In 2013, rock writer Stephen Hyden penned this seven part series for Grantland.

“We’re not going to learn anything by examining for the umpteenth time how the Velvet Underground invented alternative music, or watching all of the approximately 214 documentaries on punk, or talking to Ian MacKaye about why Fugazi never sold T-shirts at shows. What we need instead is a Winners’ History of Rock and Roll that tells the stories behind some of the biggest bands of all time. If we can learn how and why those bands became popular, and what those stories tell us about a larger narrative taking place in American culture over more than 40 years, we can track the fissures and failures that eventually caused rock to slouch toward irrelevance — and determine whether it can (or should) wage a comeback.”

“My decision to begin the Winners’ History of Rock and Roll with Led Zeppelin is bound to be at least a little bit controversial. The Beatles have sold more albums, as has Elton John. It could be argued — wrongly, but not outrageously so — that the Stones or even the Grateful Dead have left larger footprints on culture, if those footprints are measured in cubic inches per Rolling Stone cover and/or blacklight poster. But Zeppelin truly is the right choice because it is the band that set the terms by which every other band afterward would come to classify victory in rock music.”

“If you’re interested in merely basking in the glow of a successful rock band that radiated untouchable perfection, then the Winners’ History of Rock and Roll begins and ends with Led Zeppelin. If you want to know how the sausage is made, we must discuss Kiss. The band’s associates dish freely about payments — in the form of drugs, concert tickets, microwave ovens, straight cash, anything of value — made to crooked FM radio program directors in exchange for airplay, as well as the ‘roided-up sales figures that were intended to make Kiss records appear more popular than they really were, which kept the records displayed prominently in stores and helped to sell more records.”

“Bon Jovi is the most enduring band to come out of the hair-metal wing of ’80s rock; with the exception of U2,2 it remains the most popular ’80s rock band of any kind. How did Bon Jovi survive when so many bands of its ilk didn’t? And what does this tell us about popular rock music in general?”

“Aerosmith was a drug-fueled rock band when drug-fueled rock bands were big business, it was a non-drug-fueled rock band when non-drug-fueled rock bands were big business, and now it’s barely a rock band when rock is barely in business at all. Aerosmith has stuck around because it’s not married to a fixed idea of what Aerosmith is supposed to be. It ended up like Henry Hill in Goodfellas — healthy and alive if not exactly vital, hidden in plain sight in a form of witness relocation. Aerosmith changed identities like they were fake mustaches, because survival is everything, even if it means living the rest of your life like a schnook.”

“Metallica never pretended to be a punk band; the members never retreated from fame to tour with Mike Watt or pal around with Ian Mackaye; they never tried to challenge the corporate institutions that made them millionaires; they never tried to pass themselves off as something they weren’t.”

“The end of rock radio is the thread that links the last two chapters of The Winners’ History of Rock and Roll — it is important for the tangible damage it inflicted on the current generation of rock acts, and for what it symbolizes about the marginalization of rock in the last decade. Changes in radio effectively removed mainstream rock from the pop-culture playing field. In 2011, Nielsen BDS reported that a no. 1 rock song reaches only 12 million people vs. 81 million for the average pop hit. If popular music is a 12-pack, rock is down to under one beer.”

“The last chapter of the Winners’ History of Rock and Roll is about the Black Keys, one of the only indie bands of the ’00s to break out of the underground rock ghetto and achieve mass stardom. The Black Keys succeeded, in part, because it worked around rock radio, licensing songs to more than 300 films, TV shows, and commercials. In a way, dealing to corporate America from its deep well of bluesy, atmospheric guitar riffs was better than radio airplay, since the audience was bigger and you could actually get paid big dollars up front.”