Masculine Arrogance Blows
In 1973, Jonathan Richman, then known for fronting the Modern Lovers, sent a letter to CREEM magazine. He wasn’t happy that Detroit’s finest had accused the Four Seasons of lacking the “masculine arrogance” they deemed necessary in rock music and made sure to let them know.
But Richman and CREEM were nothing if polar opposites, coming from very different places in the spectrum of American rock music: them a Detroit-based music magazine edited — at the time — by music journalism’s most notorious gunslinger Lester Bangs and him a shy, soft-spoken singer who would soon leave his seminal proto-punk band to go acoustic before their John Cale-produced first (and only) album even came out. CREEM sprang from the loins of the decidedly edgier Detroit music scene, made famous by Motown and infamous by the MC5 and the Stooges. In the post-free love, pre-punk year of 1973, far from the Rolling Stone’s San Francisco offices, CREEM gave to the masses of would-be punks and metal heads (both terms, or so the legend goes, invented by CREEM) what the mainstream music press was missing: danger.
With the MC5 having long disbanded and the Stooges on a blazing trail to self-destruction, CREEM, along with the rest of the western world, turned its attention to a very specific kind of musician, one that was born in the 1970s: the guitar-toting, tight-trousered, virile, hairy-chested Rock God. The Golden God. The Lizard King. The nicknames are interchangeable but our tendency to deify male musicians is still rife. In the year 1973 Led Zeppelin were plotting world domination by way of guitar solo, collecting tales of debauchery that fulfilled rock ’n’ roll’s promise of social rebellion and sexual freedom while the Rolling Stones had already made throwing televisions out of windows their trademark move. Rock groups no longer wanted to hold your hand; they wanted to give you every inch of their love — and the hordes of screaming girls they attracted showed that there were many takers.
Don’t get me wrong; the bands I just mentioned are among my favourites, regardless of whether or not they offend my feminist sensibilities. But we have to recognize that Richman was right: masculine arrogance does blow, especially in an industry that for decades carried itself on the three pillars of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, giving a license to musicians to behave badly while normalizing sexist behaviour and feeding the egos of hundreds of young men who would aspire to that archetype. Some of these young men went on to form bands like Guns ’n’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, who in their attempt to continue the legacy of their idols ended up pushing the boundaries of their status, marking the eighties as a decade of hedonism fueled by bizarre displays of masculinity that more than often involved the disrespect and exploitation of women in particular.
Either as fans or as artists, rock history hasn’t been particularly kind to women. The erasure of women from the rock ’n’ roll landscape of the seventies has reduced them to the sidelines as groupies and muses and backing singers, with those that managed to rise above the sexism having to work harder than their male counterparts for respect and recognition. Isn’t Stevie Nicks as skilled a songwriter as Lindsey Buckingham, or Nancy Wilson as good a guitarist as Jimmy Page? Wasn’t one of rock ’n’ roll’s pioneers a black, queer woman by the name of Sister Rosetta Tharpe? Even Janis Joplin, a rock star of her own making with a voice, stage presence and sexual prowess to match any man’s, constantly struggled with being a woman in a boys’ club, plagued by the need to embody her larger-than-life persona in order to live up to people’s expectations which played a part in her alcohol and heroin addiction. After her death, referring to music journalism’s tendency to present her as a woman first, rock star second, Country Joe McDonald famously said that “Sexism killed her.”
This isn’t to say that there haven’t been any musicians to challenge the presubscribed macho tendencies of rock stardom. Following the birth of glam in the early seventies, 1973 was also the year that David Bowie would release Aladdin Sane and the year the New York Dolls would release their self-titled debut album. While glam’s androgyny and high camp were mostly employed for shock value, it did open up a whole new spectrum in the realm of rock music by blurring the boundaries between genres and genders, inspiring future movements, particularly punk. The arrogance may have been there, but it was ambiguously gendered and clad in glitter and platform boots. In his 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star Todd Rundgren mocks the dichotomy between the stereotypes surrounding rock stars in the most sardonic way:
“My voice goes so high you would think I was gay
But I play my guitar in such a man-cock way!”
When Richman wrote to CREEM, he wasn’t necessarily criticising rock star machismo in particular. He was making a wider point about the general perception that rock stars aren’t supposed to project anything but that. In this interview he denounces the aggression that defines “rock music,” saying that he plays “old time rock ’n’ roll” — and it’s true that his solo work is more subdued than one would expect. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the Lemon Twigs cover ‘You Can’t Talk to the Dude’ a few weeks ago.
The Lemon Twigs are a band from New York fronted by brothers Michael and Brian D’Addario, who look like they time-travelled from the seventies and make music that is anything but subdued using their multi-instrumentalist skills. When playing live they are joined by two other band members, always delivering spectacular, high-energy shows peppered with copious high-kicks from Michael (who is known to favour sequined dresses) and an androgynous cockiness that successfully puts today’s queer lens on what is basically a tribute to the band’s many seventies influences. Essentially, they’re more Todd Rundgren than Jonathan Richman. And while they might be too flashy for his liking, I like to think that Jonathan wouldn’t mind them covering his song. The heyday of rock as CREEM described it is over and in 2017, the year that knocked male entitlement off its pedestal, we’ve seen the music industry making more space for acts that transcend stereotypes and gender.
No masculine arrogance here, just pure rock ’n’ roll.
