Forget Michael Buffer and the ridiculous boxing analogy, the screaming meemies and the endless Coke ads (with Simon even drinking from a logo-emblazoned red cup!), what struck me about the "American Idol" final duel was these two cats didn’t write the songs.

David Cook did an almost credible version of "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For", but it had none of the urgency of U2’s original on "The Joshua Tree". "Where The Streets Have No Name" opens the album like the sun emerging over the horizon, but in the now broad daylight "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For" follows it with a loping gait that pulls you up on the pony and takes you for a glorious ride. Do we credit Edge or Eno for the guitar sound, I’m not sure…but one thing’s for sure, Bono’s got a voice nowhere close to either of the Davids’ in purity. But you have no doubt that he wrote the lyrics, that he believes every word, it’s like your best friend showing up at your front door and pouring his heart out.

This is why music exploded, why the revolution occurred. It was the Beatle originals that enraptured us. We wanted to know what the artists had to say! They seemed unfettered, following their own muse. If there was a svengali behind the scenes orchestrating their efforts, he certainly wasn’t perceptible. Our rock heroes were renegade gods, like Radiohead.

How come everything the music industry says you must do, Radiohead does not, and they’re the biggest, most credible band in the land?

You’ve got to get a sponsor, touring’s too expensive. You’ve got to whore out your music to TV shows and commercials, they’re the new radio, they’re the only way to reach the target audience. You hear this blather from towers in Century City, but this band from the U.K. doesn’t do it this way. Radiohead is not trying to reach every last fan, the band is only interested in the core, and only if it plays on their terms. Radiohead does not pander. One Radiohead album is not a blueprint for the next one… This is not Mariah Carey reproducing the formula, this is artists exploring, and you want to go along for the ride! And live, you probably can’t… Because the band underplays and you can’t get a ticket. Does it sound like the seventies to you? Does to me… So why does everybody say to do it the other way? Isn’t it about artistry, not selling out, playing on your own terms, isn’t that what being a rock star is all about?

Not singing a thirty year old composition by two guys who knew each other but composed their songs in different rooms.

David Archuleta sang Elton John’s "Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me". A great tune, but not Elton’s absolute best. You could hook David Archuleta up with Diane Warren until the end of time and they’ve never come up with "Your Song". For all his blathering, Clive Davis has never come up with one track as good as "Your Song". And "Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me" was on the eighth hit album after Elton’s American debut, and it wasn’t even the best track on "Caribou". That was "The Bitch Is Back". Those Elton albums still sell, and "Idol" winners from just a couple years back have been forgotten.

Maybe we have to blame MTV. Then Mariah, the rappers and "Idol". People watch this crap and they imitate it. But now, with the Internet, music’s past has come alive. The biggest bands today? Not the Top Forty wonders, but Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and AC/DC. The little kids don’t only understand, they know!

To see a marginalized Clive Davis on this blowhard extravaganza is to make anyone who remembers the heyday puke. He recently said to concentrate on your vocals, that he will supply the songs. I’ll buy that when he writes a hit single himself, which hasn’t happened yet. An executive can get song doctors to construct something salable, but he can’t tap into the zeitgeist and create something wholly new, that stops someone in his tracks and makes him a believer.

That’s what U2 did with its very first cut, "I Will Follow", from "Boy". It’s not about the song so much as the immediacy! There’s more to great music than a pretty voice. We learned this long ago.

Looks to me like David Archuleta is going to win. Not only did Simon Cowell say he was the best last night, he was right. But what happened was a made for television event, all about drama, with those in attendance playing the role of audience. At a real rock show, you’ve got to earn your applause. It’s not sustained by flashing lights and the exhortations of fluffers during commercial breaks. Even if there’s raw anticipation, the show goes on, you’ve got to deliver for ninety minutes.

That’s tough. You need enough material and you must be able to play live.

Don’t mistake "American Idol" for the music business. It’s television, it’s drama. The real music business begins in bedrooms. Managers are met in clubs. Careers are built gig by gig, not by instantaneous television recognition, but fan by fan, experience by experience. The sun has gone down on the vapid, rancid music industry of the nineties and early twenty first century. We still might not have found what we’re looking for, but it’s in the future, not the past.