The great magic moments of rock'n'roll
By Michael Herr. Excerpt from the book 'Rock Dreams', by Guy Peellaert and Nic Cohn.
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The submission was immediate and total, in the beginning at least it was probably the sweetest thing about us, and the bravest, because it wasn't passive. It's ridiculous to say that we created the climate for rock and roll, we created the rock and roll. The music was never anything more than a face, a pretext for the star-making and the gathering, and that was always true, back a quarter of a century ago when we were simultaneously a secret society and a public menace. We adored rock and roll before we ever heard eight bars of it.
For twenty years we longed for some real intimacy with our stars, and when we finally got it in Rock Dreams there was a recoil, like we'd been hit with an astringent. It was the old familiar greatest story ever told, but one-off. Openly commemorative and soulfully memorial, it was most of all ruthlessly, implacably antinostalgic. It was an elaborate and completely successful entertainment, but dangerous to enter. Even its immense compassion was disturbing, it touched us where we didn't expect or particularly want to be touched again, and it clearly and forcefully included us, embedded us deep in every picture by making us the tacit other-half of every event, the object of all those stargazes and the implied over-subject of the book. This was a rock and roll history that we were forced to take personally. No wonder, looking through it even today, that you can't say whether what you're seeing is glorious or sordid, celebratory or morbid. Even at its funniest it wasn't exactly fun. In fact, there was something a little malarial about these dreams, clinging, upsetting.
Too many men and women had been torn from the saddle riding for the Rock and Roll brand. I don't think anybody was terribly shocked that death figured so blatantly in Rock Dreams; what would any rock and roll book be without it? Dead stars, dead friends, dead days, and even deader responses, in 1969-70-71 that was the weather, there wasn't anybody rocking on either side of the stage that wasn't touched by it, in those days we were all part-time necrologers just as a matter of course. But in Rock Dreams, death is not necessarily the worst of it. Even the most vivid happy people are somehow tragic, trapped inside their pleasures or excluded from their triumphs, and (see the Ad Lib Club Rock Dream) uniformly alone no matter what they do or we do. Hungry and lonely, sated and lonely, mobbed and lonely, it's lonely at the bottom, lonely through the middle, notoriously lonely at the top. It would all be pretty depressing, really, if it wasn't for the rock and roll.
Dreams of famous people, with their impossible inevitable moments and random impeccable casts, magic and logic compatible and torrents of emotion streaming in and out of cold neutral objects. Dreams-as-jokes that make you laugh or make you cry or leave little marks on your psyche.
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The submission was immediate and total, in the beginning at least it was probably the sweetest thing about us, and the bravest, because it wasn't passive. It's ridiculous to say that we created the climate for rock and roll, we created the rock and roll. The music was never anything more than a face, a pretext for the star-making and the gathering, and that was always true, back a quarter of a century ago when we were simultaneously a secret society and a public menace. We adored rock and roll before we ever heard eight bars of it.
For twenty years we longed for some real intimacy with our stars, and when we finally got it in Rock Dreams there was a recoil, like we'd been hit with an astringent. It was the old familiar greatest story ever told, but one-off. Openly commemorative and soulfully memorial, it was most of all ruthlessly, implacably antinostalgic. It was an elaborate and completely successful entertainment, but dangerous to enter. Even its immense compassion was disturbing, it touched us where we didn't expect or particularly want to be touched again, and it clearly and forcefully included us, embedded us deep in every picture by making us the tacit other-half of every event, the object of all those stargazes and the implied over-subject of the book. This was a rock and roll history that we were forced to take personally. No wonder, looking through it even today, that you can't say whether what you're seeing is glorious or sordid, celebratory or morbid. Even at its funniest it wasn't exactly fun. In fact, there was something a little malarial about these dreams, clinging, upsetting.
Too many men and women had been torn from the saddle riding for the Rock and Roll brand. I don't think anybody was terribly shocked that death figured so blatantly in Rock Dreams; what would any rock and roll book be without it? Dead stars, dead friends, dead days, and even deader responses, in 1969-70-71 that was the weather, there wasn't anybody rocking on either side of the stage that wasn't touched by it, in those days we were all part-time necrologers just as a matter of course. But in Rock Dreams, death is not necessarily the worst of it. Even the most vivid happy people are somehow tragic, trapped inside their pleasures or excluded from their triumphs, and (see the Ad Lib Club Rock Dream) uniformly alone no matter what they do or we do. Hungry and lonely, sated and lonely, mobbed and lonely, it's lonely at the bottom, lonely through the middle, notoriously lonely at the top. It would all be pretty depressing, really, if it wasn't for the rock and roll.
Dreams of famous people, with their impossible inevitable moments and random impeccable casts, magic and logic compatible and torrents of emotion streaming in and out of cold neutral objects. Dreams-as-jokes that make you laugh or make you cry or leave little marks on your psyche.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Buddy Holly. Hey, what happened? One moment I was in Lubbock, Texas, and I had bad teeth, bad eyes and sang with my nostrils and adenoids, hiccoughing and whining. Everyone said I was crazy, so I left and came to New York, an I met a man who straightened my teeth, gave me new glasses, dressed me up real Italian sharp. Next he called me Buddy Holly, and what kind of name is that? Then he sent me out on tour, and put me on TV, and now I'm a Rock'n'Roll star. I like it. Everywhere I go, girls scream at me, boys ask for my autograph and I ride around in a Cadillac. But sometimes I can't believe it - I remember Lubbock, Texas, and everybody laughing and I ask myself, can it last?