Chapter One
On season two, episode eleven of The Henry Rollins Show, Hank interviewed Gene Simmons of KISS fame. This interview is a few years old, but I only recently viewed it for the first time.
During his
traditional nonsensical ramblings, Mr. Simmons made a comment that Rap is huge
and Rock is dying because Rappers are the new Rock Stars. He explains that, with Grunge, Rock Stars
wanted to be viewed as normal. According
to his logic, folks don’t want their celebrities to be normal. We want to idolize people that are super
human, or at the very least, people that aren’t scared to do the things from
which normal folk shy away.
What Gene is
describing was heavily utilized by Johnny Cash in his Man In Black, Outlaw
persona. Being a bad boy was such an integral part of what people loved about
him, the majority of society chose to turn a blind eye to the fact that he was
arrested for smuggling a very large amount of drugs in 1965. Considering he
only had to pay a $1000 fine, and serve a 30 day suspended sentence, even the
court seems to have taken a “That’s just John being John” approach to the
situation.
I wish I
could prove Gene wrong, and find a contemporary rebel Rock Star, but none come
to mind. While metal tries to portray
itself as evil and dark, you still see the members of Slayer attending the
Grammy’s with their kids and being sincerely, decent parents. Rock has grown old.
Also, while
Rock musicians pride themselves on not selling out and not going commercial,
they probably can’t afford to constantly get into trouble. Meanwhile Rap performers are selling us
everything from Toyotas to tampons. If Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dog, formerly
Snoopy Doggie Dog formerly Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr) wants to participate in
a 1993 murder in broad day light, at a heavily populated park with several
witnesses, why wouldn’t he? All he has to do is start selling something like
Snoop Poop Adult Diapers, and boom, the killing pays for itself.
Glen Danzig
is a musician that made a career out of being intimidating, and being viewed as
a rebel. In 2004 a video was circulated
via Youtube of him being punched in the face by an obese rocker. Neither striking back, nor even verbally
assaulting his attacker, Danzig did nothing in response. Later in an interview he stated that as a
celebrity people are often looking for reasons to take you to court and get
some of your fortune. His explanation for
doing nothing was to avoid being sued. A
Rapper would have just shot the fat fuck, and then paid to make the problem go
away.
In the same
interview, Danzig also said that he has never been paid for any of the
recordings he did with Rick Rubin.
Assuming lyrics like “Hacking off little girls heads / hang em on my
wall” never got him a cell phone commercial, Danzig and his like can’t afford
to be rebellious, and Rap is now the new Rock.
If it was
ever proposed to him that he was the genesis of the Rapper’s persona, I wonder
how Johnny would have felt about that.
The key difference is that Johnny Cash wasn’t really a bad guy. He was a knucklehead, and he was addicted to
drugs that at the time were still not completely illegal. It wasn’t until five
years later that Nixon got the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control
Act passed. I could be wrong, but I
can’t imagine Cash would have ever condoned the killing of another person. The
similarity in Johnny’s “Outlaw”, and a modern day Rapper’s “Outlaw” is that
both are demonstrations of the common man.
But the common man of 1965 Nashville and the common man of 2015 New York
City, are pretty different.
Part B
In an interview I read with Everclear singer Art Alexakis he explained that while he was getting started and signed to an indie label he realized that being signed didn’t really mean much. While most musicians would assume the label is going to promote their albums, he instead took it upon himself and paid out of his own pocket for promotions. He went on to explain the importance of a publicist which he also hired and was responsible for compensating.
At the time
when I read that I didn’t know anything. I was young and stupid. While I had seen characters in movies
portraying publicists I still didn’t actually understand what one did, or how
they were hired. Alexakis explained that
a great band with no publicist can easily go unnoticed, while a mediocre band
with a great publicist can get all the attention in the world (e.g. KISS).
It wasn’t a
long article, but it was extremely informative. Art, though not a Grunge musician, obviously shared the Grunge train of thought regarding an open,
honest, human approach to being a celebrity. Clearly this is the
opposite of how Gene Simmons believes musicians should behave. Gene believes that providing the
audience with too much information makes you human and less than a God.
Mr. Simmons
would have you believe that KISS earned fame based on their talent, and would
choose to leave out details about extremely talented business people that made the
mediocre band what it became. The people Gene doesn't want to talk to you about include an impressive list of songwriters that penned most of
the band’s hits, while the Grunge band’s he criticized wrote their own
material.
Anyway, I
don’t really know where I stand on this discussion. While I don’t agree with Gene’s logic, I do
agree that Rock music is suffering, and it’s players are no longer iconic. I also agree with him that the world wants
celebrities to be unrealistically super human.
A couple of
side notes to all of that: Gene
simplified the problem without taking into consideration the current climate of
the music industry. Major labels are not
offering record deals to small rock bands as they did when KISS first got
signed. Most large labels (like
Interscope) no longer even have a rock department. That means they only focus on Top 40 and Hip
Hop. Gene did not mention the possibility that maybe Rock music is dead because
nobody invests in Rock music, while Rap is heavily financed. Why?
Who knows? Maybe it is easier to
control one performer than it is to control 3-5 people in a band, but it is not
due to a lack of public demand.
The Blink
182 reunion album Neighborhoods (Interscope, 2011) was highly anticipated. At the time of its release the band was
selling out large arenas all around the world.
People were excited about Blink 182 being back together and looking
forward to their first album in 8 years.
The album’s sales were less than impressive and can easily be credited
to piss poor promotions. With no Rock
department, Interscope didn’t have a single employee with connections in Rock
radio, or Rock press. Their employees
had to start from scratch to promote that album.
Other side
note: my experience is that people don’t want the truth. I can tell a journalist the quick and easy
story of how we did what we did and they will say “there is no story here.” But
if I church-it-up and emphasize the action words then I am guaranteed
attention. In the documentary TAD Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears Jonathan
Poneman discusses this. He mentions the importance of having a creative
back story. He says something along the lines, and I am paraphrasing
here, "oh you're in a band and you make music just like the tens of
thousands of other bands out there? Well that's not very interesting." So as much as I hate to admit it there is some validity to
Gene’s theory.