Happy Rocktober! Greta Van Fleet, the Struts prove rock's not dead
Rock ’n’ roll has been declared “dead” for years now, but it seems such reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Two young and exciting rock bands — Michigan’s Greta Van Fleet, who’ve been compared to Led Zeppelin and declared the best rock act of the past 20 years by none other than Sir Elton John, and British glam-rockers the Struts, whom Dave Grohl said are the best opening act to ever tour with the Foo Fighters — are releasing new albums, one week apart, just in time for Rocktober. And GVF’s bombastic, rifftastic full-length debut, Anthem of the Peaceful Army (out Oct. 19), and the Struts’ hedonistic, euphoric, powerpoppy sophomore release, Young & Dangerous (Oct. 26), are introducing the genre to an entire new generation.
“The understanding of ‘rock ’n’ roll is dead,’ I think people don’t really know what rock is anymore. The easy answer is to just say it’s dead,” says 19-year-old Greta Van Fleet drummer Danny Wagner. “Rock ’n’ roll’s not just a genre. … I think it’s kind of a lifestyle. I am very humbled to have been given, along with the other guys, that torch, so to speak. It’s not something that we take as pressure; it just builds the momentum of everything. We’re all very humbled — it’s really great. But I hope there’s a movement that sparks overall in terms of live music — a resurgence, a renaissance. I feel like there’s a lot of things that could potentially be happening to lead the world to believing that rock is dead. But I don’t think it is.”
Luke Spiller, the flamboyant caped-crusader Struts frontman who looks like the lovechild of Freddie Mercury and Joan Jett and describes his Zandra Rhodes style as “practically cross-dressing,” is equally hopeful. “This band, even from the day it was born, was never going to be a run-of-the-mill band,” he says of the Struts, who formed in 2008 when he was 20 years old. “But what I’d like to think what the Struts are doing is what bands when I was 15 or 16 were doing to me. I discovered, at that age, bands like Queen and Led Zeppelin, and for me it was all amazing and brand-new, despite how old the music was. … I kind of hope we would be a bit of fresh air to our audience. That would be an achievement.”
Greta Van Fleet hail from the tiny Michigan town of Frankenmuth, famous for “chicken, fudge, beer, the whole Bavarian thing” and for being home to the largest Christmas store in the world; it’s not exactly known as a rock hub. Still, Wagner and his bandmates somehow found one another. “I don’t know if you’d believe me, but until I got to about middle school, I didn’t know there was any other type of music other than live rock ’n’ roll,” Wagner laughs. “I didn’t know there was a modern thing going on. I didn’t really realize what it was met everyone else in middle school and realized, ‘Wow, I’m the only one that is listening to this stuff!’ — until I met the other guys, and that’s where we kind of fell in love with each other.”
Wagner eventually met identical twins Josh (GVF’s wailing, Robert Plant-like lead vocalist) and Jake Kiszka (guitar) and their younger brother Sam (bass), who were raised “surrounded by blues and music; that was the foundation of their family growing up. Their dad played all sorts of instruments, and through their parents and their family they carried on learning instruments as soon as they could get their hands on them. We were listening to a lot of blues, a lot of soul, a lot of the old-school R&B kind of ideas. We started branching off once we were given the tools to a lot of other genres.”
Growing up thousands of miles away in his own small town, Derby, Derbyshire, England, Spiller was also mostly disconnected from modern pop music and pop culture. (“I was always dressing different; I was always a bit outspoken and a bit out-of-touch with what was going on currently.”) But unlike the Kiszkas, he didn’t have any family members to introduce him to rock ’n’ roll, as he grew up in an extremely strict and religious household. “I didn’t have the Rolling Stones introduced to me by my parents, or the Beatles, or Zeppelin,” Spiller says. Instead, it was a great retro-revivalist band of the early aughts that showed him the way.
“The Darkness came out when I was 15, and this was the music-channel era,” Spiller recalls. “I remember seeing those first three videos [“I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” “Growing on Me,” and “Love Is Only a Feeling”] from the first album, and just being like, wow. The performance element of it, it was lighthearted, which I found extremely refreshing. … From that, I was just hooked to that guitar sound and was discovering the influences of that band; I then found Queen, and ever since I’ve just been going on this self-discovery journey with music and everything.”
And now, Greta Van Fleet and the Struts are doing that for the next generation of kids looking for something different — the old-school way, through world-of-mouth and constant touring. “If I don’t sweat perpetually, then I haven’t done my job. I always aim to excessively sweat at every show,” says the hardworking, hard-charging Spiller.
The Struts have actually been touring nonstop for about four years, sharing bills with everyone from the aforementioned Foo Fighters to Guns N’ Roses, M?tley Crüe, and Weezer, and they’ve won over new fans at every gig. They also just did a four-night residency at the Sunset Strip’s fabled Roxy club, where they were joined onstage by the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, Butch Walker, and even former American Idol judge Randy Jackson on bass. “Whether it’s the festivals or more recently when we’ve been out with the Foos, we’re entering arenas every night, and there’s one goal and that is to win over as many people as we can. That sort of takes an extra bit effort and pizzazz. It is relentless,” says Spiller. “And I’ve never walked away from a show, whether it’s four people or 400 or 4,000, and thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t really come across that well.’”
Wagner recalls the packed Mojave Tent absolutely exploding when Greta Van Fleet (who also recently played the Foo Fighters’ CalJam festival) performed at Coachella earlier this year and were one of the breakout artists of the weekend: “You couldn’t deny the fact that that room was energized through the roof. It was crazy. That’s what I’m talking about — that resurgence that I’ve been seeing on the road as often as we’ve been.”
Spiller has witnessed a similar phenomenon on tour. “Every time we play, I’m always eyeing up the crowd, and it spans from 14-year-olds all the way up to 40-plus. And that says something,” says Spiller. “A lot of the older generation comes because it’s got reminiscence, and then you’ve got younger people, whose minds are blown because amongst this music like Ed Sheeran and 1D and whatnot, you’ve got this music which is completely different.”
It remains to be seen if Greta Van Fleet and the Struts can revive rock ’n’ roll in a major way, but their major labels are very much behind them (Universal even put the Struts in the studio with crossover pop star Kesha), and that’s a good sign that the tides might be turning. “It’s always harder to be different. It’s so much easier [for record labels] to float along with the era of trend and just go along with all the other sheep,” admits Spiller, adding with a sardonic rock-star laugh, “You’ve got to have a big pair of bollocks to promote what we do, for sure.”
Wagner’s interview and a portion of Spiller’s conversation are available on demand via the SiriusXM app, on Volume channel 106.
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
Watch Elton John jam with the ‘amazing’ Greta Van Fleet at his Oscars party
The Darkness, featuring Queen-descendant drummer Rufus Taylor, still believe in a thing called rock
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