AI Rock & Roll: A Musical David Vs Goliath

Real people, Real Lives, Real Music

It used to be that death pretty much ended a creative life. AI and other sorts of technology have changed that paradigm but not to give you an eternal life but to give its tech overlords an eternal and generous revenue stream.

For example, you can see a hologram Buddy Holly play and sing or ask an AI tool to produce a song in the style of so and so and, most recently, to ask it to flat out imitate an artist’s voice in an original song.

This last bit was reported in a current news item which stated that the late Steve Marriott’s wife had “licensed” an AI company to release original new music in a vocal imitation of him. Needless to say, his children were opposed but not for monetary reasons.

They apparently believe that such a project would damage his artistic legacy and that may be true. Then again, maybe not. What if the song is great and sells a million copies. What then? Submission or resistance?

For me, the real issue is what it says about our humanity. On that count, count me out. But is it all even possible?

Let’s start with the big picture. Depending on how you enjoy or loath certain tasks you can find fulfillment in almost anything we do up to and including sweeping the floor. That said, if the floor is a 100 by 100 foot room and the temperature is 99 degrees, you are likely to come out on the loath side of that equation.

On the other hand, painting or writing or playing music is likely to rate quite highly on the scale of human fulfillment even taking into consideration all the frustrations associated with the creative process.

If AI comes to dominate creativity of all sorts — and I am also referring to tasks beyond high art such as math related subjects like accounting or non-creative writing that is business, legal or science related, what fulfilling work is left to humanity? Is it the actual or equivalent of sweeping that 100 foot room in 99 degree heat?

And in that reality who benefits? Will it be most of us or only a tiny percentage? Our current reality would seem to suggest that only a few will reap the lion’s share of the benefit.

Moreover, in the past, all sorts of interests promoted technologies that allegedly promised to free humanity from mundane tasks in order to give us ample time to pursue creativity. Now the promise is reversed, AI will provide the creativity and we get stuck with the mundane tasks.

And at least with respect to creativity, toward what end beyond money? My guess is that some Tech billionaire thinks he will one day be presented with a Grammy by a swooning Scarlet Johansen.

Thankfully, when it comes to literature at least, I am confident AI will be proven incapable. Think of Huckleberry Finn and the penultimate line in it: “All right then, I’ll go to hell.” Could AI create such a line? How?

Within those seven simple words Twain invested his entire lived experience up to that point. And those simple words condemned an entire culture including the deeply held morality that supported it.

Again, all of it was derived from a lived experience. The same could easily be said of All Quiet On The Western Front or There Eyes Were Watching God. That sort of creativity speaks to our shared humanity, something AI will never share with us.

It is not just our self conciousness that makes us human but our relationship to others and to nature and, ultimately, our mortality. A machine cannot experience those things

The same can, of course, be said about a lot of music. Some Classical and Jazz would likely defy AI learning because of improvisation. But what of popular vocal music like Rock, Pop and Country? There things become a bit more dicey.

Those musical forms often follow standard instrumental patterns and many feature rhyming couplets as their lyrical base and no matter how hard you try there are only so many ways to arrange certain lyrical themes.

Does that mean the game is lost and humanity is doomed to an endless stream of catchy hits sung by a long dead Taylor Swift two hundred years from now? Perhaps not, unless AI begins to date and fall in and out of love with musicians and football players. But let’s circle back to Steve Marriott’s case.

First off, Steve’s vocal likeness was up for grabs as it was controlled by a wife who had long moved on with her life. Obviously, the allure of finally cashing in may have played a factor but let’s be honest, many credible artists may be tempted to do this for a lot of different reasons. Maybe even Steve himself except, of course, he has been dead for over 30 years (Rest in Peace by the way) so we will never know his position on the subject.

What we do know is that at the time of his death Steve was at a low point in his personal and professional life. But, obviously, things had been different for him. In his first incarnation as a Rock star — for lack of a better word — he was a young handsome modish singer, songwriter and guitarist with the Small Faces. He, and them, were just a break or two away from major stardom.

At that time Steve and his bandmates were the perfect reflection of Swinging London. That could be said of many of the major bands of the era but what held the Small Faces back, however, was that they didn’t translate as well to an American audience. In other words, too British.

Case in point is Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake. But my point here is a song like Lazy Sunday from Flake. Marriott wrote it with Ronnie Lane and sings it with a jaunty accent. There are Rudy-Dee-Ti-Dee’s and toilets flushing as he ambles through the lyrics. In other words, the song overflows with a positive, youthful glow.

Fast forward a few years and Marriott’s new band, Humble Pie, are blasting the flecked paint off the walls of venues like the Fillmore East. Songs like I Don’t Need No Doctor, are the archetype of 1970’s Hard Rock and it is a long way from Itchyco Park. Added to the bombast is plenty of Drink, Drugs and Divorce.

Burned out and broke by the mid 1970’s, Marriott was no longer the handsome Mod nor the Hard Rocking bad boy. He was adrift and trying many different combinations in an effort to make a living. He was also stealing vegetables and refunding bottles according to some.

In the early 1980’s he reconnected with his Small Faces bandmate Ronnie Lane who was just beginning his long terminal battle with MS. Together they cut a sentimental album that was more American Country then British Folk: Majik Mijits. Tender and sweet, it was unlike anything Steve had done in years and out of context given his situation then.

For reasons that are unclear, Steve shelved the album. After that decision and again battling tax and finance issues, he sought a new project. In the late 1980’s, Steve started working with his ex-Humble Pie bandmate Peter Frampton and then…and then he died. Tragically, in a house fire.

Marriott’s estate passed to his third wife of two years and there were reissues and box sets but the market was limited for his various incarnations. He was neither a first tier Mod like the Who or the Kinks nor a first tier Heavy Rocker like Zeppelin or Deep Purple. Which is unfair because in any other era his music would have been first tier.

As is, they are the best sort of deep cuts that align beautifully in a mixed bag playlist. Try Shine On sandwiched between Smoking In The Boys Room and Never Before. But I digress.

So, you may ask, what the hell does this brief Marriott biography have to do with an AI Steve Marriott and, similar to my Mark Twain example, the answer is everything. To put it bluntly, which incarnation of Steve? The Mod? The Hard Rocker? The struggling down on his luck journeymen?

What sort of original Marriott song could AI conjure that would pick up his trajectory just before his death? It would seem to me that only one entity could ever summarize his state of mind at any given time and then express it though music and that would be the flesh and blood Steve.

AI Steve never experienced Swingling London in the mid-60’s or toured America in full on Rock Star mode in the early 1970’s or kicked around Southern California trying to scrape together a few bucks in the late 1970’s. Like Twain, Marriott’s art derived from a lived experience, every second of it.

As mentioned previously, because Rock and Pop have to generally conform to certain lyrical themes and instrumental patterns, it is possible that AI might be able to generate a “let’s have a party” type song and such a song might click with a large audience but could it come up with the equivalent of Frank Zappa’s Help, I Am A Rock, Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime and Steve’s own Song Of A Baker, As Safe As Yesterday or Lonely No More?

What would AI’s frame of reference be to write songs like that? What is it’s artistic motivation to do so? We, on the other hand, can answer both questions easily.

Simply put we are mortal and perhaps our true purpose in a limited life is to connect with each other through touch or conversation or literature or music.

Even the silliest song can bind us together. To know we shared a fleeting moment of happiness and joy to take with us to whatever is next or at least to give meaning to what was.

These are things a machine cannot experience so far as we know and — even better — why are we trying? Should there not be something sacred about our humanity? Isn’t this the way we grow wiser as a species? Should it not be how we connect with each other at our most enduring level? Is it not though our creativity and the bonds it forges our best hope for universal peace and understanding?

Also, is there a shortage of creativity that AI needs to fill? Is it about the quality of modern creativity? Do we trust AI’s subjective taste? Are we expecting only the most tasteful and respectful AI creativity? What assurances do we have on that? What fun would that be?

In short, why would we cede this most important power to another entity? Would it not be ceding our humanity? Who or what will we be then?