11 Rock Visionaries who are Pernicious Influences
Spin, March, 1991
by Simon Reynolds
MORRISSEY: The poet of maudlin moping, martyred monkishness and sexy celibacy; the man who turned nerdhood into an art form. Unfortunately an army of droning clones (Housemartins, Wedding Present etc) thought that being a nerd made you an artist, and proceeded to inflict the contents of their diaries upon a longsuffering world.
LOU REED: "The guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock'n'roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide" (L. Bangs). Also opened the floodgates for 1001 non-singers sporting sunglasses after dark and peddling fake street romanticism.
SYD BARRETT: The original acid-baked fruitcake, and (in Pink Floyd) inventor of psychedelia as regression-to-childhood. Thus the model for such mad-as-a-hatter jackanapes and professional scrambled eggheads as Julian Cope and Robyn Hitchcock.
DAVID BOWIE: Each of his myriad incarnations has spawned its ghastly progeny: Ziggy Stardust (Bauhaus, Sigue Sigue Sputnik), 'Young Americans' era plastic soul (ABC, Spandau Ballet), Thin White Duke (Gary Numan).
THE
BYRDS: Ever listen to college radio?
NEW YORK DOLLS: Sired Hanoi Rocks, who (together with Aerosmith) birthed the entire LA glam sleaze scene.
THE WHO: Blame them for The Jam and the UK's late Seventies Mod revival, and maybe all New Wave to boot. Pete Townshend also invented the rock opera.
VAN MORRISON: Mystic visionary with the voice like gargling phlegm. Unfortunately Van inspired Ireland's "raggle taggle" movement: Celtic soul-stirrers like Hothouse Flowers who believe that if you sing like you're gargling phlegm that makes you a mystic visionary.
BLONDIE: Pop as Pop Art, blank and chic and deliberately shallow. But Debbie Harry's Eighties children (The Primitives, Darling Buds, Transvision Vamp) were merely two dimensional.
LESTER BANGS: As well as the thousands of fanzines that follow his creed to the letter, LB also created a canon (Iggy, Velvets, garage) and coined an attitude (punk, who-gives-a-fuck) that's been aped by countless dismal noisenik combos.
PRINCE : The first post-modernist superstar, who constructed himself from components of his ancestors (Hendrix + James Brown + Little Richard + Todd Rundgren + Clinton). Since then Prince has become a genre in himself: i.e. chameleonic/ musical magpies like Terence Trent D'Arby and Lenny Kravitz. Also invented "positivity", the platitude of the Nineties.
Just putting this NME piece from later in 1991 here, drawing no conclusions, casting no aspersions...
12 Great Artists Who Are Terrible Influences
By Simon Reynolds
THE BYRDS
Two major crimes here: creating the template for West Coast country rock (The Eagles etc) with 1968's Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and being the major source for the jangled-guitar and pallid-vocalled sound that made Eighties American alternative music such an unrocking wasteland.
LOU REED
According to Lester Bangs (see later entry), "the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock'n'roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide." Reed also opened the floodgates for 1001 non-singers sporting sunglasses after dark and peddling bogus street romanticism.
SYD BARRETT
Inventor of psychedelia as regression-to-childhood on The Piper At the Gates of Dawn and rock's first major acid casualty, Barrett inspired a raft of wannabe lunatics on the grass such as Julian Cope and Robyn Hitchcock.
THE WHO
Blame them for Paul Weller, the late Seventies Mod revival, and the rock opera.
VAN MORRISON
Mystic visionary whose voice is the missing link between gargling phlegm and talking in tongues. Unfortunately the grumpy Ulsterman would inspire the "raggle taggle"-era Dexys of "Come On Eileen"/Too-Rye-Aye infamy, along with subsequent Celtic soul-stirrers like Hothouse Flowers.
The trouble with DB's constant artistic evolution and restlessly rapid procession through personae is that each of his myriad incarnations spawned its own set of misshapen progeny: Ziggy Stardust (Bauhaus and other Goths, Sigue Sigue Sputnik), Young Americans era plastic soul (ABC, Spandau Ballet), Thin White Duke/Low (Gary Numan, the New Romantic movement). Thankfully, the seed of Tin Machine has, so far, fallen on barren ground.
THE NEW YORK DOLLS
Okay, they (or rather Johnny Thunders) gave us Steve Jones's glorious guitar sound, and the group stirred strange fancies in the heart of the young Steven Morrissey (q.b.). But they also helped, via Hanoi Rocks, to sire the LA Sunset Strip hair metal/glam scene of the Eighties, from Motley Crue to Guns N'Roses.
As historically potent a figure as all but a handful of bands, LB's proto-punk manifestoes of the early Seventies shaped a canon (Iggy, Velvets, garage punk) and coined an attitude (who-gives-a-fuck, noise annoys) that's been aped by countless dismal combos from the late Seventies onwards, even though Bangs himself was far more open-minded taste-wise and emotionally sensitive than the bastardised cartoon version of his gospel.
PRINCE
The first postmodernist black superstar, he constructed himself from components of his ancestors (Hendrix + James Brown + Little Richard + Todd Rundgren + George Clinton) only to end up a genre himself: that breed of chameleon/musical magpie/pasticheur that includes Terence Trent D'Arby and Lenny Kravitz.
Have they inspired a single decent band? Okay, the Sundays and Suede had their moments and that T.A.T.U. cover was fun, but Housemartins, Bradford, Easterhouse, Echobelly, Gene… Most recently the Smiths have pooled genetic material with The Cure and injected some UK miserabilism into America's emo genre.
PORTISHEAD
One fantastic album (Dummy) of trip hop torch songs became the blueprint for a mid-90s deluge of downtempo mood-muzak that provided chic-ly depressive ambience for a thousand boutiques, hair salons and designer bars.
RADIOHEAD
A great and original group, but oh, the plague they've visited upon the house of Noughties British music, in the form of numberless rock bands that don't actually rock and vocalists wheezily fixated on strained upper register singing (most notably Coldpay's Chris Martin) as the true modern sound of feeling a bit shit about the state of the world and/or the state of your self.
30 comments:
Are you saying that ABC and Gary Numan were bad? Or did you change your mind about them?
Two, I think, obvious choices you overlooked: the Rolling Stones (encouraged plenty of bands to be LESS ambitious in their approach to rock, and also encouraged a thousand sorry attempts at Dust My Broom) and Nirvana (I honestly believe it is physically beyond me to type out every dreadful band claiming Nirvana as inspiration; such a typing effort would require training more suited for a marathon, so let's just take the Smashing Pumpkins as the totemic example of Nirvana's shameful legacy).
Okay, you did mention the Stones, and I apologise for overlooking that, but I think you're being far more panglossian about the Stones' direct legacy (also, are Aerosmith that interesting? I'd say they're the absolute, Platonic centre of generic rock. Tinned rock. Rock reduced to an industrial process.)
Both Numan and ABC I loved at the time - I bought 'Are 'Friends' Electric' just as it was approaching the Top 40, had 'Tears are Not Enough" and "Poison Arrow" and the Lexicon of Love. But later on decided ABC was overwritten shlock and got rid of the album. It was helped by ABC's rapid decline while Numan fell into a mode of imitating Japan unsuccessfully.
I think in '91 when I wrote that Spin thing, Gary Numan and ABC were at the lowest ebb in terms of my personal stocks-and-shares index of taste. New Pop and even postpunk to some extent seemed irrelevant to what was happening that I thought was interesting.
Later on I rediscovered both and went to my original opinion on them - even esteeming Numan higher, especially for the album with 'Down in the Park' and 'You Are In My Vision' on. What surprised me listening again was that it was music that rocked - great riffs, guitars quite prominent, a real drummer. 'Cars' obviously eternal. Lexicon of Love I came back to and kind of admired as much for their cleverness and masterstroke ability to make their dream come true, as for the sound. Which is still a bit Costello clever-dickery at times, too prolix. "Date Stamp" is the one that I is truly poignant - stings with real hurt.
I think the Stones have inspired a mix of good stuff and bad stuff - bit like the Beatles in that respect. There's a lot of lame aspiring-Beatlesy groups out there. Or not even lame, just determinedly minor.
Nirvana, for sure - but I don't think they'd broken through when I wrote that first piece. They did not seem like a group that would be world-historical figures.
Aerosmith - I cannot claim exhaustive knowledge of their urrrv. But "Dream On" is a great lighter-in-the-air stadium anthem / radio anthem, "Walk This Way" is undeniable, and "Sweet Emotion" has an epic production and big rolling cinematic groove . I think they found a neat sweet spot between the Stones and Led Zep. But yeah, there possibly wasn't a real need for them to exist. Most of their comeback phase in the '90s I found really annoying - there's a great Saturday Night Live sketch where they parody a string of identikit Aerosmith singles that came out in row, with almost the same melody, this sort of soulful sway-a-long type chorus. But I did like the fussy-funk of "Dude Looks LIke A Lady" with its herky-jerky brass riff.
In England's Dreaming, Jon Savage says the Stones were the one major influence on punk that punks refused to acknowledge. I suppose I may be unfairly basing my contention on how the Stones themselves stopped being interesting. But have Primal Scream ever been at their peak when emulating the Stones? I think my point about the Rolling Stones narrowing aspirations has some merit.
What's the point of Aerosmith after Appetite for Destruction? GnR were the Aerosmith tribute act that managed to be about a billion times more vital than the original (Izzy Stradlin, by far the coolest member of GnR, once sold smack to Joe Perry and Steven Tyler).
And yes, I'm massively right about Nirvana. Greatest American rock band of the 90s, sure, but what a disappointing lineage.
Oh, completely off-topic, but was Pulp's This is Hardcore meant as a contemporary version of Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home a Heartache? And This is Hardcore the most opulent entry in the illustrious category of songs about wanking?
This conversation seems to be going down the track of "any influential artist will have a bunch of people making lame retreads of their music". Which influential artists have NOT been a pernicious influence?
One thing to come out of the Reynolds-Stylo conversation is the extent to which "pernicious influences" are a function on the time that one is currently living thru.
The Byrds can be enjoyed for their folk/country/rock now that their offspring are long gone.
Altho one of the downsides of the accessibility of so much historical music is that the unimaginative now have so many more sources to copy.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a singer warbling Morrissey-esque in a human face - for ever"
Another thing is disavowed influence. The Sonz of Radiohead all denied their influence. Muse and Coldplay would say that they were copyin-, ahem, influenced by Jeff Buckey (who was conveniently dead by this point).
This is Hardcore is in a special micro-genre within songs about wanking - songs about wanking in high-end hotels while on tour. Although Jarvis would say that he found the porn on hotel TV to be depressing as he started wondering about the soul-attrition of being a porn star.
Never thought of a "In Every Dreamhome" connection, I can see that in the sense of penthouse perfection etc... but also think of Scott Walker because of the musically setting.
I never thought of Guns N'Roses in relation to Aerosmith.... they seem to have a quite different spirit... meaner, nastier, paranoid which is not their detriment, makes them more interesting... whereas Aerosmith, it's just good times music innit? They really enjoy being rock stars, there's none of the tortured, lashing-out Axl Rose thing.
Which reminds me, when they did try to address Serious Issues, like "Janie's Got A Gun" or "Livin' on The Edge" - which I think is their attempt to do a "Sign o'the Times" or even "Praying for Time" the George Michael take-me-seriously bid - it's awfully unconvincing.
There was one punk group that explicitly nodded to the Stones - the Vibrators covered one of their songs as an early single ("Sympathy for the Devil"?). But then the Vibrators were considered old lags and fake-punx. (I love 'em, or at least, I love the song "Pure Mania").
I think there is Stones in the Saints actually - Stones, and Them, and that kind of surly Sixties beat music (Pretty Things maybe too). But yes they wouldn't overtly acknowledge it, I wouldn't have thought.
But you could conceivably use the Stones to widen your aspirations if you wanted to... like the way that Spacemen 3 were obsessed with "Moonlight Mile". Or how about if a group had tried to build on "Jigsaw Puzzle" or their weirder tangents?
"Moonlight Mile" and Kraftwerk and Laurie Anderson were big influences on Playing With Fire.
Matt M - "One thing to come out of the Reynolds-Stylo conversation is the extent to which "pernicious influences" are a function on the time that one is currently living thru." - I'm honestly not sure what you mean. You've mentioned my name, so I'm a little worried.
Yes the great groups like the Byrds will outlast any temporary phase of being a bad influence.
But there are often phases when overkill in the sense of an immediate huge swathe of being an influence can temporarily knock a group out of contention as something that you would take inspiration from, as a young group in the identity-formation stage. So for instance, Joy Division just dropped off the map from the mid-80s, it had been ruined by Goth bands and Red Lorry Lorry Yellow. (Probably the active cultural life of New Order had some effect too).
Where it persists and resurges is the basslines in a lot of shoegaze. but other aspects of JoyDiv are taken off the table for a really long time - right up until the Interpol and co years.
Ooh, let me point out a group that clearly took (or claimed) inspiration from Joy Division: the Manic Street Preachers.
That's true, although only on Holy Bible I think.
The Manics kind of specialized in deliberately obvious influences - like copying the Clash early on. Sort of a gesture against the obscurantism of record-collection-rock hipsters. That's why they went for Clash, Pistols, G'n'R.
One of the first groups to start talking again about Joy Division (and that whole era - Chrome, This Heat, etc) in the mid-90s was Six Finger Satellite. Whose soundman (I think I've got this right) was James Murphy as in LCD Soundsystem and DFA.
Oh, since he's been mentioned, can I get something off my chest? I can't stand Jeff Buckley. I'm not overwhelmed by the fierce, gossamer power of his voice. What I hear simpering pretension, and I note that the voices that have most affected me include Mark E. Smith and the greatest of all, Shaun Ryder.
To make clear: Shaun Ryder is better than Jeff Buckley. That includes vocally.
Did you ever write something about similar about genres/sub-genres? It seems like your problems with some of these bands are basically about whole genres based on copying them badly: the Byrds and country-rock, the NY Dolls inspired the sleazy side of hair metal, the Smiths helped launch a scene of milquetoast indie rock.
Or to put it more directly, can any band, scene or genre avoid influencing wannabes and trend-hoppers at least as much as it leads to further innovation? If it has commercial success or cultural capital, I doubt it.
steevee- The group who has been the conspicuous absence has been the Sex Pistols. The sheer variance of their offspring has protected them from such declarations (well, at least among Pistols fans).
So this is all great, but what about the opposite: who are the good influences?
Extra marks for any that were exceeded by their successors. They might have been OK, or even pretty good in some cases, but the artists they inspired were transcendent.
First thoughts in that category: Chuck Berry, Depeche Mode
Controversial calls: Bob Dylan, James Brown
Oh, and a couple more from the 80s: the Jesus and Mary Chain, Black Flag
That's a clever idea
Yes I prefer several Dylan-influenced artists to Dylan. To the point of preferring their cover of a Dylan song. (Well, "All Along the Watchtower" is a no-brainer - even Dylan prefers Hendrix's interpretation. He subsequently based his own live renditions of it on the Jimi take. But really I'm thinking the Byrds or the Chocolate Watchband's renditions)
J&MC is a good call, if you mean MBV eclipsing them by miles and miles. (But then MBV in turn become a Bad Influence, if you think about it - at least an endemic one, inspiring some good music but a lot of shoegaze-by-numbers)
James Brown also another good call, especially if you include the use that samplers made of the breakbeats and his vocal grunts and rasps.
But who are the children of Depeche?
Stooges inspired some great groups and not so great groups - among the greats would be Spacemen 3 and Loop. And in the category of covers that eclipse the originals, the Pistols version of "No Fun"
Weren't Depeche Mode a big influence on Detroit Techno? And therefore on all Techno everywhere.
See, for example: https://contentcatnip.com/2017/01/18/every-picture-tells-a-story-when-depeche-mode-met-derrick-may-in-detroit-in-1989-2/
Ed: I think these are all excellent suggestions.
Also: Cliff Richard. Little Richard. Elvis Presley. Parliament / Funkadelic.
All great calls, except... Cliff Richard?
The Shadows, I can see. A huge influence on 60s and 70s guitar players. But Cliff?
‘I think there is Stones In The Saints’
Absolutely, “Messin With The Kid” on their fist album might be the greatest Stones song the Stones never wrote.
Chris Cutler has a whole thing on the Shadows in his book File Under Popular, he traces the arc of progressive music in the UK and says it really starts with the Shadows - guitar textures, instrumentals, atmosphere, the beginning of the guitar hero thing.
But yeah Cliff Richard, not seeing that!
I love the way Derrick May enthuses about anything and everything from the UK - he's said similar things about Cabaret Voltaire setting standards that everyone else had to aspire to with their records (I imagine he means the Virgin era more club-attuned releases, rather than Red Mecca). He's raved about Frankie Goes to Hollywood and early ZTT. But I think there's a generalized Anglophilia (and Europhilia) in the Detroit scene. It's hard to pinpoint something specific to Depeche and Depeche alone - in any of their phases - that the Detroit techno guys picked up on and developed. I should think the admiration is more for them as a prominent name a whole wave of synthy Anglo stuff at that time that was absolutely foundational for Detroit (whatever the deGiorgio et al "it all came from Black music" types would want to argue).
I think it's difficult for us to understand now how influential Cliff Richard was on young wannabe UK rock n rollers in the late 50s - including the obvious (The Beatles), the less so (Freddie Mercury) and the completely unexpected (Lemmy from Motorhead).
Bob Stanley makes the case here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/17/cliff-richard-bob-stanley
One analogy that I am toying with for Cliff is Derek B.
Oh, in terms of Dylan covers better than Dylan originals, this is Elvis' version of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. Magnificently, Elvis makes a 3-minute song last 12 minutes, by repeating whatever lyrics he wants whenever he wants. And that's why The Big E is the King, and that's just the way it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxCCNY4A68M
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