The incredible shrinking frontman
The preening rock star of the past gives way to a decidedly unheroic new species of lead singer
Rock 'n' roll frontmen are, historically, a rare breed - charismatic crooners or ravishing shouters endowed with the kind of bravado that moves men to plant their feet at the front of stages under burning spotlights, microphones in fist and personalities on parade.
The classic preeners (Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Jim Morrison) and their descendents (Bono, Axl Rose, Anthony Kiedis) are a diverse musical lot with one thing in common. They are - or were - electric performers with uncomplicated, larger-than-life personas.
But as the genre evolves, so does the rock-star paradigm. And as the music industry contracts, so does the frontman's mythic wingspan. It might be entirely serendipitous, this simultaneous shrinking of budgets and frontmen, or it may come down to the proverbial chicken-and-egg question: Which came first, the struggling record label or the downsized lead singer? No doubt the rise of indie rock has chipped away at rock's mythology and helped create a humbler breed of star, one who feels free, even compelled, to identify with the masses.
Whatever the confluence of factors, it struck me that when three of today's most notable rock bands - Coldplay, Wilco, and Ra diohead - perform in Boston this month, audiences will behold a new species of rock god that's decidedly unheroic.
Coldplay, which performs tomorrow at the Garden, is the most mainstream of the bunch, chart-topping pop-rockers given to standard-issue bombast and crowd-pleasing theatrics. And yet the band's frontman, Chris Martin, is transparently self-conscious. He's a worrier, a plotter, an overthinker with a soft heart and an incorrigible appetite for approval.
Thom Yorke, the lead singer and main songwriter in Radiohead, at the
Wilco, which performs Aug. 12 at Tanglewood, is the accidental rock band - an alt-country outfit that took unexpected detours into psychedelia, noise, pop, and drone - and leader Jeff Tweedy smacks of nothing more than an accidental rock star. His roots are rural, his vision eclectic, and the two combine in a discomfiting mash of modest strummer and enterprising explorer.
As with previous generations, these frontmen's musical inclinations couldn't be more different. And like their predecessors, Martin, Yorke, and Tweedy have one important trait in common. They're taking one of the genre's pillars - swaggering sexuality - out of the rock 'n' roll equation.
Plenty of women (and surely a few men) find Martin alluring. He's handsome, an incurably romantic songwriter, and he shares his bed with a Hollywood starlet, which confers untold sex appeal. But Martin's magnetism is in the eye of the beholder; the man's energy is that of an anxious student determined to score an A.
Leaping about the stage during live shows, Martin doesn't channel rock-star iconography. He looks like he's on the verge of hurting himself. Pushing himself to a swooning - borderline spastic - state of grace at the piano, he walks the line between emotionally resonant and profoundly absurd.
"When I watch Woody Allen films I really feel like someone else feels the same way as me," Martin told me in a 2005 interview. He may qualify as rock's first bona fide neurotic, an arena-level fretter who obsesses over his hairline, his functional provincial upbringing, and his unused college degree (in ancient world studies, with honors) as vehemently as he obsesses over writing great choruses.
There is an urgency to Martin's mindset. And it translates, in a sweet, innocuous way, to his music and performance. It's nothing like the erotic urgency that has fueled so many rock stars' aspirations, but the self-doubt that colors Coldplay's musical dreams - this is a stretch, but let's not forget that the band's first hit was called "Yellow," the shade of cowardice - resonates with global legions of fans.
If Martin seems like the anxious sort, he's got nothing on Thom Yorke, the ultimate digital-age icon. Yorke isn't moved by rock's galvanizing power and feels no compunction to cultivate the sense of universality that others in his genre have taken to heart through the years. His isolation goes beyond the sound of Radiohead's music, which is modern and often abstract, and the band's embrace of cutting-edge technology, on extraordinary display in its new data-driven video for "House of Cards."
Yorke exists in a vacuum of his own making. He channels the angst of the human condition, but he also distances himself from the source. The epic sweep of Radiohead's music is completely internalized, a vehicle for grand-scale alienation, not big emotions. Even "In Rainbows," which is concerned with love and is often quite lovely, comes from the head and not the heart.
In Yorke's hands, connections are dissonant, musically and ideologically. Words don't help; they arrive like puzzling pieces of information, or in question form. Sensuality is nonexistent, and Yorke is in a perpetual state of distress: forever cynical, dangerously fragile, and cosmically alone. On the artist's well-titled solo album, "The Eraser," it was just the man and his laptop, and that's where he seems most at home.
And yet Yorke does reach out to listeners in a fashion - by demanding a rigorous level of intellectual engagement. There is no other way to get to him, and there is no other way to be a Radiohead fan. That communal glow that briefly infiltrated the fan base following the mass download of "In Rainbows" last October? It was virtual. Following the rock star's lead, we were alone at our computers.
Wilco may not share Coldplay's commerical clout or Radiohead's phenomenal cachet, but the group has ascended to the pantheon of "important" rock bands thanks to the restless and uncompromising creativity of Wilco's frontman and brain trust, Jeff Tweedy.
In 2004 - just after the release of "A Ghost Is Born," Tweedy's visceral, twisted self-portrait - he told me that "being a musician is about trying to nurture some sort of fearlessness about being yourself." While rock gods of yore may have presented themselves as fearless, authenticity had very little to do with it. For Tweedy, being himself has meant vomiting in pails on the sides of stages throughout his migraine-plagued years, setting Woody Guthrie's words to music, and concluding a beautiful ballad with 12 minutes of savage feedback.
Watching him perform is like watching your dorm R.A. kick out the jams. Tweedy has a fondness for cable-knit sweaters, button-down shirts, and bad haircuts along with lush pop, psychedelic soul, ambient noise, and folk-rock. He tends to be studious onstage, piping up when necessary but happier to burrow into the musical matters at hand. He uses no body language, presents no image, and can't sing very well.
Tweedy is the frontman as vessel. He knows he's making strong, relevant art, and at the same time he takes no credit for the impact his music has on the world. As he said in 2004: "Meaning exists. It's all around us. An artist didn't invent it."
Where did the egos go? Who are these shy, complicated men slouching toward microphones? And what have they done with the rock gods?
They've shipped them off to hip-hop, for starters, which makes all kinds of sense considering that it has basically replaced rock as the dominant form of popular music. A handful of post-punk poster boys and emo kids are carrying on in the swaggering tradition, with their black leather and skinny jeans, but it all feels so . . . retro.
Meanwhile, indie heroes like bookish Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie; Craig Finn, khaki-wearing frontman for the Hold Steady; oddball Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse; and Win Butler, the quiet giant running the Arcade Fire's show, are breaking into the mainstream and refashioning the job of rock star in their own images.
None are particularly cocky or cool. On the contrary, you wouldn't look twice if you saw them walking down the street. They are - as Chris Martin once described his songs - quite human.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music, go to boston.com/ae/music/blog.
