The barometer #3
Apr 23, 06
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"take a step outside yourself/and turn around/take a look at who you are/it's pretty scary/so silly/revolting/you're not much/you can't do anything".
that's the first verse from nirvana's "turnaround" from incesticide. and it’s the basis of this edition of "the barometer".
i admit, i am addicted to the "live fast, die young" theory of fame and rock and roll. what you have to understand is that this isn't necessariy a big deal. we're all sort of addicted to it. we love to see our heroes eventually fail. exhibit a is michael jackson. seriously. is there anyone in the world who doesn't say that thriller is in the top 5 all-time of recorded music? i'd say it's more popular than any national anthem. maybe even "take me out to the ball game". give or take. but did anyone flinch for a fucking second when he was accused of molesting the boy in the early 90's, or, worse yet, in 2004? i don't think so. but mr. shiny-glove is not the sole exhibit in our fascination.
for me, we need not look further than james dean. first of all, let's all remember that the "rebel" died at 24. let's just take a second to think about that.--------------------okay...back to the point. what's interesting about dean is this. if you know only one thing about him, you probably know him as jim stark from “rebel without a cause”. and only as jim stark. for me, i'll always know this: james dean made 3 movies in a little over a year, and then he died. and we're still fascinated with him, whether by his image or simply because he stood for something. that “something”, for the pre-boomers, was freedom. for everyone afterwards, it was reckless abandon. the theme of the barometer #3 is that: reckless abandon. few people know that exactly one month before he died in a car accident, he recorded a public service announcement about the dangers of driving and to "always wear your safety belts, kids".
in the late 1960s, there was no one in america that didn't know about jim morrison, jimi hendrix or janis joplin. these three were responsible (along with about a hundred other psychedelia-inspired rock acts) for taking the pomp of the rolling stones and the melody of the beatles and putting them all in a mixture...with a little help from things that are officially qualified as "illicit materials". hendrix recorded only 3 records before succumbing to a drug overdose. joplin only got to see 1 fully released before she took too much. and the ill-fated lizard king saw 7 albums before he "died" of a heart attack in the city of lights. all three of them were 27 years old. coincidence? that's always up for review, but my vote goes into the "no" column.
the list goes on and on. keith moon from the who "auto destructed" after years upon years of drug, alcohol and hotel-room abuse. sid vicious (nee, john simon ritchie) was known less for actually playing bass guitar in the sex pistols and known more for allegedly stabbing his heroin-addicted girlfriend nancy spungen in the chelsea hotel. he himself died weeks later, before the trial. elliott smith supposedly stabbed himself, twice, at 34. after he died, his record from a basement on a hill hit 80 spots higher on the billboard charts than any of his other recordings. darby crash dies at 22 and isn't remembered by many at all. nick drake writes some of the most amazingly tragic songs, ever. and then he commits suicide. jeff buckley drowned in the mississippi before really cracking his 30's. i'm going to stop there because i think you all get the point.
in april of 1994, i was 13. kurt cobain was 27. i had a poster of nirvana on my closet the day kurt took a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. i was watching mtv when kurt loder made the announcement that "the singer of one of the most promising and gifted bands in recent memory is dead". i think you all know what comes next. kurt cobain was the epitome of the "live fast, die young", but he didn't have to be. and that's really the point. sure he had a lot of pain and even more angst, but he did something that no one has been able to do since he took his own life: he made people unite. kurt allowed all of us to see, feel and say things about ourselves and our lives that we would usually be too scared to do on our own. he played jesus for generation x. he took all of our anger and disappointment and channeled it into something brilliant. and then he couldn't take it anymore. kurt didn't want to be the hero. he just wanted to be able to express himself artistically in a way that he thought we should all be able to do, even if we weren't rock stars. after all, he never said that he was a rock star. he made it look like he was just one of us.
which brings me to my second point. the theory of dying “before your time”. sometime around the outbreak of school shootings in america, the news media would relentlessly interview the parents of the victims from jonesboro, columbine, et al. to find out what they felt about the tragic incident that marred their town. the one response that was wholesale-ly used was that the victims were “going to be someone special”. they would “do such good in the world”, but instead, they were “taken from us before their time”. every parent said “you’re not supposed to bury your kids, they’re supposed to bury you”. now, i’m not ripping on the tragedies of school shootings or teen suicide or anything like that. i’m more interested in the idea of someone being killed or taking their own lives before they would amount to something inexplicably “special”. maybe they’re right. maybe one of the columbine victims would grow up to cure cancer. maybe. but we don’t know the answer to that promise. and we never will. the “live fast, die young” mantra might not fully apply to these kids (and there are thousands of them every year), but it goes without saying that what’s really the point of all of this comes down to something deep within all of us: our need to feel like we matter. like no matter what, we’re doing great things. and yes, because of our addiction to hero worship and celebrity envy, the victims of these heartwrenching episodes become nothing more than fodder for water cooler conversation. a footnote in the jay leno monologue. a statistic about the dangers of parents not paying attention to their kids. we all want to feel equal to celebrities, especially those members of the elite class of pop culture. the legends that gave us something to care about, but never stayed around to see how they would affect culture as a whole. kurt cobain didn’t stick around, and he’s still relevant more than a decade later. the columbine victims…not so much. kids who die “before their time” are another dreadful anomaly in the culture of pop; mere memories to hold a vigil to each year, if you can remember the date.
If you were to create an equation where you were to add the (a) celebrity-ism of “live fast, die young” and the (b) everyday tragedies of death and “before their time”, the sum of (a) + (b) would equal pete doherty, the former lead singer of the libertines and the current lead of babyshambles. many of you would really only know pete because he has been mr. kate moss for the off & on past 3 years. if you're an american, that's all you know. if you live in the uk, you either love pete or hate his fucking guts. he is the most fascinating pop culture "icon" in britain. the problem with pete doherty is two-fold: he's addicted to heroin AND he's a rock and roll star. but he's not a typical rock and roll star. i find it unbelievable that he's the crown jewel of tabloids in england and he hasn't even made a 2nd record in babyshambles. he's been arrested more than a dozen times (his rap-sheet includes drug possession, breaking & entering, robbery, and assault) and he's only 27. read that again. 27. the same age as kurt cobain, jimi hendrix, janis joplin and jim morrison were when they died. and we still have until march 12, 2007 to find out if he'll make it to 28. but here's the clincher. if he dies (for any reason), he'll be remembered in europe for fulfilling the (a) part of the equation and in america, he'll be just another victim of the (b) portion.
i'm going to put my money on pete NOT dying any time soon. i will, however, watch as he gets arrested many more times before the next babyshambles record ever sees the light of day. mr. doherty, i want you to "live fast, die young", but i also want to remind you that in the end, you may in fact find yourself featured on the next edition of this.
godspeed!
