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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 3 of 3)
THERE IS A COMMON IDEOLOGICAL UNDERCURRENT running through all these books, a kind of necessary corollary to the generic RM narrative that I outlined earlier: Rock, Hagar et al. would like us to believe, is a tough game, a Chinese meritocracy that admits only the most adept mandarins into the upper echelons of its scholar-gentry. In the words of AC/DC’s Angus Young (himself conspicuously absent from the list of RM authors), “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.” Except as a kind of auto-justification for rock excess (lurid accounts of which are both the chief matter and doubtless the main selling point of these books), this is very hard to take seriously. For one thing, when one takes a long view of the matter, it becomes difficult to judge rock talent in any meaningful way. Between the 4/4 tempo and snare-driven beat (not rhythm) fleshed out by simple instrumentation and throwaway lyrics (“Yeah, she’s straight / Just won’t wait”) of the “first” rock song, “Rocket 88,” and the abrupt time signature shifts, Mellotron noodling, and pseudo-mysticism (“Nothing is real”) of the “best” rock song, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” there is far less musical progress on display than between two successive symphonies by a minor 19th-century composer. To say that rock itself, considered in light of the Western classical tradition, is a fundamentally unsophisticated musical form is like saying that Boucher’s portrait of Marie-Louise O’Murphy is slightly better than a stick figure drawing of a naked woman. A course in rock theory will (one hopes anyway) never be offered at Juilliard, not because conservatories are bastions of cultural atavism but because it would be over after a week of lectures.
Of course, the RM authors (many of whom rarely discuss music with much depth in their autobiographies) know all of this, at least at some level. The Angus Young thesis is contradicted by their own testimony, which they have given without realizing that, by admitting they owe their success mainly to chance, expert marketing, or the black arts rather than to their own talent or industry, they are pulling the magic carpet out from under their own autobiographical enterprise. After all, if it’s not so much a long way to the top as it is an instantaneous rise attributable to either the whims of record company executives or the passing fancies of a credulous rock-consuming public, what boots it?
Here is the great joke of the RMs, and, in an extended sense, the great joke of rock itself: A bunch of people who got rich paying lip service to a set of disingenuous values are now getting even richer writing about how they were indeed mostly just paying lip service to those values, all the while earning adulatory reviews from our increasingly obsequious Baby Boomer media. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” indeed! As if rock’s total victory over our airwaves, turntables, car stereos, ethernet cables, and iPods were not enough, it has now successfully insinuated itself into deckle-edged pages as well.
I’m not trying to be a snob. An honest list of the records sitting on my shelf right now would include dozens of rock albums, including more than a handful of items by some of the idols whose memoirs I’ve just panned. But I put on albums like Some Girls on what I think are suitable occasions: while playing poker or peeling garlic cloves or polishing glasses. When I sit down to listen—really listen, while doing nothing apart from maybe smoking or drinking a cup of coffee—it’s Purcell or Stravinsky I want to hear. To attempt to pound out a book review or execute a lane change while listening to Dido and Aeneas is ridiculous the same way that putting a Matisse in one’s bathroom is ridiculous. One brings John Le Carré rather than Jane Austen to the airport. So by all means listen to rock music: with your X1’s Bose system, with your smartphone and earbuds on your walk or jog to work, feel free to let the Led out, roll with the Stones, or get all the Kinks out of your system. The rest doesn’t have to be silence. But please don’t take any of it seriously, and, whatever you do, for heaven’s sake, don’t buy any of these books—expect maybe Keith Richards’.
About the Author
Matthew Walther is the assistant editor of The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (26) | Leave a comment
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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,
http://tw.gs/YbVcey
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.