Builders Mindset In Three Songs

It’s the most important twenty-seconds in rock history. Twenty seconds that change the world and inspire bands for generations to come.

The setting is Chess Studios in Chicago. The year is 1957. The room is small, cluttered and alive with the hum of amplifiers and the spirit of blues legends. No one present, except the young man in the booth, has any idea what is coming.

The singer steps to the mic and plays an irresistible four chord sequence. Restless, cutting and urgent, the rhythm section kicks in, faster than traditional blues or country. The tape machine rolls, capturing a milestone in music history.

In this cramped studio, Chuck Berry and his band record what the world will come to know as rock and roll.

Berry is a canonical builder.

Like the greatest builders, Berry brings together existing forms in a new way. He fuses blues, country and R&B in a way no one had imagined. That alone would make him a legend.

But Berry’s genius goes beyond music. He is a lyrical genius. His words and stories transcend the themes of traditional country and blues. He speaks directly to young people about universal themes. Cars. Dancing. Dating. Jukeboxes. Freedom.

Like any great builder, Berry invents a platform for future innovation. He builds rock music with a simplicity and flexibility that endures for decades to come.

In the pantheon of builder archetypes, Berry is the Creator. He is architect, craftsman and performer. Like Jobs, Bezos, Altman and Ford, Berry launches an entirely new category.

But even Berry could not imagine what would come next.

The Poet

How does it feel?
Ah, how does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

--Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone

Great builders are not wed to the system they operate in. They do not limit themselves to the tools they inherit. They do not confine themselves to their past or adhere to a fixed identity.

Instead, they’re wed to their muse and their craft. What exists today is merely a launch pad for imagination. Bezos was not wed to physical stores. Jobs was not wed to vinyl. Hastings was not wed to physical DVDs.

Bob Dylan was not wed to folk or rock conventions.

An instant classic, Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone expands what a rock song can be. He extends the length of a song from three to six minutes. He elevates rock’s street poetry to the level of serious literary discourse.

Henceforth, lyrics can be ambiguous, ironic and opaque. Thanks to Dylan, rock artists can tackle big and complex ideas without apology.

Berry gives us the gift of a new medium. Dylan takes the gift and broadens what it can do. He provides new white space for artists to work in.

Others build on Berry’s platform, be it the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell or Prince. Berry’s platform allows endless innovation. Like these artists, Dylan takes the platform of his time and broadens its possibilities.

But Dylan cannot imagine what will come next.

The Disruptors

When there’s no future, how can there be sin?
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in your human machine
We’re the future, your future

—John Lydon, God Save the Queen, the Sex Pistols

In the pantheon of great builders, we must allow room for disruptors. If we don’t, they kick down the door.

In 1977, rock music witnesses its greatest disruptor, John Lydon and the Sex Pistols. Lydon and the Pistols don’t iterate on what they inherit.

The Pistols burn it to the ground. They leave rock music in a heap of ashes and walk away, without a hint of regret. To the extent the Sex Pistols think about you at all, they want to punch you in the face, take your beer and hotwire your car.

Future artists smash and burn guitars. But it is purely theatrics. The Pistols are fighters, the real deal. When they tour in the American South, they taunt their audience. After shows, they fight them.

They don’t seek to entertain. They seek to destroy.

Lydon brandishes rock music as a blunt instrument for the angry and dispossessed. He uses Berry’s invention as a vehicle for protest.

He does not duck walk. Lydon prowls the stage, stooped over, scowling, and yells at his audience. He doesn’t want to sell records. He wants to launch a revolution.

Lydon and the Pistols are quintessential disruptors. They blow torch and hammer Berry’s creation but, in the end, only make it stronger. Berry built for the ages.

Like Berry and Dylan, Lydon gives music new life. In seeking to destroy it, he restores it.

The Greatest Band on Earth

If being wrong’s a crime, I’m serving forever
If being strong is what you want
Then I need help here with this feather

--Replacements, Swinging Party

I end this piece with the greatest band of all time, Paul Westerberg and the Replacements.

More fully than anyone before or since, Westerberg fully brings to life what Berry creates and what Dylan and Lydon reinvents. No band before or since expresses the genius of rock more brilliantly and with greater purity.

Eight years after John Lydon leaves rock music in smoking embers, Paul Westerberg fuses melody, chaos, imperfection and vulnerability in a way no one has before or since. He channels everything that precedes him.

In doing so, Westerberg tips his hat to his predecessors, takes a sip of Wild Turkey and falls off the stage.

Berry is a craftsman and consummate showman. Dylan is a poet. Lydon is a flame-throwing anarchist.

Paul Westerberg does the hardest thing of all. He plays with his deepest heart, even as he unleashes fury. Reckless, chaotic, unpredictable and loud, the Replacements offer the greatest live music ever performed.

They teeter on the edge for all to watch.

Three decades after Berry’s recording in Chess Studios, Westerberg takes the whole thing full circle. He knows the structure Berry created inside and out. He has the lyrical chops to show wisdom and vulnerability. And he plays with abandon.

To listen to the Replacements is to hear the entire canon flash before you, the sensitivity of Joni Mitchell with the righteousness of the Clash and the inebriated wink of Keith Richards.

Berry. Dylan. Lydon. Westerberg. Four musicians, four songs, four versions of what great builders do. The Creator. The Poet. The Disruptor. The Greatest Band on Earth.

If they don’t inspire you, nothing will.