In some ways Kendrick Lamar last Sunday was dressed more like me and my buddies in the 1960s and 1970s than were any of the 58 previous Super-Bowl halftime-show performers (some of whom, in fairness, were in marching bands).

      Lamar was outfitted in blue-jean bellbottoms, sneakers, a black shirt, a baseball cap and a letter jacket. He had a raggedy, as best I could determine, beard.

      And the performance Lamar gave—with Samuel L. Jackson as a Black Uncle Sam, supposedly tasked with asking him to tone it down—seemed more angry and more political than any previous Super Bowl halftime show, angrier and more political than we had thought the billionaires who own the NFL would tolerate. He referenced jazz-poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron’s line that the “revolution will not be televised” but insisted that it was about to be. At one point an American flag, formed by dancers, was split in half by an aggressive Lamar.

      In some ways it was the performance we might have gotten if, instead of the Florida A&M University marching band playing at halftime of the 1969 Super Bowl, we saw, miraculously, Jimi Hendrix—also partial to denim bellbottoms—doing his angry, bombs-exploding National Anthem guitar solo.

      So, yeah, at halftime last Sunday there was a “hell-no-we-won’t” vibe, a scruffy, working-class, anti-pretense, street vibe.

      And one would have thought that my contemporaries and I—veterans of anti-war marches, partisans of a music most adults then reviled—would have found Lamar’s performance simpatico.

      We did not.

      One acquaintance, who emailed me, called it “execrable.”

      It did not help that Lamar—though he did do “Not Like Us” (his huge “diss track” aimed at Drake)—was not much concerned with playing, as the hugeness of the audience is supposed to require, his greatest hits.

That was a very Bob-Dylan move. Bob Dylan has never played the Super Bowl.

      The Super Bowl had headlined rappers, or sometimes-rappers, at halftime once before: three years ago. And Kendrich Lamar was there—the young Turk, bringing the anger and intensity: “Alls my life I’ve have to fight.” But the dominant personage that evening was America’s favorite pitchman, Snoop Dogg—backed, although he was rapping, by what certainly looked like a rock band and not representing a threat to anything.

       But this time, last Sunday, it felt different in three ways:

1.     Hip hop—in the form of Kendrick Lamar—had grown strong enough to stand alone on this the largest of all stages, to be its riveting but unpretty self, to be open about its politics, its inclination to “have to fight.”

2.     Measured by degree of audacity this was Newport and Kendrick Lamar was Bob Dylan—doing something different and annoying. Lamar was producing music—bare, unleavened rap— that a significant percentage of his audience, the rock generation in particular, mostly could not appreciate, any more than the angry folkies at Newport in 1965 could appreciate Dylan’s electric “Maggie’s Farm.” And many of my contemporaries, watching Lamar, would have been happy to pull the plug.

3.     Rock ‘n’ roll—with its traditional electric-guitar based, chorus-verse-bridge song structures, its “All-You-Need-Is-Love”—was not only absent that evening, it seemed nowhere to be found. In TV terms, in selling-stuff terms, there ain’t that much to be said any more for, and therefore to, the rock generation. So we and our music are also, for the most part, nowhere to be heard: not only feeble but gone.

      Look, I spent a lot of time recently with a Kendrick Lamar album, To Pimp a Butterfly— listening to, analyzing, writing about and, yes, very much respecting its art, energy, militancy and wit. Lamar’s very large success is very well deserved.

       But you’ll forgive me if point number 3 above is the more significant one for me. For rock ‘n’ roll has been—ever since that Ed Sullivan Show in 1964—the dominant art form in my life. And I think that half-time show was a milestone or maybe a tombstone in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. For on that stage, with the whole country watching, there was no such thing as rock ‘n’ roll.

      Maybe I’m early to this realization. Or maybe I’m late. But last Sunday I realized that the music that has been, since an Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964, the closest thing I have to a culture seems finally and conclusively to have run out of steam.

      Blue jeans are still going strong. Bellbottoms have even had a moment. Political protest may be more necessary than ever before in this country. But rock ‘n’ roll has not only lost its centrality but its significance.          

      This art form—which became a world-wide art form—had a long run by modernity’s standards. (RIP: pop art, existentialism, reggae, fondue, etc.)

      My dad did not really have the pleasure of passing on his music to me. His music was standards, show tunes, even some Jacques Brel (from the Broadway show). But—thank you rock ‘n’ roll!—I have had that pleasure. My kids and I have, in various combinations, attended many concerts together—not all featuring Bruce Springsteen. Rock ‘n’ roll was powerful enough, versatile enough to become the music of two generations.

      But it is surrendering its place as the world’s most important music. There won’t be a third rock generation.

      Yes, I know that people have been talking about the death of rock ‘n’ roll pretty much since the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, since even before Don McLean sang about it in 1971. And he was suggesting that “the music died” one day in 1956.

      Indeed, people have been predicting that hip hop would or was eating rock ‘n’ roll’s lunch since hip hop was born.  Here’s Run-D.M.C. in 1984: “Our DJ’s better than all these bands.”  To which they added an emphatic, “Huh.” 

       I’m undoubtedly too old to keep up with all the great, new, young rock bands, if there really are a bunch of great, new, young rock bands.

       Certainly, some of the artists we knew in the 20th century continued making interesting music in the 21st: Leonard Cohen, Beck, Lucinda Williams and Bruce Springsteen among them. And a bunch of interesting new musicians appeared in this century: Amy Winehouse (all too briefly), Beyoncé (though she flirts with rap), Adele, Jason Isbell, D’Angelo, Norah Jones, Radiohead, Billie Eilish and, yes, Taylor Swift, among them.

      Perhaps you have your own list, but my sense is yours—like mine—won’t have grown much lately.

     And I’m not suggesting “all these bands” are just gonna disappear. Certainly, Taylor Swift has legs. I’m sure there will be the occasional catchy new song and more new Pearl Jam or Coldplay albums for someone, maybe even the occasional young person, to buy. You want your “rock ‘n’ roll” music, old or new, you should be able to find it—just as you can still find print copies of the New York Times.

      Huh.