Presumably Townsend and Daltry have reconsidered this particular proposition in the intervening years, but the central conundrum remains: Can rock and roll – that quintessentially young person’s art form that derived so much of its original power from surly defiance and menace – still be played with any credibility in middle and old age?
This has proven to be a particularly tough question for rock’s icons. As he got older, Elvis responded by descending into sartorial and pharmacological excess. Little Richard, though still going strong at 73, gets by largely on campy self-parody. As he approaches 62, even Mick Jagger looked a little foolish last month at Lincoln Center in New York (prancing “like a chicken on crack,” nationally syndicated radio personality Don Imus quipped the next morning) as he and the Stones kicked off yet another world tour. Which made the scene later that night, 20 blocks downtown at B.B. King’s, all the more remarkable.
At a few minutes after 9:00, a frail-looking, 76-year-old man was led carefully up the steps to the stage by his wife and son. A battered black leather jacket hung loosely from his stooped shoulders; his rumpled black chinos looked like he’d slept in them. His gaunt, unshaven face, partly hidden behind enormous dark glasses, was deathly pale in the bright lights, and what remained of his thin black hair was pulled back in a wispy pony tail. Talk about menacing: The cadaverous old cat was very, very scary. But as Link Wray reached for his Strat, he flashed a crooked, diabolical grin – and then hammered home the opening chords of his signature “Rumble.” For the next hour the small venue rocked under a relentless sonic cannonade of growling vibrato and screaming feedback that never seemed loud enough for Wray, who kept cranking up the volume, searching valiantly for the kind of catharsis that he pioneered.
The music clearly energized him as he prowled the small stage restlessly, wielding his guitar like a lethal weapon, pausing now and then to punctuate a phrase with a lewd bump-and-grind. The Wray repertoire is neither extensive nor varied. The handful of other hit titles – “Rawhide,” “Jack the Ripper” – were there; but that hardly seemed to matter. This was about one man with a guitar building a wall of sound, one simple, snarling chord progression at a time.
Only toward the end of set, when Wray brought New York guitarist/harp player Jon Paris on stage to jam, did things threaten to unravel. The veteran band leader and sideman struggled gamely to accompany him through a medley of blues and rock classics, but Wray seemed momentarily to lose interest. He declined to join Paris on vocals or step up for the solos, sticking stubbornly to variations on the same rockabilly-accented rhythm line. This was particularly awkward with things like “Johnny B. Goode,” when Paris was left out front to fill in for the missing guitar riffs with his harp. An obligatory – and welcome – reprise of “Rumble” brought the show to an end.
Link Wray will never strut in front of TV cameras at the Julliard School touting a 30-city tour, nor does it seem much more likely that he’ll ever jam at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gig as an inductee, which is a real crime. He’s never done brand-name rock ‘n’ roll. His raw, distorted riffs forged a link between early blues guitarists and their amped-up
heirs of the late 1960s and nearly half a century later he can still bring a
crowd to its feet. The man and his music remain uncompromised and thoroughly
authentic: May Link Wray rumble ‘til he’s 100.
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