Hear Me Out: All your rock heroes would’ve been despicable company
Somewhere out there, amid the cautionary files of the internet, exists footage of Lou Reed mentally torturing a poor young Swedish reporter. It’s ten minutes that has scarred the psyche of all journalists. When this floundering rookie searches for a life ring, a Hail Mary question that might just buy him a minute of considered thought from Reed, abate his stream of scorn, and allow him to regain composure, maybe even touch upon rapport, he asks whether he’d ever think about writing anything for the stage. As it happens, Reed had recently written two theatrical productions with Robert Wilson. The interview ends with him telling the journalist that journalists are the “lowest form of life”.
What offends me is not that a hero is placing me and my kind beneath warlords, paedophiles and fussy eaters, but that a 58-year-old man of great reverence saw fit to absolutely butcher a nervous young boy clearly just out of university. This ferocious persona has, of course, been reconstituted as a savvy bit of character curation from the rock star—a manufactured prickly outward nature that somehow imbues his work with added edge. But I can’t help but think that couldn’t have been all that pleasant to be around even when the cameras weren’t rolling.
So, when I say your rock heroes would’ve been despicable company, I’m not about to get into the tome of terrible crimes against their names, but rather to acknowledge that, no, you wouldn’t want The Thin White Duke as your dream dinner party guest. During this outwardly entertaining period, Bowie would’ve actually stunk to high heavens. He was living off bell peppers and milk alone, emanating a soured dairy pong, and he was bottling his piss in fear of demonic curses. If Ian from accounting was behaving in a similar manner, there’s no way you’d be inviting him around for baba ghanoush next Friday.
The same can be said for any number of stars. Jim Morrison, for example, would get so worked up on the Los Angeles strip that Eric Burdon would have to be called to serve as some sort of rock ‘n’ roll guardian for the poetic man-child. Once again, this is peculiar behaviour. On any given enjoyable night out, you shouldn’t have to summon a nearby Geordie singer to mystically subdue a fellow in leather trousers who has inexplicably flown off the rails and started trashing the bar.
Likewise, all would surely be fun and games at a house party around Grace Slick’s groovy place until the police are called for a noise complaint, and she greets them on the front lawn, yielding a shotgun.
Then there’s John Lennon’s ‘wacky’ Lost Weekend. This cleverly named debacle highlights his masterful marketing ability, but in the process, it masks the fact it wasn’t a weekend; it was an 18-month affair with his assistant, during which he abandoned his wife and young son to drunkenly abuse the service industry of Los Angeles with a group of guys heading towards their 40s who called themselves ‘The Hollywood Vampires’.
Somehow he managed to marry the worst elements of punk and incel culture in one fell swoop. Of course, you can offer him the empathy that he was bewildered by a level of fame the likes of which the world has never seen, but that still doesn’t make me want to break bread with the loser and laugh at his dire sniffing coke pun as he drops a straw into a fizzy refreshment. And therein lies a lesson: beware of the group of friends with a collective nickname; it’s always tantamount to a cult of irresponsibility and shady crack.
Remarkably, all of this genuinely happened. Our heroes committed these sins against good company. And in the sober light of the 21st century, I don’t feel like I missed out on amazing hijinks – put it down to my delicate millennial disposition – but around this coterie of creative hooligans I would’ve spent years coasting on the brink of a permanent panic attack. “No, ‘Moon the Loon’, I don’t want to fly a helicopter unannounced to the mad manor of Oliver Reed. Just enjoy your pint and watch the fucking football.”
Naturally, there is an argument that all this added to the artistry, and maybe it did. Also, while it might be morally fitting to condemn some of these chaotic tales, I’m not prepared to deny that they don’t brighten days for all of us bland sinners now looking back. But would I have wanted to be there, in amongst all the sweat, piss and exhausting toll? Maybe passively at the back of a concert hall or chewing the fat with one of the few measured folks on the scene, but if you think that passing out in a seedy apartment with Sly Stone while freebasing PCP with his pit bull, a nutty mutt called ‘Gun’, would’ve been fun, when perhaps you need to take a look at your own pals.
