[no subject]

Smug rebel yells 

Julie Burchill
Saturday January 25, 2003
The Guardian 

I don't know if Pete Townshend is guilty - but I do
know that if he isn't found to be wicked, then he must
be quite silly. When people want to fight against
something disgusting, they don't generally feel they
have to experience it first-hand; the men who started
the anti-slavery crusade didn't say, "Oh, let me just
have a few slaves for a bit and whip and starve them
so I can see for myself how dreadful it is!" So it
might behove his defenders not to bang on about how
smart he is, because if he is smart, perhaps he
wouldn't have gone downloading.

But as with all people who eschew a perfectly good
religious tradition - in Townshend's case Judaism - in
order to go east, and not even to respectable,
interesting religions like Hinduism and Sikhism but
rather to follow a nu-guru, I'd say Townshend could
plead a track record of silliness in his defence.
However, the angle I'm interested in is seeing what
tack his supporters take; there's nothing I like more
than seeing a smug rebel clichi overturned, and
there's no soil more fertile for such upsets than that
in which the bloated beanstalk of rock'n'roll has its
roots. 

There's nothing to beat the alleged alternative when
it comes to being profoundly conservative; see the
message of the Eminem film, which literally is "If you
believe in yourself enough, you can achieve anything!"
This is the MGM musical Big Lie of the 1930s, a slap
in the face of the Depression, which when spoken by
politicians is ridiculed as red-in-tooth-and-claw
Thatcher/Reaganism. Yet somehow when spoken by someone
imitating Kevin the Teenager on a bad hood day, it's
transformed into a gem of radiant, empowering
socialism. Note, too, the hilarious hypocrisy of the
Eminem character reprimanding homophobic rappers in
order that young Master Mathers may stay in with the
Hollywood pink power posse, and hopefully make them
forget that he used to regularly advise his listeners
to "Rape dykes, kill fags". What a little toe-tapper! 

When rock'n'roll was born, in the 1950s, it was just
the latest gimmick in the sordid bazaar of showbiz;
the shrewd, small-time entrepreneurs who cashed in on
it, fairground bosses and the like, never dreamed that
it would prove to be anything more than a new twist on
vaudeville. No one was prepared for the way that this
new music became the repository for emotions and
desires on the part of the audience that would
previously have been directed, for good or ill, into
unionism, tribalism or party politics - least of all
the poor crooners who, confused and overwhelmed at
being elevated from showmen to shamans, lost the plot
big time. Presley, Berry, Lewis, Little Richard;
paranoia, perversion, paedophilia and the wrong sort
of God-bothering - it was there from the start. 

Regardless of the Townshend case, like all groups of
public figures, on the law of averages there are bound
to be serious rock stars who have also erred. But
whereas the Tories had no problem accepting that
Jeffrey Archer was a crook, or we ex-Glitterettes that
Gary was a raging nonce, people who take rock
seriously - people who have a supposed tradition of
questioning authority in all its forms - are still
naively shocked when there is the merest possibility
that one of their number may not be as pure as driven
snow. There must be a mistake! 

Yet what if this is the same mistake that revealed
Elvis a misogynistic anti-semite, John Lennon as a
filthy hypocrite who sang about imagining no
possessions while maintaining an uninhabited luxury
apartment just to keep his wife's collection of fur
coats at the right temperature!, David Bowie as a
meat-head prone to dressing up as a Nazi and Elvis
Costello having the lack of manners to call Ray
Charles "blind nigger"? I think we might risk a bit of
punning fun at the expense of people who are able to
excuse rock stars their sins while forever fussing
about the failings of politicians and the like, and
call them "Hip-ocrites". The problem is that rock/rap
isn't just music as it was for previous generations;
it's religion, politics, the royal family to its
believers. That's why they defend it so hysterically.
No one ever said Vera Lynn was God, but they certainly
said it about Eric "Enoch Was Right" Clapton, and
there seems to be a general agreement these days that
the one-testicled rapist Tupac Shakur died for our
collective sins, though I think I'd prefer to deal
with mine myself, ta very much. 

The NME can whine all it likes about the enervating
effect of manufactured pop, but it's actually been 40
years of dumb-ass youngsters "believing" in music when
they should have been involved in politics that has
brought about the social stagnation we are witnessing
today. And the self-immolating conceit that all that
was wicked was in "straight" society, while all that
was good was in alternative. They were "uptight". They
did bad things. Above all, they had bad sex; we, on
the other hand, had joyous, consensual, life-affirming
sex. Even if Eminem could threaten to rape female
journalists and have them simper like ninnies in
response, and even if John Peel only stopped banging
on about schoolgirls a few years ago! And now the
final bitter irony is that straight society has proved
itself actually more able to find the mote in its own
eye, to put its house in order, than hip society has.
How sad, and how funny! "To live outside the law, you
must be honest", my arse! 


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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