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Feature
Rock and Roll Is (Mostly) Noise Pollution
And now book publishing is choking on it, as rock enters its “memoir” phase.
(Page 2 of 3)
As befits the first composer of a “rock opera,” Townshend for the most part takes himself and his work very seriously. There are exceptions to this, of course: His wry anecdotes of The Who’s early touring show us that he also knows how comic timing works in print. My favorite, too long to recount in full here, involved a cake, a hotel swimming pool, a Lincoln Continental, and a lamp (don’t ask; it was Keith Moon’s birthday), and ended with The Who being permanently banned from Holiday Inn hotels.
The last of the RM authors to go it alone, Roderick David Stewart, CBE, seemed to me at times refreshingly staid in comparison with both Young (flighty) and Townshend (angst-ridden)—indeed occasionally almost dapper in an oleaginous sort of way. Also surprising was the news that the former Faces frontman and composer of “Da Ya Think I’m a Sexy?” was once a devoted reader of the Daily Worker (later the Morning Star), that former flagship of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain. On the whole, Rod: The Autobiography was far less sleazy than one might have expected: I underlined the word “sweat” (after seeing it on the first page) a mere six times, two fewer times than I found Rod writing about “breasts.” Admirable restraint on both counts.
THERE IS PROBABLY ONLY ONE ITEM OF INTEREST to be found in Steven Tyler’s Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, a book otherwise full of infantile puns (“cum to find out”; “Ladies and Genitals”) and poorly deployed Tom Wolfe-style CAPS! Aerosmith was visiting the White House to play a private show for the president the day Slick Willie was impeached. After reading this, I had an RM epiphany. In 1998 Toni Morrison declared Bill Clinton “the first black president.” I’ve never been sure what she meant by this, and anyway she seems to have retracted her earlier statement during the 2008 election. So whether or not he is the first black president I can’t say. But I’ve come to think that Clinton, a loose fish who has grown rich blowing bubbles at his eager co-generationalists, may be the first—and so far the only: Bush is too earnest, Obama too staid and fussy—rock president.
That makes Clinton’s memoir, My Life—co-authored, simultaneously pseudo-confessional and evasive, overlong, superlatively reviewed and widely purchased but (one suspects) probably little if ever actually read—in some sense the archetypal, even if not the first, RM. Publishers should recognize this and follow Knopf’s lead by releasing deluxe, autographed, numbered, slipcased versions of future RMs; copies of the limited edition of My Life, with gold ribbons and fine purple cloth, still manage to fetch $700 on Amazon.
One more thing about Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?. Having seen Tyler’s title question repeated across the top of nearly 200 right-hand pages, I feel entitled to answer:
Dear Steven:
Yes, the noise in your head does bother me—almost as much as the words on the pages of your awfully written, self-aggrandizing, self-exculpatory, self-indulgent, graceless, tasteless, morally callow (one could go on) memoir.
Best,
MW
PS: Rock and roll is noise pollution.
THE BEST OF THE RM LOT turned out to be Keith Richards’ Life (co-written with James Fox, a correspondent for the London Times), incidentally the most highly praised and widely purchased of them all. One certainly sees why the book was received with such enthusiasm in the London Spectator: The prose is very good in a rakish, Jeffrey Bernard sort of fashion, and Life is full of memorable phrases in Richards’ peerless, Jacobean cutpurse cum P.G. Wodehouse’s Ukridge register: “The Bible Belt was a lot tighter in those days”; “There were a lot of Pre-Raphaelites running around in velvet with scarves tied to their knees, like the Ormsby-Gores, looking for the Holy Grail, the Lost Court of King Arthur, UFOs and ley lines”; “I’ve been through more cold turkeys than there are freezers.” His great rolling lists of illegal drugs purchased and consumed remind me of the glorious catalogues of nouns in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
About
Richards there isn’t much I can add to what has been written in the
scores of positive reviews that have appeared elsewhere. For once I
agree with my fellow correspondents: Life was a thoroughly
enjoyable read. Its author (or subject: What does one call a person
who tells his life story to someone else who writes it down for
him?) is a mystery to me. Richards’ antinomianism is not of a
fundamentally different order from that of, say, Criss or Tyler;
but somehow his across-the-tracks anti-glamour managed to win me
over.
If Richards comes in at the top of his class in the School of Rock, then down at the bottom of the list, far and away the worst of the RM authors, is Hagar. In fact, if one agrees with St. Augustine that evil is really just a privatio boni or privation of the good, and comes up with a list of what, book-wise, constitutes “the good,” then there is, I think, a pretty decent case to be made that Red is an evil book. Badly written, badly edited (more on this later), it is an account of a life badly lived. It even has a bad cover: Out from under a cheap-looking red-and-white all-caps stencil font, doubtless meant to scream the title and subtitle at passersby, looks “Red” himself, his hair dyed “rock” blond, enormous “rock” sunglasses sitting just above his mental patient’s grin, wearing a solid black “rock” T-shirt, faded “rock” jeans, and a “rock” (read: peace sign) necklace.
Throughout Red, Hagar manages to elevate raunch and affront to the level of Platonic ideals. Of a disabled friend: “he was really f—-ed up looking from spending life in a wheelchair.” Of the same friend’s mother: “She would wipe his a— for him and everything.” Of former band mates: “They f—-ing arrested the f—- out of Larry and Dave.” Of himself: “I was probably the best guy in the world for about two years.” Ditto: “I’m a sexual person.” Of a studio secretary: “She came around from behind her desk, undid my pants, and started blowing me, right there in the lobby, about two in the morning. She wanted to take me in the Jacuzzi, but I didn’t go for that. I wasn’t that promiscuous then, but when a chick unzips your pants and starts going down on you, it’s really hard to say no.” Of chivalry: “When I found out Betsy was pregnant, I kind of decided to end my affair, or at least started slowing down.” Also, I doubt he impresses any of his readers when he admits to collecting unemployment after buying a $5,000 Porsche with a $5,100 royalty check—this appearing in his book not long after he has described writing a song meant as “a little political commentary on consumer society.”
Hagar also struggles to keep his facts and opinions straight. About this someone—his co-author, his editor, an intern at HarperCollins—should have done something, because the results make for a very embarrassing 252 pages. Compare: “Everybody in the family hated my dad”; “I loved my dad, but he was crazy.” “He never beat us kids, but he would thump my mom around”; “Because my dad hit so hard, I learned how not to get hit”; “My dad never laid a hand on one of his kids, ever, except one time with my brother.” “Me? I never worked another day in my life”; “I worked all that summer.” He was an avid fan of the Rolling Stones well before their first American Top 20 hit, has a Twiggy lookalike girlfriend prior to Twiggy’s American debut, and even covers The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in 1969, two years before Pete Townshend wrote the song.
About the Author
Matthew Walther is the assistant editor of The American Spectator.
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Appleby| 3.22.13 @ 6:54AM
The fact of the matter is, as my Dad would have said, that almost nobody can write a coherent paragraph these days, far less an entire chapter; and further, it's blindingly obvious that most people can't remember what happened to them on Tuesday, far less what happened to them 45 years ago. As for the prevalence of "f--k" in these memoirs, the ordinary everyday best seller isn't much better. I routinely black out this word and it's best friend "s--t", and almost all the books recommended by staff of the bookstore are sprinkled with black spots on every page. This is why I mainly read classic children's literature, including a wonderful series someone in Texas has just gathered up for me, written by a woman who must have been nanny to the Addams Family. Don't read rubbish. Read good books. And the way you can tell a good book is that it doesn't have those two words on the first page of the first chapter.
Derek Leaberry| 3.22.13 @ 11:58AM
This book review is written about as poorly as the books that the author pans. It was as lucid as a swamp.
evie826| 3.22.13 @ 2:37PM
It’s by-far the best job Ive had.. Make money with Google. On thursday I got a brand new Chevrolet Corvette since I been earning $5269 this-past/4 weeks and-even more than, $10,000 this past month. I work through this link,
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Albert Constantine Jr.| 3.22.13 @ 8:25AM
I have come to conclude that a one to two hour VH1 "Behind the Music" program was the best venue for a rock memoir; print is not the best medium for those who captured our audio imaginations, or inspire visual or sensual rock star fantasies.
Meanwhile, it appears Mr. Walther may have succumbed to the temptation of those who get paid by the word to make this article a page and a half longer than it needed to be. I suppose that is a hazard one expects to encounter when writing about a topic about which one feels need not be written (or written perhaps more coherently, and less verbosely).
Bob Grant| 3.22.13 @ 9:59AM
Perhaps it could have been shortened a bit, Al, but we must give credit where credit is due. One sentence at middle/end gave me the second wind to finish the article:
" In fact, if one agrees with St. Augustine that evil is really just a privatio boni or privation of the good, and comes up with a list of what, book-wise, constitutes “the good,” then there is, I think, a pretty decent case to be made that Red is an evil book."
Heh, heh.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 3.22.13 @ 10:37AM
It is a clever line, but sometimes the chaff blocks out the wheat.
Said another way, the reason that All You Can Eat crab buffets manage to make money is that it takes a lot of effort to get to the tastiest meat (or is it that they make it back in beer sales?).
Bob Grant| 3.22.13 @ 11:50AM
Eh, those buffets get my money at the bread lines and by eating too many pickled okra :-)....
Admittedly, I had to muscle through most of the article but overall found it mildly interesting. I wouldn't qualify it as a wasteland where TLP squats to get 400+ easy comments on weekends.
Bob K| 3.23.13 @ 12:43AM
Whatever Joyce said in "Finnegan's Wake" he said it better than this.
JimH| 3.22.13 @ 8:49AM
Rock and Roll, along with pretty much everything else is subject to Ted Sturgeon’s law: 90% of everything is crap.
Egil| 3.22.13 @ 9:08AM
I read Keith Richards' book all the way through, and I was impressed only by how "Keef," who has been given huge amounts of adulation, fame and money, presents himself as a poor victim of "The Man." He continually made very bad choices, but continually blamed others for the trouble in which he found himself.
Richards has the public image of a lovable rogue, but his book, admittedly entertaining as Mr. Walther says, shows how shallow he is in his awareness of self and others. Not uncommon qualities among our celebrities I guess.
Paul McGrath| 3.22.13 @ 8:48PM
Yeah, well, he may have made bad choices Mr. Egil, but he also pointed out how often they hounded him. Police, for example, waiting around his house at night for him to come home, hoping they could get him for something. This happened to Richards all the time.
You must remember what it was like in those days. Youth, we, were hated. I can understand why Richards, as a very public symbol of youth, was pissed.
Bob Grant| 3.23.13 @ 7:15AM
Egil,
Please tell me you read the book on loan from the library and didn't fork over 30 bucks to discover Keith Richards continually made bad choices...and had a drug problem.
astorian| 3.22.13 @ 9:15AM
Matthew- one thing you should have learned by now is that words and titles that are alleged to be acronyms almost NEVER are.
Golf does NOT stand for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden."
The obscene "F" word does NOT stand for "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge."
Cop does NOT stand for "Constable on Patrol."
Tip does not stand for "To Insure Promptness."
And KISS did not stand for "Knights in Satan's Service." That was a silly legend promoted by dolts on the religious Right.
R Martin| 3.22.13 @ 9:15AM
A question for readers: which is more polluting –RMs (good initials, btw) or an operose essay about them?
Albert Constantine Jr.| 3.22.13 @ 10:39AM
A pithy and concise way that expands upon one of my theses-again, less is more.
Petronius| 3.22.13 @ 10:52AM
Maundering rockers have no place in My Library, but there is something to be said about them "getting religion." Best Case in point is John McGlaughlan and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The first offering on Columbia is Inner Mounting Flame. There's not a bad cut on it. After that the music got turned to mush. The energy and musicianship went down the drain in endless minimalist riffs rediscovered and retreaded at Windham Hill which is more like a rut. You want to read testimonials, wait until Hamiltons has them for $5. The good tracks are to be heard on Pandora. Go for it.
aware| 3.22.13 @ 10:58AM
What would happen if Rock and Roll did go to Juilliard? Here is the result(Rudess accepted at 9, graduated at 14):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPKrOMifeq4
Spent my teens and 20s in the business in the 70s and 80s. Rockers are mostly uninteresting and shallow people who have very little of importance to say. Best they shut up and sing.
axbucxdu| 3.22.13 @ 7:14PM
And if you attend the Royal College of Music, you too can become Rick Wakeman.
JP| 3.22.13 @ 11:05AM
There are few RM (esp from the late 60s through the 1970s) who tell everything. This reminds me of reading the memiors of those German vets from WWII fame who survived fighting against the Soviets. They will mention the blood and guts. But none ever recall murdering Russians POWs, civilians, or burning down any villages. Likewise, I seriously doubt David Bowie or Jimmy Page recalling their times with then 13 year old LA groupie - Lori Maddox. Some things are better left unwritten.
Bob Grant| 3.22.13 @ 11:13AM
My letdown, similiar to learning about Santa Claus, was listening to Paul McCartney explain the process of writing the lyrics to many of those classic Beatles hits while in his teens. Previously, as a teenager, I just assumed those lyrics were a result of deep thinking and insight and a little help from above, but it turns out they were the result of pseudo-clever experimentation with words and just plain dumb luck; nothing mystical about the process at all.
A major bummer for a serious teenage rock/music afficionado.
Peter Lyden| 3.22.13 @ 11:52AM
You were too kind to Neil Young. "Waging Heavy Peace" reads like it was written by someone who spent the last fifty years smoking dope daily (which it was).
Casey Abell| 3.23.13 @ 9:24PM
Have to agree that this review could have been cut by half, or maybe two-thirds, or maybe three-fourths.
The kid probably figured he was preaching to the choir on a conservative web site about the self-indulgent evils of rockdom. So he just went on...and couldn't stop going on.
As some of the commenters note, a few good sentences turn up here and there. And, as another commenter notes, 90% of everything is crap. Which this review demonstrates, at length and in detail.
Oh gee, now I'm saying the kid should have cut the review by nine-tenths. Well, he should have.
acrossthedam| 3.24.13 @ 4:30PM
Casey Abell,
Loved reading your comment above, especially the fumbling of numbers which has always plagued our sex. And you’re so pithy and edgy. Amazing that you could be so cutting to “young” Mr. Walther. (Don’t worry, when I want men to agree with me, I just repeat what they’ve said too.)
I do think it’s too bad that you lack the attention span or cultural knowledge to enjoy the piece. My guess is that the density of information was a bit much for you. If Mr. Walther cut his piece 90%, that would leave 50 words per book reviewed. Well, tweets are probably more your thing.
Keep up the good work!
Bumr50| 3.24.13 @ 10:36AM
Nick Mason's book is a good read.
Casey Abell| 3.24.13 @ 7:46PM
"If Mr. Walther cut his piece 90%, that would leave 50 words per book reviewed."
Which probably would have been more than enough.
Ronald54321| 3.25.13 @ 8:22AM
The West has been a red light district for many years. The public mind is a urinal full of sleaze.