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IAN HUNTER LIKES ROCK 'N' ROLL

“Compassion touches me in the head, and then it begins to bleed/Oh, there ain’t no rock ’n’ roll no more, just the sickly sound of greed. ” Ian Hunter wrote those words in 1976, shortly before the punk/new wave explosion gave rock ’n’ roll a brief and perhaps final moment of glory.

January 1, 1982
Bill Holdship

IAN HUNTER LIKES ROCK 'N' ROLL

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Bill Holdship

“Compassion touches me in the head, and then it begins to bleed/Oh, there ain’t no rock ’n’ roll no more, just the sickly sound of greed. ”

Ian Hunter wrote those words in 1976, shortly before the punk/new wave explosion gave rock ’n’ roll a brief and perhaps final moment of glory. Hunter claims he wrote “Apathy 83”—which dealt with the glorified form of rigor mortis rock has become—in response to “seeing the corporate machinery and its majesty for the first time, and it scared the shit out of me.” As far as I’m concerned, those lyrics now stand with anything Bob Dylan’s ever written in regard to the modern world, especially when one begins to realize that rock ’n’ roll doesn’t seem all that important anymore and that jerks and insects control virtually every aspect of the music business.

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