Kurt
Hernon:
November,
2003

Rock 'n Roll Heroes Suck and Slipping the Dodo to Jenna Jameson: Hernon Rants

"Hey man," the voice was, again, familiar, "What the fuck is up? I was looking for your monthly on that Fuckin-dot-com site you write for and couldn't find anything. You get yourself fired from that gig too?"
It was my old pal Lucas. He was drunk.

"No Luke, I didn't get fired," I mumbled.

"Well then what the fuck is up? You never miss a fucking deadline." I could hear him swigging from a bottle.

"I've missed before. This ain't a big deal."

"Like fuck it ain't!" Lucas surprised me with what sounded like it might be a genuine dose of sincerity. I chortled nervously.

"Look you fucker," he took another swig and continued, "whether you know it or not, people read your shit. They read it because nobody else cares enough about fucking rock and roll to write about it with the sort of passion you spew. I may not give a fuck about whatever it is that you're ranting and raving about, but a few people out there sure as shit do…" Luke took another gulp and continued, "So when you don't do this thing that you do, people's lives are lessened a little."

I laughed.

"Lessened a little? What the fuck does that mean?"

"What it means asshole is that some people, for whatever reason, think that the shit you write is worth-fucking-while. They look forward to reading it. And maybe you make them smile a little…or think…or laugh…or want to buy a goddamn record that'll make 'em smile, think, and the like."

The phone went quiet except for the gurgling sound of Luke taking a long draw of whatever poison he'd chosen to drink tonight.

"Anyhow," he sighed (he actually fucking sighed! We'd now entered new emotional territory for Lucas), "I just wanted to let you know that you let me down a bit - and maybe you let a few others down too."

"Well thanks for that Lucas."

"No, I didn't mean it like it sounded…"

"That's okay man."

"What I meant was…well, you don't owe nobody nothing and so you can do what you want. It's just that you are damn good at what you do."

"Thanks Luke, but I don't see it."

"That's probably a good thing."

"I'm not so sure of that either anymore."

"Just think about it, okay?"

"Okay."

Last month I missed my column for this site for the first time ever…I expect it will be the last. But you see, there was a reason. Damn good reason if you ask me - a couple of them to be honest with you. And you folks being the folks you are deserve and explanation, and maybe an apology, both of which I hope to offer here and now (which is hardly any consolation, I know, but grant me my guilt):

Rock and roll heroes suck. I know because my life has been filled with them, and nearly every one of them has let me down. It's a tightrope walk to be sure, this "fan" thing, but it's a manifest evil if you ever really, truly care about rock and roll (or music in general for that matter). And in the long haul being the adorer is far more difficult than being the adored because the adoration is generally rooted in the all to vague logic that you might actually understand your heroes through whatever heroic thing it is - in your eyes - they do. In my case it's writing and delivering rockroll tunes (in yours it may be shooting a basketball, running a football, slipping the dodo to Jenna Jameson…or whatever). And while I know it's hardly fair to hold my heroes to the white-hot flame of my own needs, I do - because I need. Oh how I need! I need more than any one artist can give…but that doesn't stop me from making the demand. Which is why I find myself disappointed more often than not these days. It's a fucked up relationship to be sure - what do they owe me? Nothing really. But I owe them nothing either.

So when I say that rockroll heroes suck, that's exactly what I mean. I never wanted this sickness. I never wanted to hold people I don't even know up to standards that are altogether ridiculous. I never expected, twenty-five years ago when I got my first taste of the stuff, that rockroll would inform nearly every minutia of my life. Hell, half of the time I wish I could change it all…go back and throw away those early Sweet 45's that made me woozy; burn that Mott the Hoople double-platter that tuned me in and turned me on; become that jock who dated all of the cheerleaders and listened to whatever the radio presented. Sometimes I fantasize about going back and never wearing those ratty old Chuck Taylor's, those frayed old Woolrich shirts of my dad's, and doing a poetic analysis of the Tubes "White Punks on Dope" for my Understanding English Composition class. There are days when I just wish to all hell that this sickness would leave me and let me be "normal". But it hasn't. And it won't. Because, let's face it, I love this shit.

But last month I was paralyzed. Not physically but rather psychically paralyzed. September was a very bleak month for me and for the music I love. And by the time I got around to sitting down at the keyboard to try and sort things all out I found myself rendered completely useless by rockroll depression brought on by a confluence of events that left me vacant and necessarily silent. My silence, I decided, would become homage: part honorary and part mourning. At least that's what I told myself. But the reality of things was that I found myself with nothing to say. Not a goddamn word. There was nothing I could say. Events surrounding the month were that enormous - both personally and professionally.

Johnny Cash had died; so did Paul Westerberg…to me. And that's what I meant when I said that rockroll heroes suck. And that's why September may have been the darkest month of my rockroll life. And that's why this column lay quiet. Consider it the psychic mourning of a man distraught; a man of words (or so I like to think) giving way to a requiem of silence in honor of our dearly departed.

I spent the few days following Johnny Cash's death listening to one of his more obscure but most eloquent of records, Water from the Wells of Home. Originally a late 80's (1988) release on the directionless Mercury Country imprint, Water from the Wells of Home, to me, is Johnny Cash as Johnny Cash, and in that, you get Cash at his very, very finest.

Cash was considered a relic by the late 1980's; a hangover from a bygone era that was too fucked up and old fashioned to be fashionable. The truth of the matter is that had Johnny Cash died in, say, 1986 it would have probably taken at least until now for people to properly recognize and honor the enormity of his musical contributions - he was that removed from the American mainstream. So by the time he recorded Water Cash had been split from lifelong label Columbia for a few years and, with his eternal place in American music already secured, he found himself toiling away on the fringe of what could pass for obscurity, as hard as that may be to believe these days considering the man's largesse. Yet, somehow the cultural distance sounds as though it were a panacea for Cash. For the first time in nearly three decades Johnny Cash was free from the iconography of Johnny Cash. No one, they said, was listening anymore and for a fleeting moment - with the load of being "him" lifted - he was able to do something he hadn't been able to do for several lifetimes: relax, play, and record the music he wanted, how he wanted, and with whom he wanted. The results on Water present a startling and musically autobiographical look at a man who, when he looked into the mirror, saw none of what everyone else claimed to see. There was no "man in black"; there was merely a man - frail, flawed, insecure, and tired. Cash's vocals are flawless and easy-going on Water. There are wonderful guest appearances all over the record (Waylon Jennings, strong and true on Mann/Burns/Rouse "Sweeter than the Flowers", a flawless Emmylou Harris trading off on Roy Acuff's "As Long as I Live", wife June Carter on a perfect "Where Did We Go Right?" and even Paul McCartney on a toss-off tune written with Tom T. Hall and Cash called "New Moon Over Jamaica"), which give the record its warm and familial vibe.

And in the end that's how I want to remember the late Johnny Cash - rock and roll's grandfather, left behind for naught, down but not entirely out, finding solace in friends, family, and the music that is his life's blood. It's probably a selfish vision of Cash that I hold, but I believe it to be his most earnest legacy. And while there is much music of Cash's to recommend, I find myself turning to this little gem when I want to experience the man's truest gifts. Water from the Wells of Home indeed,

Rock and roll heroes suck. I know I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Rock and roll heroes suck. There…is that enough already? It might be for you, but I just can't shake it. I've been let down too many times. I've had enough. And it's nearly killed my passion. But I won't have heroes anymore. It's the only way to make hay these days…take it day-by-day, song-by-song, and album-by-album. Anything else would make my mind snap. Hell, it's already snapped…

False Start # 1 (a feeble attempt at last month's column revealed)

So this is it - the end; insignificance; irrelevance; washed up; finished; toast; burned out and used up. I am finally and irrevocably obsolete - a pathetic aging man messing about in a young man's game who has finally recognized that he is nothing more than a pitiable hanger-on-er whose only true and lasting motivation (and more than half of the time that word merely plays its small part in the persistent Big Lie that I tell myself) is a souring ego. An ego built (falsely, I assume) on the entirely contemptible act of masturbatory self-congratulation that is writing about fucking music. And now I'm simply passé; done; dead; never to rise again - at least not without making a complete fucking ass of myself. Hell, I've got nothing. I bring nothing to the table anymore. My day is done. And I feel like Paul-fucking-Westerberg now. But maybe that's being a little too harsh, at least Westerberg wrote some timeless fucking tunes before he gave way to time and irrelevance. Me? I've done nothing really. Not a goddamn thing for the ages. But Westerberg…well, he's…he's….He's let me fucking down! He's let me down as much as anyone I've ever adored. He's let me down so fucking much that I'm contemplating just up and quitting this rockroll writing crud for something more fucking noble (writing add copy? Who the fuck knows or cares!)

Rock and roll heroes suck. I know this better than most because I've had more than a few in my day - far too many in fact. And Paul Westerberg was right at the top of my list for a very, very long time.

Twenty years ago the man could do no wrong - and pretty much didn't. Spewing forth a litany of tart, terse rock and roll songs while heading the legendary Replacements, Westerberg turned the emotional baggage of life - not just his own, but American life, which is what made him so special - into a grand bile stained stage on which he shone as the brightest star. There was so much texture in the Replacements music: giddy adolescent nervousness ("I Will Dare"); fuming angst ("how do you say I love you to an answering machine?"); dramatic cautionary tales ("Johnny's Gonna Die"); lost-generation anthems ("Hold My Life", "Bastards of Young" "Never Mind"); and ceaseless self-examination ("Achin' to Be", "I'll Be You", "Swingin' Party"). And, of course, there was the bile. Oh! How there was bile! Sweet, sweet, bile. That pitch perfect noxious venom that infected every goddamn syllable of Westerberg's careening tales of youth gone bored and ignored!
It truly was an amazing rockroll run, Westerberg's songwriting was. From 1981 to 1989 he was completely unrivaled. And for one brief moment, he was the greatest rock and roll songwriter in the history of the form…a moment that remains perhaps the most supreme in modern rock and roll music…a moment when the whole kit and caboodle got shot down, it's shiny artifice smudged up, by a fucked up and disgruntled twentysomething poet from Minnesota (not the first, but not from Hibbings).

"Unsatisfied" (from 1984's brilliant Let It Be) stands, to this day, as the single greatest recording of pure disaffectedness and disenfranchisement ever recorded. It was the guttural howl of a generation born in the midst of the self-congratulatory baby boomers and antecedent to the cold and detached digitally informed generation X; a lost and forgotten generation that found itself caught between the tombstone of a dead industrial revolution and rocking the cradle of the new economy's technology boom. It's a simple song. "Look me in the eyes and tell me, that I'm satisfied" is basically all it said. But the way Westerberg said it, the way he howled, ached, and damn near cried ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" my ass! This is the sound of pure alienation); and the way in which he quickly gathers himself in, brings all of his emotions back into check, straightens up, and then serves his song up as an indictment on society (as it existed back then - and I'd be willing to bet that today really ain't all that different) was as exhausting as it was exhilarating. It was also impossible to top - ever.

It isn't fair to expect him to either. And I don't. Most writers, be they novelists, journalists, poets, or songwriters, have only one or two absolutely classic moments in them. We were fortunate that Westerberg had a solid dozen or more. And for that I am grateful. But what do we expect of our fading rock and roll heroes? What's reasonable these days? Well, how about this: that they at least seem to care. Hell, try pretending…please.

And while it isn't quite fair to expect Paul Westerberg to be the "old Paul" (oh how I wish he could be!), it is entirely reasonable to expect that he deliver something that sounds as though he's doing it for anyone else but himself. Because, as with the bulk of the rest of his solo material, Come Feel Me Tremble (the DVD and CD) and Dead Man Shake, feel entirely uninspired and self indulgent - the masturbatory efforts of a man seeing fit to pleasing one person and one person only. And that ain't you and me babe.

Two new records, one (Come Feel Me Tremble) filled with easy-does-it slop rock references to his glory-filled past, the other (Dead Man Shake) a cursory blues effort that actually has the better tunes (two of which are not even his), and a DVD documentary/diary that merely magnifies the sadness of the enormous yet atrophying talent at hand, and still not a seriously compelling moment amongst all this useless media.
Rock and roll heroes die oh-so-hard.

And Westerberg isn't the only one. The list is long, tedious, and ugly (Bob Mould, Mike Watt, R.E.M., David Johansen, etc. etc. etc.), the disappointments, while hardly absolute, all crushing in their own way. But I'll accept the responsibility on this one. It's my fault for caring too much I suppose. These people don't ask for my adoration (at least explicitly), and I'm the fool for letting myself give into it. But the last straw has been drawn. I am drained. I'll no longer play the fool. I will consume and dispose because that is what they want me to do. I have no expectations. I'll grant no more adoration. I'll listen. I'll process. I'll move on. It'll be better that way. I have no more heroes…I swear. I…I…I…

I'm hopeless. I'm a sucker. I'm doomed. Have you heard the new Ryan Adams record yet? He's a prick to be sure, but he's a wildly talented prick who is my latest and greatest hero. And this time, I'm sure I'll never be let down! I know it! I can feel it!

Ryan Adams - lloR N kcoR (a review…a love letter)

Ryan Adams is a prick. While the rest of the world spent the past year and a half (two - three for those "in the know") ejaculating over a so-called "new" garage rock movement that was being led by New York's hype-inflated retro-dullards The Strokes, Adams sat back quietly on a pair of solo records strumming his guitar like a sober-minded Gram Parsons with a somewhat annoying Elton John fetish and waited, apparently, for the "new" rock n roll table to be set. So while the Strokes busted ass the past couple of years, struggling to suck in the 70's and 80's and regurgitate them as something that, if not entirely original, at least sounded fresh, Adams lay low, avoiding the rock rebirth like it were the plague and very nearly serving as the musical antithesis to the idea of "new" rock.

But that hardly make the guy a prick now, does it? What does make Ryan Adams a prick is that when he did finally decide to meet the new rock movement head on with this record, Rock N Roll, he does it far better, with more apparent ease, and with far superior results than any of the buzz bands who've been trying so fucking hard for so long to make the "new" rock movement sound like anything more than rehashed retro shtick.

Rock N Roll is a damn good rock record. Whether it's drawing from early Cheap Trick ("Shallow", "1974"), raving like a skinny-tied power popper (the impeccable and not so subtle stab at the Strokes "This Is It"), or mining the early 80's Euro-wave of U2, Roxy Music, and Psychedelic Furs ("So Alive" is a smash hit, twenty years too late), Ryan Adams has made so perfect a "new" rock record that he may single handedly render the genre obsolete anymore.

Dream on Johnny Cash…dream on!

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