Revolutions end up recreating the very conditions they happened to overthrow, writes John Waters
THE CURRENT edition of my old magazine Hot Presshas a cover picture of Barack Obama and the headline, "The First Rock'n'roll President – Obama by Bob Geldof". Actually, the heading oversells Geldof's copy, which in the whole is a reasonably sober assessment of the new president of the US.
Geldof thinks Obama a cool dude and a good thing, but adds only marginally to the burden of hype being heaped upon the frail shoulders of this moderately competent actor by a generation still seeking its messiah after a half-century of false promises.
It goes without saying, I hope, that the last thing we need is a rock’n’roll president – of the US or any place else. In as far as the term has any meaning, we already had one – Bill Clinton – and an unedifying spectacle that proved.
The prefix “rock’n’roll”, appended to anything, tends to signify superficiality, pseudo- glamour and a surfeit of emotion.
In its natural and ordinary meaning, the idea of a rock’n’roll president summons up someone big on style, slight on substance, overly conscious of “yoof” issues and selective victimologies, and reluctant to convey bad news about the necessity for postponement or the true nature of freedom.
Rock’n’roll is the expression of permanent rebellion and perennial irresponsibility. By definition, it is incompatible with power because it denies that evil exists, except in the heart of “The Man”. Power has a requirement for ambiguous choices, for distinguishing the lesser of evils.
Rock’n’roll, other than in a fistful of songs by a handful of artists, sees only black and white, and most of the authors of these songs seem to lack the ambiguity and complexity they occasionally express in their music.
Springsteen writes better about human weakness than almost any contemporary novelist, but comes out with excruciating rubbish every time he opens his mouth without a tune. Dylan is the exception, having laid false trails across the counter-culture for half a century.
But although the music has largely degenerated into pastiche and pose, the idea of rock’n’roll revolution lives on, albeit on diminishing sustenance.
The rock’n’roll generations, which now control pretty much everything, have impressed upon our culture the idea that their revolution must have a happy ending, whereas history tells us that revolutions end up recreating the conditions they happened to overthrow.
There is no revolution. All that ever existed was a bunch of fads, slogans and puerile notions about reality, including the ideas of power without compromise and freedom without consequences.
There will be no rock’n’roll redeemer. Already it is obvious that history will not purchase the obsessions and delusions of the generations now watching their pensions dissolve like clouds of dope smoke.
Last weekend, myself and my 12-year-old daughter, on a trip west, picked up the London Independentwhich had a free CD of the Watergate module of the 1977 Frost-Nixon interviews, the subject of the eponymous, soon- to- be-released movie. I roughly outlined the history and we viewed the interview together.
It being more than 30 years since I’d seen them, I had the flimsiest sense of what I was expecting. Coming to it with my counter-culture prejudices, I anticipated that Nixon would be shifty and evasive.
Wrong. The interview is riveting and deeply moving, but mainly because of Nixon’s demeanour, which is open and frank. I was struck mainly by the sense of Nixon’s emotional honesty. What emerges is that his flaws were those of a decent man – mostly an unwillingness to shaft those who have shown him some misguided loyalty.
Afterwards, I asked Róisín what she thought. “I think he was innocent,” she said. I was blown away, because this is what I had been thinking myself.
Nixon is the sole scalp of the rock’n’roll generations who promised to tear away the past and replace it with pure freedom, peace and love. Now it emerges that Nixon, when his whole record is evaluated, was perhaps the greatest US president of the 20th century. The counter- culture’s one claim to fame is that it pulled down a great man because of a triviality.
On the way home, I decided to give Róisín the educational benefit of another media freebie throwback, this time a CD of John Lennon songs.
Having emerged from those counter-culture generations, I tend to vacillate between self- interrogation and uncritical nostalgia, so, by way of introduction, delivered a portentous speech about the cultural significance of John Lennon and the fact that he was, in many ways, the cultural antidote to Nixon.
The CD had most of the best known songs, including Imagineand the anti-war anthems, Power to the People and Give Peace a Chance. As we listened, I found myself wishing the anthems a little less simplistic and the ballads less mawkish. After a while, Róisín said: "John Lennon was shot, wasn't he?" I said he was, yes. "I'm not surprised," she declared, and she put on Johnny Cash.