If you think back to being a teenager, which, as you know, for me was in the 70s, what did you think the future would be like? At the time, even the 90s seemed futuristic. I remember working out that I’d be 39 in the year 2000 when I was about 8. It seemed so far away. I couldn’t really imagine what the future would be like, though I recall asking why you couldn’t just watch a TV programme or film when you wanted, but that wasn’t a vision into the future, more just a kid that didn’t understand broadcasting.
The idea that phones would become such an integrated part of life, never occurred to me. They weren’t a really important part of life. We’d had to wait for 6 months to get one in 1976.
As for computers, they were only in sci-fi books and movies. Even in the 80s, they used to refer to ‘main frame’ computers in big companies. The personal computer wasn’t imagined yet.
At the time I certainly didn’t imagine the Rolling Stones would be still touring in the 21st century. But I didn’t see a time when guitar music would fall out of fashion. Indeed, there was a time in the early 80s when even Steely Dan were derided, as were many bands of the 70s, before classic rock was invented.
As for records, the idea that they’d become obsolete was just unimaginable. They were so omnipresent and so important, I assumed they were permanent, which I suppose they are, as 60 year-old records still change hands.
If we try to look into the future, assuming it follows the patterns of the past, it seems likely that there’ll be a new format in the next 10 years, designed to supplant streaming. It’s happened about five times already and is the industry's favourite way of monetising music they’ve already sold many times over. That said, it’s hard to imagine what a new format would look like, given that by that time a whole generation will be used to everything being free or with a single subscription. Once you’ve made everything available where else is there to go.
Vinyl will live on for enthusiasts but they’ll be a niche which will all but die out with us. They’ve sold physical music, metaphysical music, charged and given away music. Isn’t that everything? A different delivery system will just reproduce what already exists. But that won’t stop them.
I bet some bands will live on as holographs of them in their pomp. That’s already happening, though I think there’ll be much fewer current bands that will survive the test of time.
The more I think about it, the more I realise we lived through a golden era in the 70s where bands could record up to 10 albums, like Gentle Giant and never chart any in the UK. Artistic merit mattered more than huge sales. I’d like to think that might be the case again but that might be wishful thinking.
