I've written many articles trying to explain exactly why Europe is so different from the United States, and why people take this difference for granted. I have almost beaten a dead horse to a pulp writing about ti so much. But now I want to try and explain to my diligent reader one of the origin points of how I came to realize just *how* different the two cultures were,by striking on something that is a little more modern, and more interesting for most modern folks: Rock and roll.
I want to try and explain just why rock and roll was really the first place where I saw this great big (and negative) difference (i.e. the States was negative, and Euro positive) and also just why the American relationship with rock and roll is, to me, one of the strangest of all time. How come? Allow me to give two reasons: One the one hand, we all know that, yes, Americans birthed rock and roll, in a certain sense, with the blues and the Memphis, Tennessee Sun Studios sound; but, on the other, we also know that the most memorable rock bands of all time all seem -- even still today -- to be English. In addition to these two points, there is also the third point I want to make, which is the most controversial: Not only do I think the Americans never gave us a band that was even close to as fun as the Rolling Stones were; but I also think that the US culture accidentally even sort of killed rock and roll. This will be offensive, and misunderstood, I know, but let me try and explain myself.
The first reason that my statement when it comes to this will be taken as strange is because, when one looks into rock history, one is going to find that the entire English side of it is often very glossed over whenever it is being discussed, even in complete spite of the fact that almost all the great rock bands were English. What is instead endlessly focused on (even by the English band members themselves) is the fact that all the inspiration was taken from the blues, that they loved the US, and that they were so inspired by Elvis and Little Richard and so on. Figures like Keith Richards , Jagger, Eric Clapton, the guys from the Who, basically all of them, will come in and explain to you in interview after interview just how vital the United States was to their success, and just hiow inspiring it was. Usually, if England is mentioned, it's insulted and denigrated: "We couldn't wait to get the hell outta there.."
Of course, there is one key thing that people must remember about these figures and perhaps why they are saying these things, and glossing over Englands specific role in rock and rolls origin, and here is one reason I believe heavily in: They are paying lip service to the States,and buttering up to it, because ..well, the US has about 270 million more people living in it, than does England, which only has a population of 50 milliom. As a result of this incredibly enormous population, the English acts are quite correct that America is responsible for their success ...because they wouldn't have sold nearly as many records without them. At the same time as that though, they are very mistaken, in my opionion, if they seriously believe that they would have been the same sort of artists had they been born in the States, instead of in England.
The really harsh truth is that no country besides England could have ever possibly created these bands, for a few reasons, the biggest reason being that rock and roll was, at the height of its 1960s success, a very strange sort of fusion between New World excitement, and Old World artistry. Just take a look at some of the Rolling Stones most popular hits and you should see what I mean: many of them are almost shockingly British in nature once you look twice at them. "Jumping Jack Flash" for example, honestly, if you stripped it of its electricity, seems like a song that could have been sung in medieval times, at the Kings court. And then, never forget the costumes that Jagger and others wore : many of them look like they ought to be the costume of the "jester", a figure who of course, since we have nver had any Kings courts, has never existed in America, period. In other words, there is actually something deeply European and even Middle Ages about much of rock and rolls imagery, despite the fact that it later became known as this wholly American thing. Led Zeppelin was the most unapologetic in their Englishness; but the Rolling Stones are right up there with them, oftentimes, depending where you look, as well as the Beatles and Pink Floyd, in major, major ways.
Now, one big cultural connection that occurs between the "British Invasion" is actually, I believe, that it ties very much in with the success that Harry Potter has enjoyed here, because whats happening is that this stuff is all coming out of this exact same Old World pot of "mystery" that we, as Americans, are only able to get from the English, since they are the only people speaking this language in the Old World. Rock and roll is very deeply tied to a very specific European tradition of fantasy writing and theatre, believe it or not, that includes Italian Renaissance figures, William Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Frodo Baggins, castles and kings, and others. What many people who have never studied the deeper spheres of US culture fail to realize is that , no longer being in the land of castles and kings, and not having any of those ruins around us to go and see as we stop to get groceries (like Old Worlders do) we have often, especially before television, not had the first idea as to how to write about any of that stuff, at all. Americans in the mid 1800s could have never produced a text like Alice in Wonderland, and that text and its influence on the English rock bands ought never be forgotten. John Lennon, for instance, was heavily influenced (and says it somewhere) by Alice in Wonderland, and this influence is very easy to see in "Strawberry Fields Forever" and other 'hippy dippy' works by him. Mick Jagger at times literally seems like Peter Pan come to life.Look at Donovan from Ireland, who is far more imaginative than Bob Dylan ever was, ironically. And it's also no coincidence at all that Johnny Depp based Captain Jack Sparrow, who seems like Captain Hook, off of Keith Richards. All the English rock characters really do seem like people from fantasy books, because many of them are coming from the exact culture that, even then in the 1960s, was already very deeply influenced by fairy tale culture.
Americans, on the other hand, are, as I repeatedly stress, coming from a "developing country" culture, and so they tend to value practicality and realism, and oftentimes they even tend to wholly reject fantasy as a realm of, well, "faggotry". There are no real American fairy tales...and so we have not often produced "fairy tale" type characters ala Mick Jagger and onwards. We have instead often produced characters who are more in line with our old folklore, characters like Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan the Giant Lumberjack, et cetera. Our current hipste r movement, of bearded boys who wear flannel shirts, is a testament to just how strangely close we still are with all of this. We still somehow really have not produced a wholly American fairy tale setting for our artists to truly flourish in, and this is why, to get back to rock and roll, you'll see that ...after about 1972 or so (which is when American rock bands first start to try to sink the English ones) rock and roll experiences a dramatic change: it goes from being the terrain of fairy boys like Jagger, with glitter and sparkling blue costumes and dance moves and gallons of eyeliner and eyeshadow, to being this hardcore outlaw biker movement that mixes more with, first, the Deep South and country, and then, later on, an almost toxic masculinity and Hells Angel sort of vibe.
It gets completely consumed bythe States and comes out looking more like something created in Las Vegas, rather than in London. The "faeries" get pushed out, and the ones that are left go dark..and rogue, and wind up as angry heavy metal heads. And , like I said, we never really see another band like the Rolling Stones again, because the Americans seriously cannot self produce one. Even if they could, for instance, the problem would be that the band would be rejected and altered at some point, and made to be something different than it was. In other words, it would get struck down and told to write "practical realism" lyrics, et cetera....
Of course at this point in the discussion the question becomes a sort of "well, if they sold many records here, doesn't that mean Americans like this sort of stuff?" and this is admittedly tricky, but I think the big issue is that it all, somewhere, goes back to the initial origin point of gaining success on those first opening stages. So, essentially, England, having the ability to accept fairy tale type things without prejudice, gave the Stones and things like Harry Potter their first push , and then, following that push, we are able to accept them on a bigger stage, but without that first push -- which Americans won't give - we don't ever see anything.
If one does not believe me, then all one has to do is try and imagine it from a real life point of view:
Can you seriously imagine a flamboyant and effeminate boy like Jagger , making the rounds in many modern American rock clubs, with pink eyeliner on, and glitter, and those brightly coloured outfits he used to wear, and the long hair etc? The rings? The jewels? The love songs? Can one seriously imagine this act coming out of the South, or the Mid-West, or "low class" New York City? For me, it is impossiblet o imagine. This plane, I guarantee you, as an American, would be shot down on our lower stages. It could survive on our biggest ones, ironically, but it could never actually survive in that birthing pot, and so therfore it is never born. In England, on the other hand, it is able to survive the birthing pot, because they don't have this enormus prejudice against, well, basically anything that isn't about lumberjacks, gunslingers, and masculine men -- which, if you look at the direction American music has gone in since the 70s, you're going to see that such masculine themes are of the utmost importance to them. Hip hop, now the dominant music, is beyond obessed with a ferocious masculinity and despises faggotry, country music is obsessed with a rural conservatism that esssentially espouses the same ideals in a less vulgar way, heavy metal is obsessed with being eternally angry, and though it takes influence from fantasy, tends to take it all from the vicious Vikings rather than anything innocent; and when you do find the colorful modern performers that seem to have a rsemblance to Mick Jagger or Robert Plant , et cetera, from the States, what you will find is that they are, where else, trapped in the pile of "this music is for girls and gays".
Now one last thing I am going to add about this is going to take us into the world of cinema, rather than rock and roll for a moment, and what I want to do is look at someone like Johnny Depp again, for example, who seems very much like a sort of rock star, even though he is an actor. And what I want you to notice are two other notable figures behind him, two film directors, Tim Burton, whom he has worked with repeatedly, and then this man called Terry Gilliam,who did Monty Python. What is so incredible about these two men is that both of them work in the fantasy line -- they are some of the best fantasy type movie directors we have, in my opinion -- and whats so strange is that, well, they're both Americans who now, guess what? They both live in England , and have apparently taken up permanent residence there. And I can assure my reader that the reason this has happened is because of exactly what I say: Fantasy and faery tale sorts of things and alll of this stuff that initially gave birth to rock and roll...it is not accepted in the United States. It is just not accepted. Because it is not practical , and not real, and so it seems queer to the Americans....
The end/
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