Get a Little Bit Closer: Memoir, Accessibility and Brushing Virtual Shoulders with Celebrity
This is something that’s seemingly crept up on me while I’ve been immersed in various writing projects and pouring over lyric books and websites while researching a story of indeterminate length I’m currently working on (just in case anyone thought I may have been dwelling in a cultural vacuum with no access to television or internet with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears), because until recently I was largely unaware of the popularity of memoir and, equally, the accessibilising (yes, I’m coining a new term) of celebrities. Perhaps that’s simply because although I like to think I have a reasonable idea of what’s going on in the mainstream, I nevertheless tend to focus my energies on things that interest me. Really, life’s too short to squander too much time on bad books, bad music, crap blockbusters and even crapper television programmes. Which means that while I will drop in on Big Brother every now and again, I’m not wired to the box 24/7 for the 3 months or whatever it’s on for.
Now, I already knew that biographies (and crummy autobiographies ghosted for retard pseudo-celebrities who’ve done precisely fuck all in their short overprivileged lives) have topped the best seller lists for some years now, and that the proliferation of bollocks magazines like OK! Grazia, etc., etc., ad nauseam, all filled with grainy paparazzi shots of sagging tits and bad cellulite is more than evidence of our obsession with ‘celebrity’ and also with propagating the all-too-obvious fact that all that separates these figures of international renown is, in essence, a bank balance and a publicist. Yes, your favourite celebrity, for all their fame and wealth, has a spare tyre just like you, gets pissed and looks like crap at 2 in the morning just like you… you get the idea. As if it takes a genius to fathom that they are, after all, only human. But non-celebrity memior...?
What really surprised me was the discovery I made when leafing through the sleeve notes to the Strapping Young lad album ‘Alien’ that a friend of mine had lent me. No, the fact that I was disappointed by their appearance wasn’t the surprise, and nor was the fact that I was disappointed by the music, which isn’t a patch on the albums I already have, ‘City’ and ‘Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing’ – the reason for this being that the band appear to have slumped from making a wall-of-noise industrial strength racket to fairly MOR nu-metal fare, replete with wanky solos (you can’t blame it all on the production). What struck me was the page of credits. A paragraph of credits for each musician. No, I didn’t bother to read them all. It was the principal. Ok, so all bands have some assistance in the recording of their albums, all bands use amps and other equipment and have preferred brands of gear, all bands have friends and family and fans and managers and roadies and groupies and engineers and bands they’ve played with, bands they’re influenced by, blah blah blah. We don’t need to know about it. And thanking your mum’s ok if it’s your first record and you’re a 15 year old kid in a wet, drippy indie band, but for hairy, hoary old rockers to do it is fucking tragic. I for one prefer to think of my hairy, hoary rock idols as having been spawned, or grown like mould on a slice of bread in the dank bowels of hell rather than having parents. And certainly not mothers they love and go round for Sunday dinner with. It’s just not rock ‘n’ roll, man. But it seems that this is emblematic of a wider issue, regarding the way that people – individuals, artists bands, whoever – present themselves a lot more openly now, a point I’ve touched on previously when discussing the lack of restraint some people seem to have when sharing everything – and I mean everything – with the world and his dog via their blogs.
This also set me thinking about the way we perceive bands more generally. Specifically, it set me thinking about the way I perceive bands more generally. Of course, as one grows older, one’s perception changes somewhat. Some of that has to do with a growing awareness of the process – the one whereby a band records an album puts out a single some time ahead as a taster, to create a buzz, and then another one a couple of weeks before or after the album, does a round of promotional interviews, a tour, put out another single (often using live tracks recorded on the tour to save having to record any additional b-sides and maybe to help plug the previous album) then go off and work on the next album. Rinse and repeat, every couple of years or so. Of course there are exceptions to the rule and some occasional deviations from and variations on the pattern, but that’s the general framework. I’m not sure precisely when I became aware of the ‘rules’ – probably in my early teens, when I started collecting records properly, and buying new singles and albums in the week, or even on the day – of release. Partly out of a fear of the limited edition selling out, and partly through excitement and anticipation. And having a rather obsessive streak. But with that kind of knowledge, a certain degree of mystery is lost. Up to the dawning of that awareness, songs got into the charts, were played on the radio – I always listened to the Top 40 on Radio 1 and watched ‘Top of the Pops’ – and they’d be around for a while and you could go to Woolworths or WHS and pick them up a while later. I had no idea about the process.
Things are very different now, of course. Airplay starts about 2 months before a single release, it makes a stratospheric entry into the charts – or fails to chart despite being a release by a big-name band – then plummets off the radar. If you don’t buy a single within a week or two of release – unless it’s one of those that lingers in the charts for fucking months – you’ll struggle to find it. And you’ll not get it in Woolworths because they’re ceasing the sale of CD singles this year. I haven’t been into WHS in about a decade because they stocked nothing of interest to me once I had discovered that my tastes were less mainstream where music – and books – is concerned. Even albums, apart from the big-selling and standard titles become more difficult to find in high street stores like HMV after a not-so-long time. This only serves to accentuate just how driven by marketing formulae the industry is.
It’s perhaps less of an issue with smaller bands, and bands that are on the kind of labels that simply can’t operate in keeping with the commercial model. Some bands and labels are practically cottage industries. This again reflects the nature of our contemporary society, as characterised by, simultaneously, an immense homogenisation of culture as represented by the mainstream, and an extreme fragmentation, as represented by anything outside the mainstream. While the mainstream becomes increasingly centred around mass-production – which seems to run contra to the public’s craving for greater access, the non-mainstream relies on a closer relationship between the artist and the fan. In order to promote their work, the band – or writer, or whoever – is required to get out there and do it themselves. But perhaps this isn’t such a contradiction: the more famous (i.e. mainstream) the celebrity, the more access the public wants. And because direct interaction simply isn’t feasible, it has to be made through social networking and through guts-on-display biography and memoir.
I also believe that new bands often have a certain enigma, which soon fades. The trick is to maintain a degree of mystery. But so few succeed in doing so, and it’s at that point that some – much – of the magic is lost. Hearing a song for the first time, one can wonder who the band, what they look like. But television and magazine interviews can very quickly spoil things, when you learn that they’re a bunch of trendies with nothing to say for themselves. And they only have the one song that’s any good. You feel cheated.
So, returning to my central point, namely the accessiblisation of celebrities, there’s little doubt in my mind that the Internet, and particularly networking sites such as MySpace, has had a profound effect on the trend toward this accessibility. The celebrity has a blog. The fans can read it, and can comment on it, directly, immediately. It’s a lot closer in communication terms than the old fan-mail which may earn a mass-produced signed photo by way of a response. Indeed, MySpace even promote their featured ‘celebrities’ with the lead ‘get closer to...’ But is it so desirable to do so? For a start, there’s nothing worse than meeting one of your heroes only to discover that they’re a complete twat. It spoils everything and it’s impossible to view their work in the same way ever again. And discovering a noisy rock band are a bunch of mummy’s boys is just as bad. And many writers and musicians are quite shy, retiring, private types. Moreover, many writers will almost inevitably use autobiographical elements within their fiction, and that’s as much as they’re wanting to give away. What’s so wrong with that?
I’m not suggesting that such interaction in any way encourages stalking, probably quite the contrary (after all, there’s less ‘need’ if it’s all out there). But it does indubitably alter the relationship between the artist and the fan. There’s now a certain expectation for the artist – or celebrity – to put it all out there in public. But how much information do we need? I’m all for the demystification of the creative process in the way Burroughs did with the cut-ups, for example. But a little bit of mystery goes a long way. Yes, it’s perhaps unhealthy to place ‘celebrities’ and artists (in whatever medium) on pedestals and the acceptance that they are human and fallible is important. They may be special, but they’re not deities. Treating them as such isn’t good for anyone. Diva syndrome’s not pretty or conducive to the creative process. So, whatever the prevailing obsession with celebrity dirty laundry and lifestyle may be, sometimes, less really is more and yes, you really can have too much of a good thing.