Friday December 10, 2004

Rock & Roll Regicide

I haven’t laughed this hard since Joe Queenan admitted, in the last uncertain days of Spy, that jazz sucks. The Britwits at the Guardian have reevaluated some of rock and roll’s sacred cows and directed them to the nearest pasture. Some highlights:

On Brian Wilson:

His particular genius lies in making songs about summer sound like songs about Christmas and spending the best years of his life in a sandpit full of dogshit.

On Jim Morrison:

Only a blowhard stockbroker’s son like Oliver Stone could fall in love with a boorish, spoiled admiral’s brat like Jim Morrison.

On the Rolling Stones:

And don’t start protesting that Mick Jagger is the most charismatic frontman the rock world has ever seen - he’s a hideous, tulip-mouthed cadaver with nothing interesting to say, and the most grating voice this side of Sybil Fawlty. The most interesting thing about the Rolling Stones is the amount of drugs they took - and there’s nothing more boring than that.

On the Beatles:

Thanks to these four, Britain’s high watermark of musical creativity is still considered to be pub rock made by white idiots.

And, on my personal sacred cow, David Bowie:

Station To Station is perhaps a great cocaine record, but only insofar as it unimprovably demonstrates the drug’s ability to turn people into humourless, self-absorbed bores.