appeared an hour into the show and left 20 minutes before the end at which point the roadies took over most of the instruments.
It was a very organised chaos and no doubt Sly Stone could have drawn crowds if he’d been able to do something similar to George Clinton.
Sly Stone and George Clinton were in a car together when they were busted for cocaine possession in 1981. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/08/20/Rock-musicians-busted-for-drugs/2631367128000/
Becoming Led Zeppelin is a decent watch, if perhaps a bit longer than necessary. I saw it in IMAX with my son, but I don’t think it’ll lose much if you watch it at home. The early live performances featured are intense.
Robert Plant’s had a great run in the last 20 or so years by repeatedly teaming up with great musicians (especially Alison Krauss) and largely embracing his nature as a great interpreter of other songwriters’ music. He made a second album with Krauss, and my son and I saw them on tour three years ago. Plant still sounds great (though not 20 anymore, of course). The last song of the regular set was a fantastic reinterpretation of When the Levee Breaks, during which my son turned to me and said, “holy shit.” You wouldn’t regret seeing them.
The blues was a massive cultural innovation born out of black Americans in the south. Then, in the 1960s the epicenter of that innovation moved to England, and between 64 and 72 it became something new. And so what? If you don’t want to influence your audience, don’t bother building one.
As for this crank in the WaPo - if anyone remembers anything about 70s music in 50 years it’ll be Zeppelin IV, so I’m not inclined to think much of some angry dullard’s notions about relative “contributions.”
Interesting nugget from Stone's memoirs that touch on something you've written about before. Sly & the Family Stone's first album, "A Whole New Thing," was commercially unsuccessful but one group of people loved it: musicians. Sly simplified things for his next album, which was "Dance to the Music," and his career rocketed upwards.