BOOKS: Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars by David Hepworth

It’s obvious from David Hepworth’s book that he is a big 70’s guy. His other recently published book, which i haven’t read, is about 1971.  He is definitely the kind of person (I can just picture it) who would say “music isn’t what it was.”  That’s effectively what this book is.

Therefore, this book on the rise and fall of Rock Gods is at its most enthusiastic in its first half.  Rock Gods of the 80s onwards are treated with less interest.  Kurt Cobain’s suicide is dealt with intelligently but briefly, almost dismissively compared with the longest chapter which is on the rise of Bob Dylan who Hepworth considers the ultimate Rock God.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with that although it gives more than a clue to what Hepworth considers the golden age of rock music.

Really, the nature of the book, although interesting, has less depth than the title promises.  The introduction starts promisingly but the book itself is really just a chronologically ordered list of potted biographies of famous musicians based on a year in their lives.  The book very quickly moves away from analysis of what a rock god is or was and becomes more concerned with anecdotes and trivia - interesting trivia, but still.  Example: the chapter about Jim Morrison focuses a lot on the year he got done for getting his cock out onstage but doesn’t really explain why I should care, or how it contributes to the rise or the fall of the Rock God. Likewise the fact that Little Richard's 'Tutti Frutti' was originally about anal sex is funny but essentially pub quiz level information.

The ‘event in the year in the life of’ approach rarely works for me.  Without context such a narrative relies either on the reader already knowing the context or not caring about it.  The death of John Lennon works better than most; but this could well be because The Beatles have several chapters devoted in this book.  Elvis gets two, everyone else just gets one year, usually the year they made it or the year they died.  

Likewise the list approach is always highly subjective.  My main query is the inclusion of Ian Dury, who was great but a relatively minor player looking back. Considering there’s no chapter on Sid Vicious from the same period seems an odd choice, Vicious being the ultimate anti-Rock God.  The conclusion I draw from this is that Hepworth isn’t interested in 70s punk and so chose someone he liked to write about.  Nothing necessarily wrong with that, it is his book after all - but this points once more to this being more like a list of favourite artists than historically influential ones.  Another quirk is the end of chapter lists of important singles and albums from the year in question, which sometimes omit songs from the artist you’ve just been reading about.

The overarching narrative is that the concept of the Rock God relied a lot on their mystique and ability to seem different to their audience in a special way.  According to Hepworth this went out the window with the arrival of us living, in his words, in a hip-hop world, which he seems to class as the opposite of rock somehow.  It’s true that In the 21st century, it’s not hard to find out what people in the charts have for breakfast or where they shop, which makes them less mysterious and more directly boastful. Instead of hiding away in a Gothic ruin pretending to be an occultist like Jimmy Page they will show off their bling on Instagram at will.  Considering there are chapters on Elvis and Michael Jackson, this doesn’t sit right with me.  They’d be straight on Instagram showing off their latest expensive diamond encrusted toilet roll holder or whatever.  The fall of the Rock God is more likely due to the fact that Rock Gods lost their novelty and that Rock as a genre ground to a natural halt.  

The mid-90s is a good place to stop - it was at this point that rock slowly became more derivative, with Oasis and Blur pinching bits of the 60s, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party pinching bits of the Post-Punk era, and the original bands themselves reforming to do on the whole uninspiring Greatest Hits/grab the money and run nostalgia gigs.  The Rolling Stones are for instance are technically still going, but I’m sure people who see them now are either on a nostalgia trip or are curious to hear them play their old stuff live - and they give those people what they want.  Go on, name their last album without googling it - or in fact one of their albums from the last 20 years.

It is, however, premature to write off rock as a genre even if Rock Gods have in fact gone for good.  There’s always exciting indie stuff out there, as well as a lot of dreck admittedly - but that has always been the case, even in Hepworth’s day - for every Beatles there would have been a hundred Gerry and the Pacemakers.  Music is fashion, and fashion goes in cycles.  The 80s were on the whole a dry spell for guitar bands in the mainstream, but things turned around in the 90s through to the early 00s and then turned around again.  What Hepworth really means are that his Rock Gods are dead.  Music stardom still exists, and there’s nothing to say that guitar music won’t become culturally dominant again (although it’s true to say that there’s nothing to say it will either).

This is not a bad book, and is well written for what it is - if you enjoy music from the period covered (and I definitely do) you will find it very enjoyable.  But don’t expect more than some interesting facts from the past.  The future has no place in Hepworth’s obituary of the Rock God.

FILM... & MUSIC: Kurt Cobain - Montage of Heck

Kurt Cobain is the 90s rock idol.  If you want to make people think ‘The 1990’s’, a picture of Kurt Cobain will do nicely.  (The Gallagher brothers?  Are you serious?)

Montage Of Heck is a documentary that attempts to make the last of the great dead rock icons a human being.  As well as concert footage of Kurt Cobain being a live rock icon, we see home footage of him messing about with his wife and baby and hear him doing mundane things like answering the phone. 

It is definitely a documentary about Kurt Cobain, and Nirvana is covered as the most famous and successful way Kurt Cobain chose to express himself.  Equal importance is given to his journals and to a lesser extent his artwork.  Kris Novoselic is interviewed, but significantly as Kurt’s best friend, not the bass player of Nirvana.  Dave Grohl only appears in archive footage, and forget the previous drummers, personnel, etc.  If you want to learn about the history of the band this isn’t that story – a lot of it just happens to overlap.  It is expected of you as a viewer that you’ll know at least the famous hits already, as most of the songs in the film are represented either by demos, live footage or ‘reworkings’ (a nursery-mobile version of ‘All Apologies’ soundtracks baby films of Kurt, and a 'Carmina Burana'-style choir version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ plays over the original video).  All of this is very obviously in danger of drifting into alienating, Just For The Fans territory, but is also a way of making the point that this is not a rock doc.  In fact, taking away the familiar music serves as a way of taking it back from the audience and making it about Kurt again.

Of course the film fails in demythologising Cobain (the trailer reiterates the icon, let alone the film).  It doesn't really bother trying, because let's face it - the man is a cultural icon and that's a fact, like it or not.  I mean, why would we want to watch home videos of someone who wasn’t famous?  The fact that someone has gone to the trouble of putting animation to a tape of him answering the phone is instead testament to the fact that he is still entirely culturally significant.  More than 20 years after his death, it’s not uncommon to see people wearing Nirvana t-shirts and hoodies… In Utero got the Super Duper The Money Will Roll Right In Deluxe Edition treatment just last year and I’m sure it did very well…  The fame that ruined him has stayed almost as strong, long after the man has died.  It’s unlikely he will fade into obscurity, even if the music does.

What Montage Of Heck does achieve is creating a celebration of the man and explain who Kurt Cobain was when the media wasn’t around.  It's about putting some flesh and soul on the cult cardboard cutout Dead Rock Star (registered trademark, patent applied for).  He was someone who thought being a rock star was ‘the answer’.  He then unexpectedly became the biggest rockstar in the world, and maybe hadn’t realised in advance how much privacy and freedom he would lose in return.  He looks much, much happier in his home videos, dicking around with the wife he obviously loved, than the footage of interviews where his face says ‘not another, another fucking interview’.  Quite often he’s hiding his face so you can’t even tell that much. The quotes from his journals have to be taken with a pinch of salt, because everyone self-dramatizes in their diaries.  But bearing that in mind, they are still bitter about the same themes – fame and its related problems, heroin addiction and the stomach pains he seems to have almost constantly felt.

The fact is, he was a funny, talented, troubled guy who and frankly didn’t need all the shit that fame brought him – his life becoming a story consumed by the media, who sold it to us (and we bought it willingly), the easily gotten heroin and all the rest of it.  The film ends with a caption saying that Kurt took his own life one month later.  At the time, my reaction was that it was abrupt, and disappointment that they weren’t going to analyse his suicide in more depth.  And then, the other day I realised why I was slightly disturbed by my reaction – almost disgusted.  In a film which shows a man’s personal home videos and recordings, including those of him as a child, I still wanted more…  I literally wanted blood.  The whole film is scattered with things never intended to be seen by anyone outside of the the Cobains’ circle of family and friends; Kurt’s journals were a highly personal stream of consciousness which for all we know he would have been embarrassed about anyone else reading.  And I’m there consuming his private life as entertainment, and wanting more even after so much has been given. 

Intentionally or not, this film reminds the audience of the part they played in his death.  He gave as much as he could, and his audience always wanted more.  And he felt he couldn’t give anything anymore.  So he stopped.