Rock Music

When Pink Floyd first took its concept album "The Wall" to the concert stage more than three decades ago, even lead singer and chief songwriter Roger Waters couldn't imagine a day when rock music might get any bigger. But 32 years later, his magnum opus about the battle between individual freedoms and authoritarian oppression has magnified beyond Waters' own expectations of yore. Now the man who once excoriated the voluminous expansion of the rock concert experience has helped institutionalize it. "I famously hated playing to large numbers of people and playing in stadiums," Waters, 68, said from a tour stop in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

A bridge, of course, is a stretch of metal or stone or something that spans, typically, a body of water. But it also unites two disparate things that would otherwise remain disconnected. So it's only fitting that what could prove a breakthrough piece for the polymath young composer Gabriel Kahane is a piece about the Brooklyn Bridge. Kahane was led to this particular structure by his current locale -- he's part of a Brooklyn new-music renaissance -- as well as Hart Crane's 1930 poem "The Bridge," now considered a landmark of modernism.

Look, I don't like it any more than you do. But it's time to face the music. Or at least its decline. If rock 'n' roll is not dead, its demise is rapidly being hastened by these 10 factors: 1. Rock 'n' roll halls of fame, museums and exhibits have turned a vital youth movement into an aged, tiring museum piece. 2. With both AM and FM rock stations dominated by oldies as a way to chase an aging population demographic, rock radio is going the way of big band music and "Music of Your Life."

Dick Clark, the youthful-looking television personality who literally introduced rock 'n' roll to much of the nation on "American Bandstand" and for four decades was the first and last voice many Americans heard each year with his New Year's Eve countdowns, died Wednesday. He was 82. Clark died after suffering a heart attack following an outpatient procedure at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, according to a statement by his longtime publicist, Paul Shefrin. Clark's health had been in question since a 2004 stroke affected his speech and mobility, but that year's Dec. 31 countdown was the only one he missed since he started the annual rite during the Nixon years.

Tonight and Friday, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Simon & Garfunkel, Metallica and other acts that started their careers in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s will perform at Madison Square Garden here to celebrate the silver anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The landmark events, which are expected to run 4 1/2 hours each and will air on HBO on Nov. 29, come at a tricky time for rock and for the rock hall itself. These days, Guitar Hero is a video game, Rockstar is an energy drink and ring tones routinely outsell albums.

It's easy to understand musician Dhani Harrison's antipathy toward the general concept of being in a rock band. After all, he got loads of priceless firsthand information from his father about the ups and downsides of making it to the absolute peak of pop music success during his tenure with the Beatles. FOR THE RECORD: Dhani Harrison: An article on musician Dhani Harrison in Tuesday's Calendar identified Activision as developer of The Beatles: Rock Band. The game was created by Harmonix, MTV Games and Apple Corps Ltd. — It was George Harrison who famously said, "The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962.

Alex Ebert could easily double as some kind of indie-rock messiah. Fronting his new band, the 11- or 12-member strong Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Ebert appears onstage shirtless and barefoot, strands of shoulder-length hair tied back in a faux crown as he conducts his smiling, face-painted ensemble like a giddy choir director.

It was 10 years ago this week that big-time rock 'n' roll became firmly entrenched in Orange County. With the Charlie Daniels Band and David Lindley & El Rayo X doing the honors, Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, the county's first large venue built specifically for concerts, opened on Aug. 21, 1981. The anniversary is passing without hoopla, at least for now. "It kind of came and went," said Robert Geddes, the managing partner of Irvine Meadows since it opened.

Dick Clark, the youthful-looking television personality who literally introduced rock 'n' roll to much of the nation on "American Bandstand" and for four decades was the first and last voice many Americans heard each year with his New Year's Eve countdowns, died Wednesday. He was 82. Clark died after suffering a heart attack following an outpatient procedure at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, according to a statement by his longtime publicist, Paul Shefrin. Clark's health had been in question since a 2004 stroke affected his speech and mobility, but that year's Dec. 31 countdown was the only one he missed since he started the annual rite during the Nixon years.

Rock 'n' roll is in the hot seat again. Call it media hype or justifiable outrage, but an acrimonious debate is raging over whether hard-rock heavyweights Guns N' Roses--as well as rap idols Public Enemy and speed-metal kings Slayer--are promoting bigotry and hatred. Guns N' Roses has been under fire for a host of inflammatory lyrics in its song "One in a Million," which uses derogatory epithets to describe blacks and gays.

Since he came to notoriety with the 1988 cult hit "Superstar," an unauthorized account of Karen Carpenter's battle with anorexia starring a cast of Barbie dolls, Todd Haynes has developed into a singular voice in American movies: at once personal and political, steeped in academic theory yet sharply attentive to the nuances of popular culture. "Superstar," which ran afoul of the Carpenter estate and was never properly released, encapsulated the two types of films that have defined Haynes's career as a director and writer: rock-music biopic-cum-essays (no other American filmmaker is as much of a closet rock critic)

Barry Feinstein, a photographer who gained renown as one of the premier chroniclers of the 1960s and '70s music scene, including shooting iconic album covers for Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and George Harrison, has died. He was 80. Feinstein, a longtime resident of Woodstock, N.Y., who had been in failing health the last 10 years, died Thursday at a hospital in Kingston, N.Y., said his wife, Judith Jamison Feinstein. In an award-winning career that began in the 1950s and included shooting many of Hollywood's biggest stars, Feinstein had photos published in Life, Look, Time, Esquire, Newsweek and other magazines.

It might be difficult to imagine today, but there was a moment in the pre-Khomeini Iran of the mid-1970s when miniskirts and rock music reigned, where a female pop balladeer wowed crowds of thousands and a man named Kourosh became a guitar hero on a par with Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. Since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the subsequent censorship of many of the country's artists, Iran's pop cultural past has taken on a dream-like quality -- more than 30 years of constricting government bans having had a dramatic effect on the country's creative output.

I've long considered Ellen Willis something of a hero. I hope I live longer than she did (Willis died in 2006, at 64), but otherwise, it's an exemplary life. She was the first pop music critic of the New Yorker, writing 56 pieces for the magazine from 1968 to 1975 that trace her relationship with "music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated ... [and] challenged me to do the same. " In the mid-1970s, she began to focus less on music and more on feminism and her own stunning brand of liberation politics, becoming an editor and writer at the Village Voice and later founding the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU. Her writing is rigorous, unrelenting, in your face: not in the sense of mindless provocation but because she was so smart.

"You need to create blur to create desire," Jean-Charles de Castelbajac says in English, at a swanky restaurant in the center of Paris. The manager teases him about a TV appearance as he walks in and shakes hands with a famous French actor. Later, leaning in off his seat, the 61-year-old fashion designer and artist of noble birth excitedly talks about projects and the changing fashion business. "You like to see a man you understand in one minute? If you want to be seduced you don't like some blur?

Roll over Beethoven. At the School of Rock, studying the classics means learning the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" and Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," not "Moonlight Sonata. " On Nov. 13, the nationwide chain of music schools opened its 60th location, in West Los Angeles, to teach 7-to-18-year-olds how to jam on guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and vocals. The Wilshire Boulevard outlet is the second area location for the school, joining the 4-year-old School of Rock in North Hollywood.

Now it's rock music as a weapon against Washington state sea lions (Part A, Jan. 29)! Where's the SPCA? AL HIX Hollywood

I've long considered Ellen Willis something of a hero. I hope I live longer than she did (Willis died in 2006, at 64), but otherwise, it's an exemplary life. She was the first pop music critic of the New Yorker, writing 56 pieces for the magazine from 1968 to 1975 that trace her relationship with "music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated ... [and] challenged me to do the same. " In the mid-1970s, she began to focus less on music and more on feminism and her own stunning brand of liberation politics, becoming an editor and writer at the Village Voice and later founding the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU. Her writing is rigorous, unrelenting, in your face: not in the sense of mindless provocation but because she was so smart.

During Broadway's autumn doldrums, celebrity stunt casting is often seen as a surefire way of drumming up sagging sales. This week, Billie Joe Armstrong of the band Green Day joined the cast of "American Idiot" for a brief run. Now the organizers of "Rock of Ages" have announced their own celebrity cast addition. The hit Broadway jukebox musical, which draws on '80s hair-metal rock favorites, will be getting an injection of the real thing starting Oct. 11, when Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider joins the cast for an 11-week run. "Rock of Ages" is scheduled to play Hollywood's Pantages Theatre in February as part of a national tour starring Constantine Maroulis, who headed the original Broadway cast.

Built for $12,000 as a do-it-yourself community project in 1957, rustic Libbey Bowl has always been the little concert stage that could. Russian composer Igor Stravinsky premiered a number of his works at the half-shell amphitheater. His American colleague, composer Aaron Copland, chose the sycamore-tangled setting to debut his conducting career. More recently, surf rocker Jack Johnson packed the bowl with fans of his popular tunes. But time and termites have taken a toll.