Americans are from Mars; Europeans are from Symphony Hall

Warning: this is not a realist post. It’s not even all that serious. But it’s Friday, and some of you may appreciate a brief diversion from the more depressing events of the week.

Here’s my question: has there ever been a great European rock-and-roll band?

You would think that there would be by now, given the cross-fertilization of musical cultures that has taken place over the past few decades. We’ve been allied with Europe for a long time, and true rock bands have been touring the place for decades. The Armed Forces radio network used to broadcast lots of rock music too, so it was available to anyone with a radio. If we believe Tom Stoppard, rock music was a powerful cultural force on the continent (including Eastern Europe), just as it was in the United States.

Yet I can’t think of a single European band or artist that would be regarded as a major force in the history of rock-and-roll. Obviously I am drawing a sharp distinction here between the United Kingdom and continental Europe. The UK has produced any number of world-class rock bands and artists: the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, U-2, Sex Pistols, Van Morrison, Cream, Elvis Costello, Eurythmics, David Bowie, etc., so my generalization obviously doesn’t apply there. And this list appears to confirm that point.

But what about France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden? These cultures have produced a number of important jazz musicians (Django Reinhardt, Niels-Henning Orsted-Pedersen) and world-class popular music artists (Edith Piaf) plus a few one-hit wonders (e.g. Golden Earring’s "Radar Love") but continental Europe has never produced a rock and roll band of any global significance. And I hope nobody counters by mentioning Abba — whatever you might think of their music, it ain’t rock.

I’m no musicologist, and I know there are other people out there who know more about the music scene than I do (paging Eric Alterman!). And I admit I haven’t been keeping up with the scene as much in recent years. (My teenaged son was into some weird Japanese metal bands last year, but none of them seem to have broken out to a larger global following).

So I could be dead wrong about this, and I invite readers to chime in. Am I way off-base here? If there have been some major rock artists from continental Europe, who are they? (Note: I am not saying that there are no good rock bands in Europe; I’m just saying that they don’t seem to be emerging as major artists in a global sense).

And if I’m right about the gap, what’s the explanation? Is it network theory (i.e., lack of connections to key tastemakers, like the folks at Rolling Stone)? A function of trade patterns? The lingering influence of too much classical music training? American chauvinism?

My own theory, based on absolutely no research whatsoever, is that you can’t have rock music without a blues and R & B foundation. Blues and R & B and early American rock and roll spread to England in the 1950s and helped ignite the British rock scene. Result: the British invasion of the 1960s. But blues and R and B were never a large influence on the continent, and it has therefore remained focused on (or to be unkind, mired in) an irretrievably "pop" sensibility.

On a more serious note: does this phenomenon tell us something about the limits of globalization? We can send digital music anywhere now, but that doesn’t mean it sprouts and grows everywhere it lands, and national and regional cultures continue to retain a lot of individuality, even in the face of the Internet and the iPod.