Rage On

The strange politics of millionaire rock stars

Brian Doherty from the October 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Powers fails to recognize that her bohemia is predicated upon a market liberalism that throws off so much wealth that you can live like a Pharaoh just by scavenging what other people throw out–as she and her slacker buddies did in San Francisco in the ’80s and early ’90s. Her bohemian lifestyle is part of the same system that underwrites free markets, consumerism, and tolerance for all sorts of offensive speech and alternative lifestyles. In other words, the liberty to be bohemian is a glorious result of the very capitalist reality that Powers says a real bohemian must be against.

In a slightly different vein, well-known rock critic Dave Marsh asserts a necessary connection between the progressive left and rock music. Marsh, a former Rolling Stone mainstay, brings it all back home to race and class in Rock and Rap Confidential, the monthly newsletter he’s edited since 1983. Rock, he says, was the result of breaking down traditional race and class barriers. It represents, Marsh writes, "a chance to communicate across all the gaps in our society–gaps of class, race, region, gender, generation, education, you name it. Used this way rock ’n’ roll became not just a ‘way out’ of impoverished working class or straight-jacketed middle class existence but a method of absolutely transforming yourself, a means of becoming who you’d always dreamed of being…Of such things is freedom constructed."

A certain poetic internal freedom, yes. But about more mundane freedoms–to earn money, say, and spend it how you see fit, or to not have decisions made for you by a nanny state–Marsh is as quiet as audiences at a Canned Heat reunion.

Unlike many leftists, Marsh understands the oppressive potential of government clearly enough to tell me this in an interview: "The difference between a left-progressive-socialist or communist, or whatever the fuck anyone wants to call me, and a liberal is precisely the degree to which you trust the government. And the difference on gun control is precisely the degree to which you trust the government. The First Amendment is first for a reason, and the Second Amendment is second for a reason."

But Marsh can’t sensibly reconcile the liberty whose praises he sings with the kind of state necessary to forge the classless egalitarianism that he wants. "I’m trying to find a way to develop a society where people work cooperatively most of the time in order to act on individuality some of the time," he tells me.

But Marsh’s conflation of rock as class-and-race mixer with rock as progressive force foists a narrow, partisan political agenda on a more general form of pre-political expression. Certainly such fathers of rock as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley shattered race and class taboos: Crossing such lines explains in large part why they were loved and hated by so many.

More than that, though, such figures helped craft the legend of being young and being American as very heaven. Their foot-tapping, ass-shaking rhythms communicate Dionysian excess, a liberating, often frenzied release from all sorts of restraint and control. It is precisely this aspect that cultural conservatives on both the right and the left have always found suspicious about rock ’n’ roll. Rock inspires a devil-may-care sense of fun in both individuals and groups, one that doesn’t crave any social purpose higher than making the listener feel a particularly energetic and lively brand of good.

Elvis, Chuck Berry, and the rest did this as artists, not proselytizers. If they were the voice of those suffering social injustice and prejudice, they broke free by standing up for a joyous liberty of pleasure and expression, not by campaigning for campesinos and a ban on nuclear power. They were about flamboyance and excitement–especially their own highly individualized visions of such things–not dour attempts to institute Chumbawamba’s dream of endless town meetings.

It’s easy, of course, simply to accuse stinking rich entertainment celebs who talk about overthrowing the system that pays them so well of being hypocrites. Easy, perhaps, and necessary, since of course they are. It’s a pose that, however stylish, is just that. But there’s something more interesting going on than either conscious or naive hypocrisy.

What rockin’ leftists have the hardest time facing up to is rock’s reality as a product of capitalism. Chumbawamba claims it is playing the game of "exist[ing] within [the capitalist system] and at the same time trying to find ways to bring the bastard down." The members also admit that, thanks to their deal with a major label, they have "a decent standard of living for the first time in their lives." (These quotes all from the FAQ on their official Web site, www.chumba.com. On the site, they also fend off accusations from young fans who complain that Chumba should never suggest that it’s all right to get drunk if you enjoy it–that beer money, after all, could have been spent helping the downtrodden.)

To justify its compromised position, Rage Against the Machine drags Noam Chomsky into the debate, making the twisted analogy that Chomsky wouldn’t object to Barnes & Noble–a big, bad company–selling his books, because that’s where people buy books. That analogy might explain why Rage would allow its records to be sold at Tower megastores, but not why its members would become employees of and sell ownership of their music to Sony, which makes far more money selling Rage records than Rage itself does.

Leftists desperately want to avoid real discussion of such contradictions. That’s because such contradictions suggest that if it’s impossible to escape acting like capitalists, maybe there isn’t anything wrong with openly being one.

In a curious way, left-leaning rockers and critics are abetted in their cognitive dissonance by right-wingers, who are similarly uncomfortable with the liberating and wild aspects of capitalist culture, especially its willingness to give people whatever they want regardless of the "morality" of the desire. Right-wingers, every bit as much as their left-wing counterparts, are fundamentally troubled by the cultural implications of capitalism.

As Bill Bennett’s periodic jeremiads against advertising that exhort consumers "to break the rules" and "to peel off inhibitions" suggest, ostensibly pro-market conservatives are among the last ones to sell capitalism for what it is: a realm of groovy freedom filled with a dizzying and ever-expanding panoply of strange and wonderful and disturbing lifestyles and identities in which even the lousiest jobs can buy enormous amounts of leisure and the coolest movies, music, video games, and whatever else you want.

Both the right and the left are fully invested in a Puritan-work-ethic version of capitalism, no matter how at odds with reality such an approach is. For the right, Max Weber’s world of long hours and forgone pleasure is precisely what is good about the system: It creates a society of God-fearing, hard-working, well-behaved individuals. For the left, capitalism not only immiserates all but the top 1 percent of income earners, it crushes difference, breeds racism, and regiments free expression; hence the need for revolution. (Precisely how Ho’s Vietnam, say, or Mao’s China, two alternatives invoked by rockers as preferable to contemporary America, provide models for a freer world is left unspecified.)