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Re: Mastering and slavery
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