ROCK ‘N1 ROLL: Decline & Fall?

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

“I’d be a fool,” said Corporal Elvis Presley last week, “not to pay some attention to it.” The “it” he referred to was the word, which had filtered through to West Germany, that rock ‘n’ roll is suffering a disastrous decline.

Newly sobered by the payola scandal (see below), the nation’s top jocks were acknowledging what everybody has suspected for some time—that their teen-age audience has begun to walk out on them. The popularity of rock ‘n’ roll began to slack off about a year ago, and stations that once blared Splish Splash, Dream Lover, Hey, Little Girl and High School Sweater have started turning to less frenzied numbers such as Delia Reese’s Don’t You Know and Johnny Mathis’ Misty, plus the effusions of such reformed rockers as Paul Anka, Bobby Darin, Brook Benton. Back into pop records went the sound of shimmering strings, down went the beat. Of the top ten pop hits last week, only three were out-and-out rock ‘n’ roll. In Manhattan, Sam Goody’s famed record shops reported a 40% drop in rock ‘n’ roll sales compared to a year ago.

What happened to the kids? “It seems,” says a Chicago jock, “like they just got tired.”