Last May, I touched down at Heathrow Airport in downtown London. Walking up to customs, cranking my jaw as I tried to pop my ears, my lion-hearted music professor waltzed over to me with a stretching grin. He’s a modest-sized man, standing five foot four at the age of sixty-seven. He had his phone out, waving it around in excitement as he told me that he had just met a young drummer from the opening group backing Jack White on his Lazaretto tour. This happenstance is particularly lucky for both my professor and me, as we were traveling to England to study the history and music of the 1960s British Invasion. Chit-chatting with the drummer, it came up that the young drummer’s front man, Benjamin Booker, was influenced indelibly by these 1960s musicians and their predecessors. My professor told us this as he clicked through his smart phone, pulling up a song titled, “Violent Shiver” by Booker. The song unraveled with a speedy guitar intro, peeling through the tired airport air around us.

“Ya hear that?” My professor said, “Sounds like an ode to our boy Chuck Berry! I tell ya, this Booker fella sounds wild.” This was early May of 2014, three months before Booker released his self-titled debut album. The opening track of the album had my professor, the secretary of the senate at the Ohio State University, bending his knees and rocking his head with pursed lips. As I watched this event (recalling that my professor had attended Woodstock back in 1969), I got to thinking about how rhythm and melody don’t discriminate against age or race or gender. The tune still finds us. Reaches into our bones—shakes that primordial marrow of our being.

It would seem a fair trade that this man in his 60s believes in forthcoming rockers like Benjamin Booker, since Booker feels nostalgia for a time when popular music was more than just popular. In the opening line of “Spoon Out My Eyeballs,” he whispers, “I would listen to the radio if I liked songs produced by forty year olds in high-tech studios.” The level and tone of Booker’s voice dissolve any hate in the words, but still give birth to a bitterness that is felt by other rock n rollers of today, to whom Booker has been compared.

Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) and Jack White seem to be the names that are dropped most often. Others include Alabama Shakes, Kings of Leon, Led Zeppelin, and even Jack Johnson (I’m dropping this one right now). It’s never a bad sign when an emerging artist is compared (whether successfully or unsuccessfully) to its generic predecessors. In this case, it seems music critics and journalists alike have an idea of who Booker sounds like, but aren’t quite able to nail it down. This is exactly what the world needs – an indefinable quality in a new artist. Something that can’t be easily scraped from the coat tails of past musicians.

Maybe it’s the fact that Booker is only twenty-five and already sounds like a chain-smoking, fifty year old blues guy, choking on a lifetime of hard lessons and brittle morality. Or maybe it’s the paradoxical relationship between Booker’s loose, distorted guitar-playing and Max Norton’s mathematically rhythmic drumming. Whatever the key component may be, Booker has got us thinking. About parent-child relationships and the pain a mother feels when she begs, “Have you seen my son?” About where exactly this novel fury of rock n roll is coming from, if not from classic influences. And finally, about what this means for other artists, old and new, who are listening to Booker and sharing in the throbbing emotion of his debut album.

There are few music-lovers who would refute the opinion that the 1960s was the most abundantly creative and innovative period in rock history. There were many ingredients that went into concocting this tasty recipe of rock n roll, including but not limited to the British Invasion (the Beatles are coming!), anti-war protests (Viet-fuckin-nam), and the Civil Rights Movement (we shall be released). One other key component that is often discussed, but sometimes overlooked as a crucial creative conductor, is the wildly collaborative careers of some of our most respected rockers. In a time of free love within the realm of sex, it seems rock band members were acting just as promiscuously, if not more so, in their creative work.

Here’s a little glimpse of the incestuous nature of these free-wheelin’ musicians. In 1962, the Beatles released their first album, “Please Please Me.” One year later, not too far from Liverpool, a group known as the Yarbirds was formed. During the band’s five year career, it would nurture and give birth to three of rock n roll’s greatest guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck. In 1967 (nearing the end of the Yardbirds), the Jeff Beck Group was formed, consisting of Beck, Rod Stewart (future Faces lead singer), Aynsley Dunbar (future Journey drummer), and Ron Wood (future Faces guitarist, and eventually Rolling Stones guitarist). Then, in 1968 (the same year that Clapton sat in on Beatles White Album sessions, playing the guitar solo for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”), Page pulled together a group of musicians that would become one of the most influential rock bands of all time – Led Zeppelin. This same year, a young man named Steve Marriott (singer and lead guitarist for Small Faces – soon to become just Faces) quit his band, making him Page’s number one pick for Led Zeppelin’s lead singer (and would later be considered to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones, if only he hadn’t outdone Mick Jagger during the audition). Page feared living in Marriott’s shadow as a guitarist, so decided on Robert Plant instead (who happened to be a huge Steve Marriott and Small Faces fan).

(Deep breath, almost there)

Steve Marriott formed Humble Pie with guitarist Peter Frampton in 1969, the same year that Faces was formed by Rod Stewart and other former Small Faces members. Led Zeppelin was now solidified as a foursome (Page, Plant, Bonham, Jones) and released their debut album in the same year. Also in 1969 came the death of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, which prompted the group to invite Jeff Beck in as a replacement. Beck politely declined. Also in 1969, Clapton formed his next group Blind Faith, as well played several big live shows with the likes of John Lennon and George Harrison. Oh yeah, and Woodstock also happened in the summer of 1969.

So I promise there’s a reason for analyzing this winding path of musicians that began back in England in the early 1960s. The greatest rock names of all time (Stones, Beatles, Zeppelin, Clapton, Beck) were all in bed with one another at some point. Whether it was for a single LP recording, or an eight-year long career that ended in tears, or a career that is still going on today, these musicians fueled each other. Bands like the Yardbirds and Small Faces aren’t necessarily remembered for their respective musical works, but rather for the opportunities and artistic direction to which the groups gave rise.

These widespread collaborations of the 1960s rock scene seem to sometimes get lost amid all the references to drugs, sex, and anything else related to the famous social movement of that era. These collaborations, though, contributed much more to the creative process and variety than the common music-lover today knows about. There do seem to be some promising names around today (Wilco and Billy Bragg, Jack White, Dave Grohl, to name a few) that are keeping the flame alive. These artists openly share their love of these 1960s groups, whether its Wilco covering “Dead Flowers” by the Stones, or its Grohl jamming out with Paul McCartney during their performance of “The End” at the 2012 Grammys. Then there are bands like the Black Keys (covered “She Said She Said” on their album The Big Come Up) and Alabama Shakes (live cover of Zeppelin’s “How Many More Times”) that are relatively new in the rock world (or at least still blossoming) in the rock world today.

If these modern artists did more than just appreciate and imitate the great innovators of the 1960s, perhaps they’d come one step closer to salvaging the drowning animal that is rock n roll. One way they can do this is by taking breaks from their original music groups, diving into new collaborations, and generating a whole new era of rock-babies born out of band-lock. So, rockers of today and tomorrow, I challenge you all: pull your pants down, pick up that shiny instrument, and get down and dirty with your creative contemporaries. It might just be the greatest thing you ever did.

It’s a stressful thing, making a big splash with your debut album and consequently swimming in the pools of public pressure to keep the magic comin’ with the followup album. While some groups rise to the occasion, pumping out creative, yet classic gold, some bands overstep their style and end up drowning in that sea of stress. A soulful southern rock group by the name of Alabama Shakes is currently on the rise. They earned our attention with their bone-crushing debut album Boys & Girls in 2012. Now the time has come for their next move. We’re waiting patiently, but anxiously, for the release of their new album Sound & Color in April, 2015.

Alabama Shakes released a new single “Don’t Wanna Fight” on February 10, 2015. The track seems to be a departure from that dusty, pickup truck guitar we fell in love with on Boys & Girls. Other than a few promising moments (one of which occurs 40 seconds into the song) of lead singer Brittany Howard peeling through the instrumentation with her raspy vocal pulls, the track falls a little flat. The persisting guitar riff (you can thank Surfer Blood) is just short of catchy, and not quite rock n roll either. How is a track like this supposed to compare to the band’s previous steady-tempo rockers like “Hold On” and “Hang Loose”? The answer? It won’t.

The Alabama rock group is facing a challenge that many of their rock/alternative contemporaries have also faced in the past few years. Young the Giant fronted the same obstacles after their hit, self-titled debut album in 2010. The band grew skittish with the thoughts of “doing more” with their followup album, thus leaving behind their posh-bluesy California guitar for a sound that compares more to the likes of their hippie older brother, Portugal. The Man. They squeezed a little too hard on the experimental stress-ball and produced a second album (Mind Over Matter, 2014) that’s missing the substantive, youthy feel of their first. Foster the People – ignore the minor genre-jump, they’re friends of Alabama Shakes – is another prime example, drowning in a swamp of pressure to take their “sound” to the next level with their second piece of work. What these bands are missing is something that is slowly killing off the rock n roll bands of today: if it ain’t broke, don’t fuckin’ fix it. These bands established such a definitive, groundbreaking sound on their first albums, shooting them to heights of attention and stardom that were certainly well-deserved. Here’s the issue though – they grew hungry too early on, dipping into experimental pools that shouldn’t be explored until their third or fourth album. Attaining and basking in that young and fresh rock sound is so crucial to a band’s success (not commercial, the real-kind) today.

One modern rock group that managed to handle this progression well is a southern rock group by the name of Kings of Leon. Releasing their debut album Youth and Young Manhood in 2003 gained them minor critical acclaim with guitar-monsters like “Molly’s Chambers” and “Red Morning Light.” The band recognized what made them good: catchy, yet brutal guitar riffs; sexy lyrics about sex; and of course, lead singer Caleb Followill’s whiskey-spattering chords. They took these qualities, shook em’ up, and lit them on fire for their sophomore album Aha Shake Heartbreak. Classics like “Taper Jean Girl” and “Slow Night, So Long” never would have happened had KOL not recognized their own roots of talent, and flourished from there. Granted, KOL did get a little experimental with their third album, but that’s another story.

If Alabama Shakes wants to stay relevant in the teetering rock n roll realm of the 2010s, they need to keep it raunchy with this second album. Not doing so could lose them a major chunk of their fan base (gaining them a fan base of listeners who also think Taylor Swift’s newest album is “artistic” – EW!), not to mention the respect of rock n roll nerds who still comb the earth for hints of that heart-rattling guitar that they pray still exists out there somewhere.