Re: Mastering and slavery

["Jeff House" <whocasa@hotmail.com>]

From: "L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>
"I notice a number of older musicians are talking about retirement--Tina 
Turner, Eric Clapton, and now Elton John--the relevance thing is getting to 
them."

I don't sure I buy this.
Tina's act was always about energy.  Energy is a problem at age 60.
Clapton has said he doesn't want to do full-blown world tours.  He just got 
married and became a father.
Elton tossed out jab at the recording industry from the stage that he later 
retracted.

"I was just reading an article about Dylan where the author said Dylan went 
through a period of "desperation" back in the eighties where he seemed to 
feel he was losing his relevance, and then he seemed to resign himself to 
being irrelevant and went back to producing good material.  The author felt 
that what made it good material was Dylan's dark take on things, BTW."

Now this is interesting.  Do you think this was a case of his ego getting 
the better of him?  Thinking that he should be relevant to society as a 
whole (or even the art world for that matter) is pretty egotistical even for 
someone who is relevant.

I think this may be underneath Pete's fear.  He's afraid of betraying his 
own perception of his previous greatness.  A pretty distasteful thought.

David Fricke wrote an article in RS about the new relevance of Lennon's 
'Imagine'.  Fricke has a great way with words, but can't help but overstate 
his case.  He compared Lennon to Job (of Old Testament fame).  I found the 
tone of it to be pretty distasteful.  'Imagine' is a great piece of art, but 
it is still *just* a piece of art.

Is it inevitable that a successful popstar (or any successful artist) gets 
an overblown sense of their own importance?  Doesn't relevance = importance?

Jeff