A kung fu fighter in a disco

Dudes who are clearly immune to rock'n'roll: Bez, Dame Dave Bowie.

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braisedbywolves.livejournal.com

Richard, K. Also possibly Doherty, P.

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martinv.livejournal.com

Reminds me of the 90s NME cover with "Cobain, Richey Manic, WHO WILL BE NEXT?!?!" underneath a giant picture of Thom Yorke. He wasn't especially pleased by that, iirc. But then he's still alive.

Can the next one be one of Klaxons?

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braisedbywolves.livejournal.com

Richards, even.

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Does anyone actually identify with 'troubled' stars? I had a poster of Kurt Cobain on my wall as a teenager because I thought he was a rather good looking chap, not because I hated myself and wanted to die. I liked Justine because she was the supercool frontwoman of her own band and did what she liked, not because she was an enormous junkie. This is why I find it hard to understand people's obsession with eg Pete Doherty, where he clearly has NOTHING going for him at all apart from all the 'ohhhh woez I have written some poetry in BLUD'.

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And Courtney Love! I'd forgotten about her.

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The whole famous-person-dies-of-excess/driving too fast/suicide seems most prevalent in music these days - I'm sure Hollywood had its fair share of actors etc overdosing in the 50s and 60s - these days they all just bvgger off to rehab for a bit.

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srsly though, were the libertines ACTUALLY any bigger than, say, mansun? cos they didn't seem to be at the time, and yet, like every second gtr band sounds just like them, whereas 0 of them sound like mansun (we should be thankful for small mercies perhaps)

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didn''t he used to be Richard on the early, funny stuff?

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also, [cough]richeymanic[sough]

although perhaps identify is too strong a word, but he was certainly troubled and i certainly had a thing for him...

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05424a5e-5a4b-11dc-9bcd-0000779fd2ac.html

This research has been ridiculed more than once this week by Radcliffe and Maconie on R2. Partly because of the dodgy science. But mainly they seemed to be arguing that shorter life expectancy is "a price worth paying" because without the druqks and other excesses these people wouldn't have created the music they did.

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Actually, Hollywood has had a few casualties in recent years: Ted Demme, Chris Penn, Chris Farley – the clear lesson there being that cocaine + obesity really is unsustainable.

Rock star mortality report (http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2161966,00.html) from earlier this week.

I've never had any time for the self-destructive icon business, or what Parsons and Burchill call "the established bourgeois immorality of rock'n'roll" in The Boy Looked At Johnny. It's only interesting at the level of sick comedy when the person in question lives through it: Keith (Richards or Richard, incidentally: he's been both) in the 70s, or George Jones' (quite astonishing) autobiography.

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It might just be that I haven't been paying as much attention to Hollywood in the last couple of years, but I haven't heard of any of those chaps, let alone knew that they died. Perhaps there are just as many actors as musicians, it's just the musicians tend to be younger/famouser/more widely covered in the press?

That's a point - would Amy be getting all this 'OMG She Might DIE!!' attention if she was 45?

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Is 'druqks + musician' an easier combination to live with/cover up/still make money from than 'druqks + some other job'? It has definitely been noted that *particular* druqks are absolutely detrimental to writing good music, whilst others may be more, ahem, inspiring. The latter seem to be in the less addictive category, obv.

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Richey had Something though - even if he wasn't really a musical contributor at least he an example to all the kids out there that self-harming/jumping off Clifton suspension bridge really isn't much fun. Doherty has no exceptional qualities or value whatsover, hence my dismay at his continued adulation by his fans.

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but richey was adulated, totally.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

I dunno, Courtney did when she had her own Unpleasantness the other year...not to the extent maybe but I don't think she actually had any product out.

I think the current generation of off-the-rails starlets might be the first to have their antics documented in such up-to-the-minute detail? as in, as soon as Britney shaves her head the world knows about it, those photos of Amy in blood-soaked ballet pumps were broadcast as soon as it happened...I think this actually must work in DE-glamorising it, b/c a lot of what we see are the rather nasty side effects of going off the rails.

I have a feeling that this might help the, er, Amy myth, not because people identify with and want to be like her - prob quite the opposite - but because it all reinforces and confirms her emotional authenticity; she sings about being troubled, and L@@K there are her troubles in full technicolour display on the front cover of the Sun...

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There is a very particular young-women-in-peril aspect to the Brit-LiLo-Nicole-Amy coverage. There's a Doherty=twat, Amy=victim (somehow) equation.

Plus, indeed, the FOR REAL thing, which fits Winehouse's work. I've always felt, for instance, that the reason that the cult of Kurt boomed after death and River Phoenix's didn't was the differing matching of their death to public persona while alive. (Equally, poor Owen Wilson's problems are thought to be a marketing disaster within the movie industry, because they clash with his affable stoner stock character).

Kat, as you haven't heard of them, the three oversized hedonists:
Ted Demme: director of lots of hip-hop videos, plus some movies, most notably Johnny Depp starring coke-athon Blow and Beautiful Girls (top thoughtful male-bonding fave/dodgy underage Natalie Portman vehicle, depending on POV).

Chris Penn: Sean's fat brother. In Reservoir Dogs and Footloose (the beefy chum who learns to dance).

Chris Farley: died back in the 1990s, briefly huge career-wise, always huge sizewise, comedy actor operating in the dumber-than-Adam Sandler mode.

Only Farley was a big star, and only just around the time of his death, but then as that report pointed out, not so many pop stars die these days.

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Good point! BLAME THE INTERNET :) Yeah, I guess there's pressure/suffocation side of Heat/Hello etc that hounds the stars to Ruin in the first place & its much harder to hide yr problems if yr in the public eye. And then by showing their flaws to the young lasses who would otherwise be idolising them. I am v wary of falling into a big 'thinspiration' tangent here but that really is a different argument (however I must mention a big O RLY wrt the explosion of media focus on Amy coinciding with her losing all that weight).

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Ah - I vaguely recall the Chris Penn thing now I have some context. (Thanks!)

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

I don't know if the 24/7 attention drives them to ruin so much as...well. I am pretty sure that other pop stars have head periods of similar Unpleasantness, let us say - remember the year or so everyone thought Xtina had gone off the rails? based on little more than her looking a bit skanky in public? - and I think it's pretty well-known that starlets of yesteryear, Marilyn Monroe and Lana Turner and so on, weren't exactly well-behaved women; and yeah, rumours would surface and people might realise that something was wrong in a general sense, but...even 5-7 years ago, we wouldn't have seen the ACTUAL FOOTAGE of the car crash or the blood-stained pumps, I don't think.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

Yeah there's a definite fallen-from-grace aspect to a lot of those: Amy and LiLo are perceived very definitely to be wasting their talent, Britney to be wasting...something. Paris and Nicole aren't perceived to have had talent in the first place but then, despite the jail, neither of them seem to be as wrecked and out of control as the first three.

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It's also about the level at which these stories surface: in the heyday of Confidential magazine in the 1950s, the Enquirer in the 80s/90s and the News Of The World over here, there were plenty of stories about celebs on the rocks for those who wanted to read them. These days, everyone is in the act: even the Financial Times had an Amy piece on the front page banner of the weekend paper.

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perfectputsch.livejournal.com

is it just me or is amy winehouse actually not at all 'electric' when she performs? due to the fact that she mainly seems to be trying not to fall asleep mid-chorus?

i mean, alright i've never seen her live so maybe i'm not the person to judge but i've seen her on telly and its only magical if you surround it with some kind of heroin-voodoo keith richards style mysticism. otherwise its just this wasted bird with big hair just sort of standing there drooping slightly. the voice is immense, but its hardly great show-womanship.

her funky backing dancers, now they're electric.

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Are these nasty side effects not becoming glamourised, even turned into virtues though? Like 'oh man you've really been there when you've overdosed like that' etc. due to the requirement for the angst of music to be backed by some kind of "genuine pain" (this is Cobain's legacy, blech, I hate him) eg: oh no I am addicted to drugs. Therefore, yer common or garden teenager wants that ugliness; it's not enough any more to do a bit of coke maybe and then have a giggle and come home, you've got to get wrecked or you're not doing it right.

You can see it in the idolisation of Nicole Richie circa. her anorexic low because that woman was not beautiful then, was definitely not glamourous but people wanted to achieve it.

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I think Amy's the simplest case currently in the press and also the least fame-related; she's just a woman in love with a man she doesn't believe could love her back and she'll do anything to keep him. If she really is on crack and heroin then I would predict it will kill her very soon and it will be a sad waste.

On the one hand, I don't think that living a long time is a virtue in itself but on the other I think "rock'n'roll" deaths are usually far from that (possible expection of Jeff Buckley) and that usually they are deeply pathetic. I have 0 sympathy for Sid Vicious, little more for Kurt Cobain and slightly more for Tupac and Sir Notorious of BIG. I actually quite like Richey Manic, which may or may not be a generational thing (and also god knows I am so grateful when it is MANICS not PHONICS on the jukebox -so help me Wales, if I could change but one facet of your loveliness, etc.) but I find his employment of 'BUT AM I?!?!?!?!' tactics cinematically pleasing.

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bengraham.livejournal.com

According to the oft quoted theory that rock stars die at 27, our Amy still has a fair few years to live. Doherty has already turned 28, and is thus safe.

PS - I'm not sure this is necessarily true, I'd bank on Doherty kicking the bucket sooner than Wino.

PPS - Amy Winehouse was born on 14th Sept 1983, the exact same day as my sister.

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Also, witness the reaction when Keane-chap went into the Priory: "what's he doing there? His music is so dull..." – totally buying in to the whole lifestyle=music thing. Bah.

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Precisely; he couldn't possibly be doing drugs right because he still looked like a relatively normal human being etc.

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Ah yes, the ill-judged port addiction.

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mooxyjoo.livejournal.com

'we'?

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braisedbywolves.livejournal.com

I actually quite like Richey Manic, which may or may not be a generational thing

I'd go with not, considering you were eight when he disappeared :)

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Oh I know but I can remember people going on about it on the news and things; I found it quite interesting/worrying at the time cus I wasn't old enough to realise this was just rockstar behaviour, whereas definitely can't remember any of the others at all.

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I was wondering when someone would ask that :) The 'we' could apply to a number of groups of people: tabloid/Heat readers, music consumers, The Kids Today, a combination of all three?

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blue-russian.livejournal.com

justine was an enormous junkie!?! (;)

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andthatisthat.livejournal.com

I remember listening to an irreverent late night radio panel-type show a few years back, which I think had something to do with stating an opinion that was against the commonly-held belief, and one of said statements was a panellist saying that Pete Doherty was an untalented idiot who was only famous because he was the Kurt Cobain of this generation's 17-year-old boys who want to die in a toilet somewhere (not quite sure what commonly-held belief that's supposed to fly in the face of because it sounds utterly accurate to me, but there you go). Anyway, in a move that may or may not have been staged, an audience member stood up to protest about how Pete Doherty is a poet of pain and beauty etc etc, and when asked how old he was, said audience member turned out to be 17.

How is this relevant? Buggered if I know. But I've never seen this need for junkie heroes as having anything to do with music. There will always be people who want a poster boy for their own neuroses, and who better than a celebrity with a severe addiction problem, but said sleb's actual profession always seems to be deeply secondary in the equation. Would Pete Doherty's songs still be poetry of pain and beauty if he and, say, James Morrison swapped places but kept their own songs? I'll have to ask a seventeen-year-old next time I see one, perhaps.

From a personal point of view, I was always rather turned off by musicians who couldn't keep their prodigious gak habits or whatever under control, because I thought it made them self-indulgent and inconsistent, but that's just me.

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