This is one of those posts I’ve had rattling around my head for a little while and wanted/needed to expunge to see where the writing down of it all might take me. Wanton self-gratification, in other words.
One of the recent threads about Nirvana got me thinking. I know they’re a marmite band, and a lot of people on here don’t greatly care for them. I know that I very much did and do. A lot of that’s because of the records they made, the noise they created. But – quite unusually for me – part of it is also about one of the people who made that noise.
A million words have been spilled by now on Kurt Cobain, rest his soul. Death has frozen him in carbonite, and made him far more a cartoon than an actual human being. There probably isn’t much more one can usefully say about the man. And yet, here I am with a head full of things I want to say, and half an hour to write them down.
I was 13 when Nevermind was released, and I remember vividly my first true contact with Nirvana. I hadn’t yet discovered the music press, and I was trapped in a commuter belt town to which news travelled exceedingly slowly, so it was via MTV, sat alone in the front room of my parents’ house.
I’d heard of Nirvana, and I knew they were the coming thing. A few weeks earlier one of my father’s old university friends had dropped in. The one who’d never grown up and gone straight, who made Dad tense up when he arrived on the doorstep. The guy who talked to me about comics and Robert Crumb and once memorably informed me “you Southerners are so soft you get out of the bath to take a piss. Up North we don’t get out of the bath to take a shit”. Words (horrendous, awful words) that have always stuck with me. On this particular visit, he asked what I was listening to. I can’t recall what I replied, but I do remember that he told me that he loved Nirvana, because – and I quote – “they just dial it up to ten and just crank it out”. I nodded along, sagely. I had never heard Nirvana. What was I doing with my life? How could I put this right?
As the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit cued up, I recall thinking “so here it is then – the band of my generation, the one I’m going to have to find a way to like”. Such a Gen X thought to have had. Four minutes later, I knew that finding a way to like them wasn’t going to be a problem; “here we are now, entertain us” – the very thought I’d just had, spat right back at me, challenge met and returned.
I saved up and bought the records, or copied them off mates at school. Slowly but surely, a wave of Nirvana passed through the building. Everyone surfed it a little while, but most people moved on pretty quickly; they were too weird, too arty to really capture the spirit of the place for long. In my case, something about the experience stuck with me, and looking back I can put a name on what that something was: it was Kurt.
It’s a little embarrassing to write this. I’m not someone who’s ever really had heroes in my life. Not real life ones anyway; they always let you down in the end. As a great, but fictional, man once said: “A person should not believe in “isms”, he should believe in himself”. That was my take then, and – really – it still is today. Be your own hero. I certainly wasn’t looking to rock stars for guidance. I mean; Jesus Christ.
At the time of that great wave of Nirvana, I was in the early stages of a war with my surroundings. War with the racism and homophobia. War with the misogyny. But most of all, war with the messages I was being sent on a daily basis about what it was to be a man. Messages we were all being sent, and that men have continued to be sent ever since. Money, power, violence, women. Money, power, violence, women. Winning, always. Acquisition, always. All the important life skills one needed to cultivate in order to meet that oh so important bar of true manhood. All the stuff I’ve seen crush so many men in one way or another down the years. A pan-generational bear trap for us all, yawning wide at every school assembly and in every classroom confrontation.
I had thought about the kind of man I wanted to be, and I knew I wanted something entirely different, although I was still having a tough time articulating what that something looked like. I certainly didn’t feel I could look around me and see a bunch of examples of it, at school or in the wider culture.
Looking back, Kurt Cobain was one of the first, and still sadly few, public figures I looked at and drew strength from. He wasn’t the first rock star to eschew that picture postcard masculinity, but he was certainly the first one I saw, and maybe one of the first who seemed like an attainable figure, rather than an alien visiting from a distant universe, or a figure so impossibly glamorous that I could never hope to learn from them. Years later I saw David McAlmont sing Yes on Jools Holland, and thought he was the most beautiful and fascinating looking man I’d ever seen in my life, but not for one moment did I believe there was anything he was doing that I could do too. Likewise, I’d seen quite a few musicians play some of these cards before, but in such a way that it was made obvious that it was OK, because they were doing it to get women. That whole “I might be wearing makeup, but you know I’m getting laid way more than you” thing, that merely ticks the box of manhood left handed.
When I looked at Kurt, I saw so much that I wanted. Not the money, the fame or even the talent. But the weird gentleness without weakness. The unabashed vulnerability. The commitment to the parts of himself that might have been labelled feminine. The way he seemed to retain an aspect of boyhood that liberated him from all the coarse expectations of manhood. The kinship he clearly felt to gay people, and the way he spoke about women; he was certainly the first rockstar I saw who seemed interested in women as people first and foremost, and as sexual objects secondarily. I wanted all of that, very badly indeed. Most of all, I wanted the way he was able to deploy all of those aspects as strengths, rather than weaknesses. The way he fought for those values at all times. I was in a place in my life where I was just starting to have to do a lot of fighting to be who I wanted to be (as perhaps we all do at that age), and watching Cobain taught me that it was OK to be outspoken and not to apologise for being different. That different was good. Maybe even best.
I feel a little juvenile writing all of this; I’ve never been an air guitar in front of the mirror sort of person, and I never in my life wanted to join a band. I didn’t want to be a rock star, but I badly needed at that point a man who could show me, even at a distance of a thousand miles, that there was another way of being a man, and that there might in fact be myriad other ways of being so. I took power from Kurt. Power and vegetarianism, if I’m being really honest. How tragic.
When he refused to tour with Guns N Roses, I loved it. When he wore a dress, I loved it. When he French kissed Dave Grohl, I loved it. When he stood up for gay rights, I loved it. He seemed to be entirely liberated from all the things I was wrestling with; gloriously so. Airborne and resplendent.
I was never under any illusions. I knew that I didn’t know him, and that if I ever met him I’d probably find him awful. When it later transpired that he was a hopeless drug addict who was so out of it he dropped his own baby on her head, I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t Kurt I admired, after all, it was just certain aspects of him. Those aspects that gave me permission to explore parts of myself that were at odds with everything around me, every message I was receiving about who I should be and what actually mattered. Permission to continue to read poetry after a teacher announced to the class that I must be, and I quote, a “gender-bender” for doing so. Permission to articulate my emotions. Permission – and this was the big one in a boys school – to be far more interested in women for companionship than for sex. To be gentle at a moment when gentleness was something that needed to be beaten (figuratively, I’m relieved to say) out of the men of tomorrow.
It’s probably taken me until this age to be willing to admit that an actual rock star influenced me to this extent. My persona is such that the idea of taking life tips from such a person is total anathema, much less publicly admitting to having done so. But sometimes it’s healthy to put your cards on the table and call it like it is.
Every time there’s a discussion on here about Nirvana and whether they were copying Pixies, or whether they were overrated, or whatever, a little voice in my head goes “yeah, maybe, but no other band helped me through adolescence like they did”. I’m sure many of us could say similar of other groups. Nirvana were mine.
And I suppose that brings me to why I’m writing this…. maybe because these thoughts have been in my head a while, but I’ve never actually expressed them to anyone. Maybe because I sometimes think the discussion of Nirvana forgets what a cultural force they were. But mainly, I suppose, because it’s a small, tiny way of saying the thing I’ve never said and probably should have by now: thank you, Kurt Cobain.
Thanks for reading.
BL
The prize for “Best Ever Writing On The Afterword” has just been won!
(And, to be honest, I have never really “got” Nirvana)
Beautifully written. Thank you.
Lovely, lovely stuff Bingo. I hope you found the catharsis you were looking for. It all makes perfect sense to me and is in no way “embarassing” or “tragic” it’s beautiful and honest and the sort of stuff that makes this the place it almost uniquely is.
I missed Nirvana, I was aware they were happening but my life was elsewhere, they were a little too early for my boys but Foo Fighters were right in their sweetspot. Dave Grohl is their man. Listening to Dave Grohl talking to Dermot O’Leary recently about Kurt before and after he died was very emotional. Clearly he was a unique and special individual.
Thanks, Dave. It was quite cathartic to write, although it also stirred up a few old emotions last night that I could have done without. It’s not a period of my life I massively enjoy revisiting, even though I often seem to.
I think it’s profoundly brilliant that Dave Grohl emerged from all the chaos and dysfunction of Nirvana and formed a rock band that is as committed to being/making others happy as any I can think of. Not many rock stars ever grow up, but in a lot of ways he did. More power to his arm.
What a fine piece that is, made more poignant and real I think by the slight apologetic tone for writing it.
Umm … don’t apologise, it’s your story there.
^ what he said. And the others.
I very much enjoyed reading that – thank you.
Beautiful. Bingo, you have always been so supportive of my writing so I have to tell you that I could never have written something this good.
Bravo.
Thank you, Niall. I don’t think you give yourself enough credit – the stuff you post on here gets to the truth of life with a lot less hesitancy and self-consciousness. Kudos to you – hope you’re keeping well.
Great piece, Bingo.
Nirvana hit at about the time I started uni, and I remember ordering Nevermind as an import from Rockinghorse Records in Brisbane. Of course, by the time it arrived the album was everywhere. I liked Nevermind because of its underlying pop and melodic sensibilities, but got off the bus with In Utero, finding it a bit discordant and angsty. I still have it but literally haven’t listened to it since it came out, so maybe it’s worth a reappraisal.
I also clearly remember hearing of Cobain’s death while I was working as a graduate vet and living in a tiny house in Ipswich (Qld, not UK). It really did feel like the end of something.
There are a few things about him that give me pause. He married the deeply vain and troubled Courtney Love, the pornstar pinup of the alternative scene. He remained a very enthusiastic junkie, even after he became a parent. Likewise, he killed himself, believing that making a statement about his angst was more important than being a parent to his child: if it was causing him so much pain, he could have withdrawn from the music industry and lived comfortably, had he wanted to. I also know that all of the above can be explained by heroin.
Aw c’mon – not all of the above. Bingo’s second paragraph is much more easily explained by getting biffed on the bonce by his surfboard one too many times..
I stand corrected!
Don’t think it is that simple. He had suicide in his genes, many family members had succumbed. Don’t think it was a “statement” and something he could have changed by leaving the musical industry. Heroin was probably a symptom rather than necessarily a cause. He would likely have ended up the same way whatever he did.
And lovely original post
He also had some kind of undiagnosed debilitating stomach complaint, which was apparently why he started self-medicating. These things take years to diagnose and treat, but he didn’t live long enough for all that.
Last weekend, I had my first Crohn’s flare up in two years. Stuck in my daughter’s digs, curled up on her bed, clutching my guts, in so much pain it made me cry. If I’d have had access to morphine, I might well have taken it.
Not that I’m condoning his behaviour. Got bad guts? See a Gastroenterologist, not a smack dealer.
Yes. I had my first one in ages also earlier this year. I would take anything for it to go away, possibly a bullet ….
@dai I don’t think it’s that simple to say suicide was ‘in his genes’. I f it were true I probably wouldn’t be here either.
Ok, but he was the 3rd male member of his family to take his own life using a gun, suffered from serious depression since he was a teenager and had excruciating pain from a stomach issue. None of this was necessarily related to being the biggest rock star on the planet at the time of his death
I agree with most of this.
Like I say, I’ve never really had heroes (not living, non-fictional ones, anyway), and this stuff is why. In the grand scheme of things, it’s hard to fully look up to someone who was a junkie (and Cobain most certainly was a junkie), even if we accept that addicts aren’t responsible for their addictions.
What I don’t agree with is that he can be judged for killing himself. The guy was clearly in a bad place for a long time, it’s not like he made the decision with a level head and – frankly – there but for the grace of god goes each of us.
Additionally, and I sense I’ll be alone with this one, I do have a little bit of time for Courtney Love. She can be a nightmare and she’s clearly had her own drug issues, but I think her hand are underrated and she’s absorbed about as much music industry misogyny as anyone in the last 30 years, and still come up fighting.
Plus, this is rad – and it cost her.
You’re not alone. I’m sure Courtney is a right nightmare, but I have a lot of time and a good bit of admiration for her. Pretty On The Inside is a genuinely arresting record, and Live Through This is hands-down one of the best rock albums of the 90s – though it’s really gross (and utterly unsurprising) how many people seem to want it to have been written by Mr Love, because obviously a GURL couldn’t have done it. I really like whole chunks of Celebrity Skin, too.
While she’s clearly no picnic, I think a lot of Courtney’s reputation is down to good old-fashioned misogyny whipped up by the Yoko narrative imposed on her by the music press at the time (and that utter hack Nick Broomfield really didn’t help matters).
Yeah, that’s very much my take too. She’s clearly a difficult person, but male rock stars are forgiven far worse behaviour all the time.
Plus, she went after Axl Rose and responded thus to Steve Albini’s assertion that “Kurt’s girlfriend is a psycho hosebeast, and he knows it”:
“The only way Steve Albini would think I was a perfect girlfriend would be if I was from the East Coast, played the cello, had big tits and small hoop earrings, wore black turtlenecks, had all matching luggage, and never said a word.“
I mean, how can you not applaud that?
God, Albini is so obviously a nasty piece of work and gets a constant pass because of his tedious schmindier-than-thou opinions. He’s recorded some great albums though.
Mmm. I recently read Our Band Could Be Your Life – and though the portrait of Albini is sympathetic he does nonetheless sound, frankly, like a horrible little man. I honestly think he gets a pass because he wears glasses.
Remember Q magazine’s ‘Who Does So-and-So Think He Is?’ article? I read it every month no matter who the subject was. It might be someone I didn’t know, or it could be someone I actively disliked, but I read the article every month because I liked the writing style.
This is like that. I’m no fan of Nirvana (although I do like ‘Rainbow Chaser’!!) but this was well written, passionate and articulate. And who knows? Maybe I’ll look for some Nirvana next time I’m on YouTube.
Nirvana mean nothing to me and I barely know any of their music. But I completely understand what you’re talking about here Bingo and I love this piece. Really good writing about music doesn’t depend on your liking the music or artist being written about. It communicates and explains what music does, and how it does it. And this is really good writing about music. Thanks for the post.
Don’t like nirvana. (0-1).
Nirvana are the worst group of the Golden Age by a country mile. (0-2).
Half-time, 0-2.
A groovy piece of writing. (1-2).
Marmite (good feet for a Big Yeast Extract Spread) gets the equalizer. (2-2).
Ah this is wonderful stuff, Bingo. Thank you. I could’ve written much of it myself. (Well no, I couldn’t, obviously, but I *feel* much of it myself.)
Kurt played a really similar role in my life at a really formative time – particularly as a model for what a man can and needn’t be.
I’ll be honest – for me that was a double-edged sword, though. I am a gentle and sensitive chap (was acutely both those things as a teenager) and as you say, Kurt was a huge star who validated those qualities at an incredibly important time of my life (you and I are basically the same age, though you’re a few months younger, you handsome bastard).
The other edge is this: I think Kurt’s depth and complexity and – yes – victim mentality encouraged me to play up certain aspects of my own character which contributed to some unhappiness and dysfunction. It’s not his fault, but just as his public gentleness and sensitivity made me feel ok to be those things myself, it also felt like I had the green light to be a bit tortured, a bit self-pitying, a bit “the jocks are out to get me”. Too much of that can be the root of Nice Guy Syndrome: almost the worst affliction an everyday man can have, and a genuinely toxic way to live your life. I grew out of that quite quickly, thank Christ, but I do recognise how many of us used Kurt as a role model in that way, a lot of whom never left it behind. Teenagers always need to get over themselves, but teenagers who have a role model who makes them feel Deep and Complicated and In Pain find getting over themselves a lot harder, I suspect.
I think Nirvana are the Beatles of late Gen X / early Millennials. Only we will ever truly feel this way about them. To everyone else they’re no big deal, confusingly overrated, perhaps even actively annoying. Maybe you had to be there, be that age, to really get them. I’m fine with that. That’s how pop music works (something which 60s obsessives obdurately refuse to accept: it’s not just you, lads: everyone feels this way about their youth).
But no other band has ever made me feel quite like Nirvana still can, and if you had to be there to feel that, I’m just glad that we were.
This thread’s on fire! Top notch stuff, Mr Pig, especially the “60’s obsessives” bit
Absolutely nothing can ever mean as much as the music stars of your teenage years. So for me The Jam. Their shortcomings in terms of some absolute musical quality index are there to hear when listening back to the albums now but the music, the lyrics, the clothes, the Rickenbackers, and the total and utter commitment of audience and band at live gigs meant something at 16/17 that no band could ever do again.
Absolutely. I would love to have been there for Little Richard, Elvis, Cliff and the Shadows, The Beatles, Hendrix, Bowie etc but I wasn’t. I can try and educate myself but nothing will match nor better in my mind than The Jam getting to number one or seeing The Associates do Club Country on Top of the Pops. Two absolute pivotal musical moments for me. I learned the lesson the hard way when social media was in its infancy that no amount of nagging would change someone else’s peak music period. It’s so hard wired. I’m not sure if one era obsessive is worse than another. What I do know is that writing from the heart about your time and why it meant so much to you achieves more than endlessly slagging an era that you weren’t there for.
This is brilliant.
I knew you were the other person on here who had probably gone through something similar with Nirvana, and there’s a lot of truth in what you say – it’s a spot on observation.
I think (or like to think) I was spared some of the negative aspects by simple virtue of the fact I played a lot of football as a teenager, which gave me at least half a foot in the jock camp at times. I also wasn’t particularly interested in the tortured artist aspect, because I had no musical aspirations whatsoever. In fact, the tortured artist stuff is pretty much where I drew the line with Kurt – I was looking for someone to show me a different type of masculinity and make a success of it, not someone to show me a different type of masculinity and make it look like hell on earth. I realised pretty quickly that I wouldn’t want to be Kurt Cobain, I just wanted a few of the characteristics he possessed, and certainly not at the expense of all the others.
If I’m honest, I did – and still do – quite like the whole discomfort over selling out though. It’s a bit of a juvenile way to see the world, but I feel like we suffer from a surfeit of the stuff these days: the idea you should be uncomfortable sacrificing your values. Kurt took it to a ludicrous extreme at times, but a drop or two of the stuff is good for the soul.
I would guess there’s a lot of truth in the observation that you needed to be a teenager for Nirvana: they were, in many ways, the ultimate teen band – I mean, it doesn’t get much more teen than screaming “NO RECESS” like literal apartheid has just been imposed. But I also think it helped to connect with Cobain before he became the cartoon he later was. The public remembrance of him now is as the oversensitive, Ill-fated poet with the doe eyes, the Jim Morrison of the 90s. But that’s not how I remember him. I preferred the brief period when he was still a human being, with life and heart and energy and some sort of animus beyond being the poster boy for doomed youth. Before it all went fully sour.
The drugs and angst and glamorous rock star misery were where he lost me. I didn’t want any of that, it seemed so weak. Selfishly, I just wanted the strengths. Plus, I had enough angst of my own to be dealing with.
Yeah this. Nirvana aren’t the weeping-at-the-poetry band. They’re the being-ludicrously-excited-and-energised band. I felt that, entirely, and my interpretation of Kurt as a man was actually not that connected with my experience of the music. The music was, and is, pure adrenalised joy. (Especially Live At Reading, which is the best recorded document of a band I’ve ever heard or seen.)
Btw, the recent BBC Nirvana in Britain doc was great. Lots of unseen footage, and terrific fun.
I was around 30, but thought they were outstanding. Anyone who can watch Unplugged in New York and not recognise their greatness has very different taste to me. Main problem for many is they just became too huge and all encompassing, it is a real tragedy we never got to see what would come next (and I don’t mean Foo Fighters)
I think there’s a lot of truth in what you say about how your generation had a very specific response to them. I’m more like early Gen X, which is maybe five or six years older than you or Bingo. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but I think it’s five very important years in the life of a boy / young man. I was just about 18 when Bleach came out, and getting on for 20 when Nevermind blew up, and so I was through that questioning / looking for role models stage that Bingo talks about so well in the OP (that’s not to say I wasn’t horrifically immature in lots of other ways of course!). I loved Nirvana, and my experiences of being a fan as they went from no hopers to megastars are some of my most prized musical memories, but I just didn’t have that sense of, I dunno, awakening from them that you two did.
Great post. I feel similarly about David Sylvian. Very different vibe, mind.
This doesn’t really belong on this thread but I’ve just seen this on Twitter and I know how much Diego Maradona means to Bingo…
Thanks, Dave – this is absolutely brilliant. He really was the soul of the game, just look at the absolute joy in that video. That’s what football should be.
A couple of months ago I saw a young woman of probably about 20 in a Nirvana t-shirt. Not in itself a big deal, but I thought – well, Nirvana’s big record was 30 years ago and it would be the equivalent of the 20-year old me wearing a t-shirt with Buddy Holly on it, which would have been well weird.
Despite being exactly the right age I’ve never ‘got’ Nirvana, but I think it’s now safe to say that they’ve gone into that category of acts – the fabs, Stones, Led Zep, Baltimora*, Bob Marley whose appeal has transcended their time and will continue to do so.
I do like Buddy Holly, though.
*citation needed
I was wandering around town the other day, and I saw a girl of about 18 wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt. Some rudimentary maths tells me the equivalent for the 18-year-old me would’ve been wearing a Bing Crosby t-shirt. Or, possibly, a Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians design.
Thanks. This is why I come here.
Great stuff. Thanks Bingo.
It’s a classic case of ‘if you can’t see it you can’t be it’ I think.
I’m a similar age and I remember thinking so many adults males were terrible role models. There was still a very toxic masculinity around everyday life. I remember one adult who I really respected telling me the only options for men as leisure activities were drinking or golf!
Kurt showed an alternative to that and every little thing which shows a different option is important at that age.
Mind you we then had to put up with 90s lads mag culture where being a sexist idiot was dressed up as irony.
That is a really wonderful piece of writing. I never really followed Nirvana but it matters not one iota in enjoying this piece.
I recently read Mark Lanegan’s autobiography which although I enjoyed, is extremely brutal. However there is extreme tenderness in the sections about Kurt Cobain whom he clearly adored.
I concur with your depiction regarding a pop star almost as a beacon in a teenage storm of confusion. Mine was Costello and men in particular seem to need that crutch.
Wonderful writing, @bingolittle and lovely responses.
My equivalent, 15 years earlier, like @moseleymoles were The Jam and particularly the more existential-crises oriented songs (Thick As Thieves, Liza Radley, Private Hell) which went some way towards expressing that sense of not fitting in. To recall the culture around me back then, I simply bring to mind the bloke from school who, bumping into me in the Christmas holidays after my first term away at University.
‘You’ve moved to London? You’re gay then?’
The bloke from school was clear!y a dickhead.
The sheer range of things that were deemed “gay” at my school fairly boggled the mind. Teachers and students just as bad.
Ultimately, it was what it was: 1,000 boys and a largely male teaching staff, all locked in a building and trying desperately to live up to an imaginary set of traits that no one ever possibly could.
I remember walking home from a night out with a mate when I was about 17. He was wankered, I was sober. Lovely bloke, wouldn’t hurt a fly – I still see him from time to time now. He told me his nightmare was a rumour starting that he was gay – what would his dad think? – and if it ever happened he’d have to beat someone up.
Masculinity, at that school, in a nutshell. And he was one of the legit good guys.
Summed up in the immortal words of Jimbo Jones: “You kissed a girl…. that is soooo gay!”
I do remember somebody in my junior school saying that Marmite was gay. I was 8 years old, not the brightest of sparks, but even I knew that there was something wrong with saying things like that.
WMy school was all boys until the 4th year. It was pretty violent from the teachers down. One time a blue patka was stolen.The headmaster asked everyone with a blue coat of any description to bring it to the school. Several didnt obey his instruction – he rounded them up and gave them the stick in assembly. Probably close to a hundred.In French the teacher who doubled as a drama teacher went round the class asking people to pronounce boys and girls names in French. Everyone who pronounced the name wrong had to sit down. I was the last one standing and got to Yvonne – I knew it was pronounced with emphasis on the Y as an E – for some reason I pronounced it with emphasis on the last E. For my troubles I got four of the best with the slipper – I am convinced it was because I refused to play Oliver in his drana production of Oliver Twist.
No wonder people acted in a strange way. Systemic violence.
I think one of the most profound social changes I’ve seen in my lifetime is the attitude to “gay” amongst teenagers. My secondary school experiences were exactly like these, and I look back and think of the almost certainly not insignificant number of actually gay kids there would have been in my own 1000 boy school, and my heart breaks at how quietly wretched their time there must have been. The attitudes I see now from my own fourteen year old and her friends and peers are so completely different. I don’t mean to suggest it’s all wine and roses and a trip down easy street to exist as a gay teenager now, but I do suspect it’s less painful than it was thirty years ago.
The monochrome suits. Jumping in the air. The Motown covers. The Shelley poem on the cover of Sound Affects. The Empire paraphenalia of the Setting Sons inside cover. Bruce Foxton’s proto-mullet. Letting the fans in to listen to the sound checks. The bowling shoes. Blazers. The two versions of Smithers Jones. The live ep that came with the Going Underground single. Going Underground going to number one. The candy-striped paper bag the Town Called Malice 12″ came in. The Beat Surrender double single. The fact that their early politics were all over the place. The fact they could get nowhere in America. The fact I believed for years Vic Coppersmith-Heaven must be a ridiculous pseudonym, and yes it was. Splitting up at the top. The import singles that charted. The awful artwork for the mediocre second album – cartoons, terrible clothes. The terrible English Rose that wasn’t in the track listings. All of it meant a huge huge amount to me between 15 and 17. All of this is deliberately not the music itself – that’s a given.
Spot on. Incidentally, for reasons beyond anyone’s ken, Johnny Walker regularly plays English Rose on Sounds Of The Seventies. Like cueing up Laughing Gnome for Bowie obituaries.
Not forgetting, asking one of the fan club to take the cover photo for a single, thus setting him up for a lifetime career in photography.
Okay, give. Who was Vic C H then?
Plain old Vic Smith when he engineered Black Sabbath Vol 4.
The extended double-barrel arrived for no reason (apparently)
Great piece, Bingo.
The stars of my teenage years were not people whose lifestyles had any appeal for me. My moral compass was set by Catholicism. David Bowie and Eno, then Costello and David Byrne were all playing roles one way or another, teaching me nothing about how to be a man. I admired Stevie Wonder as a person but he lived in a different world. Ditto Bob Marley. Marvin Gaye fascinated me and look what happened to him. The Beatles were effectively cartoon characters from my childhood. McCartney didn’t inspire me to embrace vegetarianism nor Harrison Buddhism. I looked at Jazz artists and realised that they were effectively deranged, sacrificing any real sense of living in order to play their music. I think now about people who I once obsessed over and feel embarrassed, such as James Brown and Phil Spector.
Gosh! I look back on my life and realise I wasted enormous amounts of time, money and emotional energy.
Really great piece of writing, thanks.
I think a light has gone on in my head. I kind of avoided paying too much attention to them at the time, partly because I usually run in the opposite direction to hype, and there was a lot of that. But also I just didn’t really get them. The music was ok to thrash around to in the uni basement, but it didn’t mean much more to me than that. Since reading your piece they make more sense to me.
Thanks again.
Just fantastic Bingo, your efforts at formulating really came across movingly and synergistically, so top marks, you’re a good man indeed.
Thanks all for the kind words. Very glad if the above helps make the music click for anyone.
By way of a kind of epilogue, as well as a slightly extraordinary example of the way this universe of ours sometimes works, I offer the following…
Some of my wife’s family came and stayed with us over the weekend. House chock full of people, including a bunch of teenagers who I’ve watched grow up a bit over the last few years.
Quite late in the evening on the night of Halloween, sat watching The Descent (phenomenal and overlooked British horror movie, well worth checking out), one of them confided to me that he thought he might be gay and is having a hard time at school. Not “getting beaten up daily” hard, just the more regular “who are these jackasses I’m surrounded by, is there anyone else like me out there and will I ever feel less lonely than I do right now” hard.
So, I found myself sat listening into the small hours, and trying to figure out what reassurance I could offer. What reassurance I would have wanted at that age, when grappling with similarish issues. And as I sat thinking, some of what I wrote in the OP above came back to me, and I had a little moment of wonder at the way that sometimes we’re lucky enough get the chance to pay it forward just a little.
The kid in question will be OK. He’ll survive school, and go escape off to wherever he needs to be to find his tribe. What he really needed was to feel like that escape will happen, that there actually is a tribe out there for him. Just the same way I did way back when. It’s all so much clearer in retrospect than when you’re actually living it….
That’s a lovely bit of serendipity.
I was slightly miffed last week that a high-ranking Australian footballer coming out made the UK news. It is 2021, FFS, does anyone actually care about someone else’s sexuality? I don’t.
Still a massive massive issue in football.
We’re not fully there with racism, and we’re miles behind that with homophobia. I know a lot of football fans who will positively erupt at the slightest suggestion of racism, but when you raise the LGBT community you get rueful smiles and “yeah, well we’re not there with that yet”.
Plus, the entire game will merrily jet off to Qatar next Winter. Don’t worry though, Beckham has secured the right for fans to wave rainbow flags in stadia in return for his £150m. Just don’t be gay while waving said flags, if you know what’s good for you.
A few seasons back at the Amex, a bunch of Leeds fans chanted ‘Does your boyfriend, does your boyfriend, does your boyfriend know you’re here? Does your boyfriend know you’re here?’
Brighton fans’ response:
‘You’re too ugly, you’re too ugly, you’re too ugly to be gay, you’re too ugly to be gay.’