some are hard to find when, but others are easy.

which musician comes to your mind, what instrument and what year?

 

phil collins - drums - 1976

 

I won't name some artists, but I'll throw this observation: doesn't it seem interesting to you how in rock music the creativity peak is at a much younger age than in other genres that are more academic? I mean, in classical music the older/more mature you get, the better your works are (of course taking account of the several notable exceptions); on the other side, in rock many musicians peak at 18-25 years and very rarely equal at the age of 40-50 years their deeds from their prime. I've been thinking about this for some time without finding a decent answer.

 

That's because classical musicians spend a huge amount of time studying and training before they realise that the best way to play is not to think about it.

 

Rock musicians don't think about it from the start - but they soon come to realise that they haven't learnt much, try to expand on a non-solid base, and find that their non-musicianly background is their undoing.

 

*from generalisms "R" Us...

in the 60's, Zappa was doing extremely experimental things with the original Mothers' lineups. in '69 Zappa began fully realizing his interest in melding jazz and rock (waaayyy before most jazz-rock classic bands and artists even thought about it, except maybe Miles Davis) and recorded Hot Rats, one of his most popular and celebrated works. pretty much from there he did a lot of jazz-rock/fusion mixed with rock, classical, and funk. in 72 he recorded Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which are fusion classics and praised on this site. As a guitarist he was developing into a monster and his improvs were so unique. He then formed the next installment of the Mothers which had great guys like George Duke, Napoleon Murphy Brock and Ruth Underwood (who went back as far as some of the early Mothers' albums like Uncle Meat) the albums that came out between 72 and 75/76 are among his freshest and exquisite albums he ever released, some being some of the greatest jazz-rock albums (and he came from the rock/avant-guarde side of music)

 

(Roger Waters - bassguitar - always a lowpoint)

Bill Bruford.........now

 

 

Without doing any particular research, it would make sense that maybe left-brain (or whichever side is the creative one) to physical activity connectors respond more quickly when young - but without right-brain (or the logical centre), it's going to dry up pretty quickly once the limits have been reached.

 

If you train the logical centre to think rationally and learn the rules, then, once you've nailed the hand/brain co-ordination bit, it only gets better as the rules begin to sink in.

 

At least, that's my take on it - I'm older than 20, and did a lot of studying from age 4 upwards - although mainly not on the guitar - and my guitar playing has definitely not reached its peak, as I find I'm still learning new things all the time because my creative drive is probably stronger than it was back then, and I'm driven to try new things all the time.

 

It certainly holds true when you consider Grappelli, with his rigourous training - and Holdsworth also received training from his father - so there's evidence to suggest that my theory holds some water - and when you consider that Mozart was trained by his father at the age of 4, and was both writing and performing well before he hit double figures, this side of the equation seems proven.

 

It's the other side that's more interesting - untrained rock musicians who remain at their prime.

 

I can't think of many...

Bryan Ferry (hmm, rare mentioned here) - first half of '80's - creativity: Avalon, Boys And Girls.

 

In the years between 1967 and 1974 he was building up to that creative perfection by learning the skills and the experience he needed to manipulate his music to do what was in his head and transfer it to recorded music. After that he stayed capable but his creativity and novelty waned a bit untill he learned he died, which unleashed another creative peak between 1988 and 1990.

 

top moment: Bohemian Rhapsody

 

...and a clever play on words...

 

it is hard to ask phil collins to be better on drums than on trick of the tail & unorthodox behabviour

 

wind and wuthering has excellent drum parts, but not at the same level as on ATOTT. after that, the demise started for collins. TLLDOB is original in terms of  drums but it is not spectacular.