Personally, I don't think its a "Rock has disappeared" thing anyway --- What it really is happens to be the shuffling of instrumentation:
Think about it: The keyboard player was a mainstay in many Mainstream Rock bands since the 60s, eventually evolving into the "Synthesist" by the 70s that continued into the 80s....then, about 1993, the synthesizer player disappeared in Mainstream Rock Music..Count how many Mainstream Radio Popular Rock Bands that debuted during the 90s (post '93) that had dedicated permanent keyboard/synthesizer players in which their contribution effected the band's overall sound and performance? I can only think of one as of this writing: Marilyn Manson, but they were different than most of the other Mainstream Rock acts of their time in the fact that they were also infusing techno, industrial, and goth into what they do and most of their mainstream peers didn't.
This continued all the way into the mid 2000s, then bands like Maroon 5, Click 5, OK Go (they didnt have a keyboard player but synths were in their music), The Killers, etc started appearing and synths were coming back, not to mention all of the other technology that had been developed along the way...However, the guitar - as the ever-present driving force in Rock that it had been for previous decades, started taking a back seat and we are currently still in the middle of this lull......
As far as what is mainstream and influencing the masses of players as well as listeners, I think this thread has less to do with "What happened to Rock?" than "What happened to guitar-driven music?"
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