Rock and roll will never die: A Southern Illinois author says why

Ask Southern Illinois University English professor Kevin J.H. Dettmar if rock and roll is dead, and he'll supply you with a 200-page answer.

Here's the abridged version: People have said rock is dead from its beginning 50 years ago. But rock still lives, and changes all the time.

The common refrain that the music is dead comes from crotchety critics, says Dettmar. To prove his point, the professor has compiled a 200-page book, "Is Rock Dead?", to be published late this month, picking apart the argument through the ages that America's rebel music has kicked the bucket.

"Every time somebody says rock is dead, by default you find out just what they think rock and roll is," says Dettmar, a balding 40-something with glasses. "Rock is not dead and it's very much alive as it is."

On first glance Dettmar looks like the stereotypical image of the critics he criticizes. But upon closer inspection, Dettmar has ideas much more open than the rock music elitists. He'll even go on record with a statement that is rock sacrilege to traditionalists and elitists: hip-hop is a new form of rock music.

"Rock is so amorphous that it can encompass so many things," Dettmar says.

Dettmar is an English professor, but said he knows "more Neil Young lyrics than all of English poetry." He's been a fan of rock and roll since the 1970s, but wasn't inspired to write "Is Rock Dead?" until a critic took a potshot at one of his favorite modern bands, Radiohead, for the group's album "Kid A."

Brit critic Nick Hornby panned Radiohead as pretentious, saying that every important creation in rock music had already been made and the boys from Oxford should realize they're just another pop band.

"It seemed to me like a lot of critics have this sort of a mid-life crisis, where they start defining rock as a certain point in time," said Dettmar.

The critics take on the elitist attitudes rock has often tried to destroy. Baby boomers start to take ownership of rock, and they think nothing important in the genre can be created any more, Dettmar says.

"You do have to let go," Dettmar says.

As a fan of rock, Dettmar isn't stuck in the 1970s. As he talks about his book and the argument behind it, Dettmar invokes the names of modern rockers like Chris Cornell, Marilyn Manson and Franz Ferdinand right alongside the names of classics like David Bowie.

Dettmar sees the music as a changing beast -- and with those changes will come the inevitable clash between the old and new.

The "rock is dead" clamor often surrounds a major event or an exit of the old guard. Kurt Cobain's suicide, John Lennon's murder, the Day the Music Died and the first time hip hop outsold rock are all moments in which that familiar cry was belted out -- Rock and Roll is Dead.

That cry is one that has persisted for 50 years and hasn't been right yet, so why should it be right now?

Rock is more of an attitude than any one type of sound, Dettmar says. It's the rebellion, the rejection of the status quo, the scaring of parents.

"As long as people say it's rock, it's rock."

Dettmar's book will be available online and at bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders.