Re: Mastering and slavery

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

>>feel he was losing his relevance, and then he seemed to resign
>himself to being irrelevant and went back to producing good material.

>Now this is interesting.  Do you think this was a case of his ego getting 
>the better of him?

Sure.  Nobody considers the problems of being Dylan.  Gotta be twice as bad 
as being Townshend.


>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.

It happens all the time.  People rise up the hierarchy of status (in any 
field), and then somehow they're at the point where they lose face if they 
admit they've got failings.  It's the end of learning and producing.  
They're rebels, they're ambitious, they fight for what they want--until they 
achieve status, and then they turn conservative, because they have to 
protect what they have.


>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.

I don't think it's completely personal.  After all, he does go ahead with 
the solo albums.  What's he's been scared of is betraying The Who.  Likely 
they were all concerned about it before the Who2K tour, but look how that 
worked out.


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

There's a certain amount of honor for elder gods.  Nobody wants to squander 
that with childish efforts to be relevant to kids, but it's a hard line to 
walk.  Do nothing and rest on your rock god status, or write a new album and 
prove you have no relevence at all.  Hmmm.

But then there's always strategy in the mix.  I think The Who have built up 
a very nice following in the last couple of years that they've been talking 
about a new album.  It might fly very well--at least as well as any of the 
others in the bin.  Any Who knows?  It might get a little push from being 
new.

All Pete has to do is suit himself and The Who will handle the rest for him.


keets

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