When Rockstars Attack

As the early lives of our contemporaries drift into the twilight zone known as "within living memory", not yet compacted into "history", the semi-official accounts of Our Times begin to emerge.  For example, I am about to embark on David Kynaston's ongoing multi-volume account of post-War Britain, not least because I'm curious to know how we're going to look to posterity.  Although I can be certain my name won't appear in the index, I can be pretty sure the name of my home town, Stevenage, will.  It's one of the stranger aspects of having grown up as a juvenile extra in a major social experiment.  We were being watched, counted, and measured, although nobody said so at the time, or has ever asked me how I felt about it or what I have made of it since; just another microbe in the Petri dish, I suppose.

One area where I always find myself at odds with the emerging narratives is rock and pop, a subject close to my heart (as it is to 88.3% of all post-War teens born 1946-1960, or so it says here).  I've been reading Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970, by David Browne.  I was intrigued by the title, or rather by the subtitle.  Or, actually, just the bit that says "the lost story of 1970".  Ah, 1970!  What a vintage year that was...  I turned 16 that year, began visiting pubs and clubs, had my first "steady" girlfriend, received the validation of some good exam results, had my first holiday without my parents...  The list goes on.  I have a vested interest in any account of that year, especially one that focusses on the popular culture of the time.  That's one of my years.  Tread carefully now!

It's not a bad book, Fire and Rain.  If you have an interest in the breakup of the Beatles, or the story behind the albums Déjà Vu, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Sweet Baby James, then you'll find it fascinating.  The trouble is, I don't, and didn't.  I never owned any of those albums, or remember hearing them much at the time, even.  In fact, I had never listened to Déjà Vu until yesterday, when I span it up on Spotify ("I Nearly Cut My Hair"?  Seriously?  This is not a Zappa-style spoof?).  So, as far as I am concerned, this is not the story -- whether lost, misplaced, damaged, or deliberately dropped behind the sofa -- of 1970.  Although, clearly, it is a story of 1970, but one compiled from the unreal, outer-space perspective of the historian.

Nonetheless, I have been finding this tale of behind-the-scenes sulks, spats and breakups entertaining.  How could you not?  What big babies these rockstars be!  And, as it happens, I have also recently watched two fascinating movies on Netflix, both of which tell a very similar story of young men behaving badly: History of The Eagles, and Beware of Mr. Baker.

Now, I only really know one Eagles album: Desperado, surely the most satisfying "concept" album ever made.  Granted, grown men dressing up as cowboys is a bit silly, but -- as I have written before -- the whole rock/pop enterprise comes out of the Dressing Up Box, so why not make a virtue of it?  Few albums can have taken a thematic metaphor and run with it as brilliantly as Desperado.  And yet, as I discovered from the film, it was a disappointment in sales terms, and got made amid some serious inter-personal difficulties and rivalries, and thus gets passed over fairly swiftly in the band's "history".  In the end, all roads lead to Hotel California, yet another album I have never heard.

And therein lies the lesson, historically.  To us, as consumers, the lost story of any given year, as far as music is concerned, is not a tale of hissy-fits in the studio, sales figures, clever technical feats, or how unfairly the loot got split; it's the private story of our relationship with those few entertainment "products" we happened to choose or, as it more often felt, the ones which chose us.  That was our real, lived experience, quite a different thing to the statistical reduction of a million lives. A lot of people bought and loved Déjà Vu: I didn't.  A lot of people didn't buy and love Desperado: but I did.  We didn't know and probably still don't care who walked out or who was fired or who had to struggle with demons and addictions in the process of manufacturing the songs that invoke important times and places and feelings in our own little lives.  No-one loves a song or an album because it went platinum, and they don't necessarily go platinum just because people love them.

To take an interest, retrospectively, in the production process is fine, if you want to find out how the trick was done.  But this is never such a good idea, if you want the enchantment to last. Which brings us to Beware of Mr. Baker.  That is, drummer Ginger Baker, Exhibit A in the Monsters of Rock freak-show.  I mean, really...  I knew he was regarded as a bit intense and difficult to work with, but crikey.  As it happens, Cream were never really my thing -- they were practically Dad-rock even by 1970 -- but if you harbour any precious memories of that particular rock combo, take my advice:  never, ever watch this extraordinary movie.  To anyone else, though, this is probably a pretty good insight into how the trick was done; or, in Baker's case, how the trick was thoroughly and repeatedly fluffed, muffed, stuffed and stamped on.  But do you really want to know?  I don't think you do.

Desperado, 1958