I remember reading an interesting story in the paper a while ago about John Hervey. He was the 7th Marques of Bristol and lived pretty much Robin Leach style: champagne evenings, caviar dreams, all of that good stuff. He had the good fortune to be born into £35 million pounds. That’s like a billion in American money. Unfortunately, all the cash didn’t do him much good, because he died as a penniless junkie. He was in and out of jail, and by the time he died, he was taking the coke every other hour. Once, he flew around in a helicopter, snorting lines off the map he was using for navigation. As he lived an over the top life of debauchery, his holdings gradually decreased – the plantation became a few acres, a few acres became a mansion, that became an apartment. He had two half sisters, and while under normal circumstances (like say, their deal old bro not putting it all up his nose) they would have gotten a little money upon his death, they got nada. Now, don’t worry about them too much – they’ve both gotten reality TV shows in the time that’s passed since.
Of fucking course.
The majority of reality TV is built on the careful cultivation of misery – making golddiggers date construction workers or making college students take a lie detector test from a cute girl’s parents. It’s hard to blame some etheral, amoral jerk in a business suit – the things we disapprove of in society are sold because there are lots of people out there that buy them. And the misery is sometimes dressed in the fancy coat of inspiration, but the inspirational angle isn’t really the hook of the show. Sure, you could say it’s inspirational that an Army lieutenant with no limbs is getting a new home somehow, but you’re really tuning in too see the really cool house. And it’s inspirational to see a 500 pound guy lose weight, but you’re really tuning in to gawk at the rolls and see some crying. Jeff Probst has got a show coming out soon called Live Like You’re Dying, featuring the last wishes of cancer patients and such. The show, if it succeeds, will not do so because people need to be inspired. They’ll want to know, from week to week, what kind of cool shit the cancer kids are up to.
Tragedy is ingrained in our TV, and ingrained in our lives. The reminder that death or peril is right around the corner provides the glue, the conflict that fuels our day to day lives. But it’s not always something that we’re comfortable with in music. It’s not often that musicians will create songs or records built around really awful things that have happened to them or people they know (some have, and we’ll come to that). Usually, it’s juice, an unwritten part of the record’s story that gets attention and pulls ears.
Think about Just Whitney in 2002. There was a CD, sure, and Whitney hadn’t put out a record in a very,very long time. But the hook wasn’t a new Whitney Houston record, the hook was the drugs! The Bobby and Whitney show. Her emaciated frame and the claims of stress! “We don’t do crack! Crack is wack!” The record itself was secondary to the soap opera. When it finally came out, it did decent for the post-musical era – later on, they would get rid of the front altogether and just get – you guessed it – a reality show, where we could feast on their self destruction without the distracting pretense of a record to buy.
This happens over and over again with “troubled” celebrities who’ve become better known or their quirks than their craft. Mariah Carey, STP, Boy George. Britney Spears. Whoever. This grabs ears for a little while, but eventually it gets thin. The implied conflict of will they overcome drugs/fat/crazy? is answered with a resounding NO, which is just as boring as if they’d never fallen off the tracks in the first place.
And sometimes it’s other people who And then there’s Micheal Jackson. After 9/11, the nation was reeling from the loss of thousands of citizens and the abrupt introduction to the impact world affairs could have on their lives. None of this stopped Jacko. For all the posing and strutting he was doing, I coulda swore he thought he was gonna transform into a giant robot on the stage, turn back time, and swipe those jets outta midair. What More Can I Give was cheesy and exploitative, looking back on it, but at the same time, maybe everybody was looking for a dose of the familiar, a giant Micheal Jackson singalong song to make everything 1985 again.
And Bob Dylan released Blood on the Tracks in 1975. Technically speaking, it was one of his best records – and you can tell because his next few records after that claimed to be “his best since Blood on the Tracks” in the copy. Packed with lots of heartfelt love songs and plenty of bitter angst, the album, track by track, recounts the trauma of his divorce. Unlike the other, more voyeuristic tragedies, this one is uncomfortable to listen to, and unlike many records, this tragedy was caused by the making of the record. He’d retired a little after Woodstock and his label, desperate to get a little more cash out of a banner artist, had pumped out an awful rarities album. Dylan didn’t take it well, and wanted to wash the taste out of the mouths of his fans. He went back to work – more touring, more practicing, more hours in the studio and away from home. Eventually there were accusations of infidelity and divorce proceedings. After a lot of recrimination and stress, a settlement was reached, and the result was this album – and you know what? The story, and the gossipy meta elements probably helped sell a lot more records.
Later, he said he kinda regretted leaving the more personal songs on there, but really, would the experience have been the same if there wasn’t the dirty element to it, the feeling of wallowing in someone else’s misery? It probably would have been some good songs about love and some good songs about breaking up. It probably wouldn’t have felt as “real”. I don’t know if there’s some kind of exotic etiquette for it. Race to the bottom, any budding tunesmiths who are dumb enough to listen to me. Make it real, maybe you’ll get on the telly.
Tags: Blood On The Tracks, Bob Dylan, Britney Spears, Mariah Cary, Micheal Jackson, Stone Temple Pilots, Whitney Houston