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Bring me the fat head of Elton John | page 1, 2
Sure, Lester was a fat mustachioed drunk who rarely bathed and was dead of pills at 34, but he had enormous care for and belief in the medium of rock 'n' roll and he wallowed in it better than anyone. His pure, screaming blasts of messy feeling are absolutely heartbreaking. Lester, with hilarious grit and Gonzo grandiloquence, took the twists and turns of rock personally. Nobody seems to feel as much as Lester anymore. Nobody takes up the jousting lance and gets on the white steed and makes a big romantic fool of themselves sloppily loving and hating things with all their meat and blood and personal humiliation, the way he did, anymore. That used to be the job of the artist: heightened sensitivity, feeling life in ruder colors than the rest of the populace. Now success is all about looking stylishly dead, inside and out. It's a flat new world of celebrity insect heroes for a depersonalized culture in service to the corporate hives. I think that one big reason why nobody cares anymore is that my generation witnessed the hardcore debasement of all of our majestic rock legends by their own liver-spotted hands. Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Elton John, all of them, upon aging, started spitting up tasteless, runny clots of pre-masticated musical baby-food. These people used to be outrageous; godlike mega-talents, carnally magnificent legends, capable of ripping out billowing streams of raw transcendent emotion! They were the shit! Then, all of a whiplash-sudden, age and the vast financial rewards of Top 40, adult-contemporary hose-bagging chewed them into fat jingle-writing jerk-offs, triggered by greed. How can any artist, in the span of one lifetime, jump from creating the audio masterpiece "Living for the City" to ejecting the limp, cringe-inducing "Ebony and Ivory"? Paul McCartney was always fairly tasteless when left to his own devices, but how could any human being voluntarily jump from "Helter Skelter" to "Ebony and Ivory"? "Let's write some hits, Michael," McCartney said to Michael Jackson around 10 years ago. Not songs. "Hits." Result:
"The Girl is Mine." Shudder. How did it happen?! Elton John! Once the towering, spangled bliss-freak who birthed "Rocket Man," became the soft-hipped CEO who artificially inseminated "The Way You Look Tonight" into the big money airwaves. Sting is the worst offender of them all, having regressed from being the sneeringly poetic pirate boy who howled on "Outlandos d'Amour" to a whimpering purveyor of goddamned Branford Marsalis ultra-lite jacuzzi jazz. Is it all the ravages of age? Do the years turn everyone into a withered, simpering, pastel Hallmark card of a tired, cynical fuck? Give me the Big Black Pill, mother, if you ever see me exchange my piss and vinegar for cap-toothed, hollow-eyed, Viacom cheerleading. Better to eat dog food at 70. Book me a seat on the Chuck Wagon. Hope I eat them beef-flavored rat briquettes instead of my own words.
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