Salon.com > Jim DeRogatis

How Ozzy lost his cool

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Ozzy Osbourne has always been a cartoon, but over his 35-year career, he's devolved from a witty, sophisticated, multileveled Looney Tune to a grating, bland and stupid Saturday morning advertisement. As we continue to endure the unprecedented hype generated by MTV's "The Osbournes" and witness the latest incarnation of the corporate rock tour franchise known as Ozzfest, it's worth considering how the venerated co-founder of heavy metal moved from being a goofy but guileless Everyman that discerning fans laughed with -- someone who'd have been an alcoholic bricklayer if he hadn't miraculously stumbled into stardom as a rock frontman -- to someone who most of America is laughing at.

Somewhere along the way Ozzy lost his cool. He went from being rock to being pop, from being a private pleasure, albeit to a huge audience, to becoming a mass commodity, ever willing to pander to the lowest common denominator for a buck. And while the metal faithful are all too willing to settle for a two-word explanation for this -- Sharon Osbourne -- nothing in rock or in life is ever quite that simple.

My Britney problem — and yours

Mon, 03 Dec 2001 20:00:00 +0000

Becoming a dad is a state of mind, and it's much more complicated than becoming a father, which is a mere accident of biology. It can be traumatic for anyone, but it's especially difficult for a rock critic. Ideally, my career is based on championing music that pisses dad off and/or scares the bejesus out of him. Woe is me on the day I cross the line and become the Man myself, though I've been accused of doing so.

Witness the letter I received from a reader after I wrote a harsh review of "Britney," the much-hyped third album by Britney Spears:

"Why are you constantly complaining about Britney Spears' image? Why are you so bothered by the idea that older men may desire Britney sexually? Perhaps you feel ashamed for wanting Ms. Spears yourself in some manner? Or does it have to do with the fact that you have a young daughter?"

The first charge was easy enough to dismiss: I'm a healthy, red-blooded fella, and there's a long list of female pop stars who get my motor running, from Jill Scott and Angie Stone, to Pink and Shakira, to the fair Justine Frischmann and the risqué art-rapper Peaches. But Barbie Doll Britney? Uh-uh, no way. Sure, I recognize her obvious charms, thrust out front and center from the cover of the current Rolling Stone. But she's too synthetic, too "perfect" and ultimately too cold in that airbrushed Playboy centerfold way. Hell, I'd sleep with the guy from Staind before I'd tumble for La Brit.

Stop this benefit!

Sun, 21 Oct 2001 18:19:00 +0000

Critic Nick Tosches once wrote a piece called "The Heartbeats Never Did Benefits," not long after George Harrison organized a 1971 concert for Bangladesh's starving masses. Noted Tosches of that night's sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd: "Da people didn't give a fuck about Bangla Desh."

Tosches then posed a question that, 30 years on, is just as relevant to another benefit at the same venue organized by Harrison's former band mate Paul McCartney -- "The Concert for NYC," broadcast live on VH1 on Saturday night.

"Does rock 'n' roll have anything to do with anything?" Tosches asked. "Once it adopts pretensions of meaningfulness outside of that of a self-contained expression, matrical and flashing, doesn't it become art or pop/kitsch?"

Yes, it does -- though it's hard to complain when it reaches the level of the former. "America: A Tribute to Heroes," the Sept. 22 televised concert organized with lightning speed by veteran MTV producer Joel Gallen and the vile music impresario Jimmy Iovine just days after Sept. 11's terrorist attacks, was presented with a striking spareness and taste and included a surprising number of performances that rivaled Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock for their urgency and emotional wallop -- that did, indeed, smell a lot like art.

What’s up with Generation Y?

Tue, 25 Sep 2001 19:12:00 +0000

As America struggles both literally and metaphorically to climb out from under the bloody wreckage of Sept. 11, many a pundit has taken to quoting the famous line often attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor: "We have woken a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve."

Never mind that, as World War II scholars have pointed out, Yamamoto never uttered those words. (To quote the moderators of the Pearl Harbor Attacked message board, "Nobody can provide a source for this quote prior to the release of the movie 'Tora! Tora! Tora!'") There is a potential sleeping giant here, but it isn't the military-industrial complex that Hollywood's Yamamoto or the current crop of talking heads mean to evoke. It is Generation Y, and it has just gotten a big bucket of ice water in the face.

The boys in the bands

Mon, 19 Jun 2000 19:00:00 +0000

Prompted by the recent publication of Bill Flanagan's execrable "A&R," I wanted to select the five all-time great rock 'n' roll novels. Trouble is, with the possible exceptions of Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" and Tom Carson's "Twisted Kicks," there haven't been any. Yet.

On to the backup plan: five great rock 'n' roll biographies, a genre I've had some occasion to contemplate. Don't yawn -- there isn't a snooze-inducer among the five, promise, and there certainly isn't a story arc as hoary or a narrative voice as hackneyed as those served up nightly by VH1's Cliffs Notes-inspired Behind the Music, which is as corrupting a force as has ever descended upon the devil's music.