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Chapter 23TURNING REBELLION INTO MONEY
Steve Albini is standing on an outdoor stage, his skinny body framed by the Chicago skyline, face lit up by the strobe lights cast by hundreds of digital cameras and cell phones. In his hands, Albini is clutching his signature aluminum neck guitar, its surface scarred and pitted, a custom guitar strap encircling the singer’s waist. It is the second night of the Touch and Go Records 25th Anniversary Party, and Big Black is giving its first live performance since 1988. It is a tribute to the band’s former record label—and its owner, Corey Rusk—that Big Black has agreed to reunite, if only to play four songs. A hush descends over the crowd, and Albini steps up to the mic. “When history talks about rock music, it has a tendency to skip from the Sex Pistols to Nirvana,” he says. “Something started in the 1980’s, and you’re seeing the evidence of it all around you. There’s 7,000 of you motherfuckers out there tonight who know what I’m talking about! Touch and Go is the best thing to happen to music within my lifetime.” Big Black finishes with the song “Racer X,” and the band leaves the stage, ignoring the repeated calls for an encore. “It was better 20 years go,” Albini tells the crowd. “THE PISTOLS FINISHED ROCK ‘N’ ROLL”
The idea that punk rock ended with the Sex Pistols’ final performance at Winterland has become one of the most enduring myths in popular music. From the pages of Rolling Stone, to the Time-Life television series The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the prevailing wisdom has always been that punk rock simply burned itself out. “Punk rock began to disintegrate… by 1978,” writes rock historian David Szatmary. “Even the Sex Pistols deserted punk rock.”(2) While allowing for the fact that “A twisted, despair-filled version of punk known as ‘hardcore’ survived in Los Angeles,”(3) (and only in Los Angeles?) by 1978, anarchy had been eclipsed by synth pop. Twelve months later, the ex-Pistols were performing Eddie Cochrane covers, John Lydon was fronting his own “corporation,” and the ghost of Sid Vicious could no longer sue for royalties. But the story was only beginning. Though the Sex Pistols were gone, punk never went away. It kept reappearing like a bad case of herpes. MY PAYOLA
Prior to the year 2001, virtually all the books that had been written about punk were either profiles of the Sex Pistols, or collections of photographs.Though the Sex Pistols’ antics had outraged millions of the Queen’s loyal subjects, their culturally-specific attacks on the British monarchy were far less threatening to American audiences than native born acts such as Millions of Dead Cops. By flaring out at the end of their first U.S. tour, the Sex Pistols had assured their place in history: the punk menace had been successfully been “contained.” With Seventies arena rock threatening to choke on its own excess, punk had arrived just in time to give the music industry a much needed shot of adrenaline. Critics loved it, but only as a means to an end –the preservation of the white man’s rock ‘n’ roll: As a sudden shock, as a brief innovation, as an abrupt series of new ideas about what rock music could include and what it could get rid of, punk was an enlivening force in mainstream rock and roll.(4) But having “saved” rock music from death by Rick Wakeman, punk was expected to make way for much more “talented,” career-minded musicians. This became “New Wave.” Critics rushed to embrace the new marketing term. To hear Ed Ward tell it, hardcore-punk was simply an annoying bump on the road to Elvis Costello. As far as the mainstream media were concerned, cultural legitimacy was intrinsically linked to record sales, thus “nothing happened” from 1979 to 1991 –when Nirvana “came out of nowhere” to become the #1 band in the world. “What happened in America in 1991,” said former Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant, “is that you finally got your own punk.”(5) Critics were ecstatic. “Because of Nirvana, everything’s different now,” gushed writer Gina Arnold, “the bands and the industry and the history of rock ‘n’ roll.”(6) Nothing had really changed, of course. Reviewers seemed to think that just because “‘Teen Spirit” was on the radio, that “we” had “won the war.” What many listeners failed to realize is that the music industry is really content-neutral. From death metal to boy bands, it was all the same. DGC isn’t concerned about creating lasting art, it’s only interested in turning a steady profit for the shareholders (and David Geffen). When angry “Grrrl” bands were all the rage, Warner Bros. was more than happy to sign L7. When Snoop Dogg went platinum, even Disney flirted with hardcore “gangsta” rap. Whereas previous generations had been hampered by a lingering sense of corporate paternalism, in the 1990’s the consumer market was finally given free reign. While “Smells Like Teen Spirit” might have driven Def Leppard into exile, such cosmetic changes masked the true power of the multinationals. In the post-Nirvana era, major label artists continued to go without health insurance, and five companies still controlled 85 percent of worldwide music sales, and so-called “independent record promoters” were still charging $3 million a week to “manufacture” the hits (payola: the practice of paying DJs to play songs on the radio).(7) In 1996, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Publishers, and Performers) sued the Girl Scouts for singing hundred-year-old campfire songs. This wasn’t a revolution, this was business as usual. As early as 1992, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was lobbying Congress for changes in Federal copyright law –so as to prevent actual musicians from recovering the rights to their own recordings. Under a 1999 amendment to the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, sound recordings were retroactively declared to be “works made for hire” –giving record labels the rights to the songs in perpetuity. Musicians were furious. But Gina Arnold wasn’t interested in economics. After tackling “the road to Nirvana” in Route 666, her next book was devoted to radical snow boarding.
THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER
The symbolic and the literal death of grunge came on April 8, 1994, when the head of Kurt Cobain was found splattered all across the walls of his garage. In a spontaneous outpouring of grief and mass hysteria (egged-on by round-the-clock coverage on MTV) thousands of young people turned out for a candlelight vigil outside Cobain’s home, where his widow, Courtney Love, provided a dramatic interpretative reading of her husband’s suicide note. Kurt’s body had scarcely been laid to rest when the vultures started circling overhead. With record sales flagging, Cobain was worth more as a dead man than when the singer was still alive. Dozens of instant books and op-ed diatribes rolled off the presses, followed by the posthumous release of MTV’s “Nirvana Unplugged.” For the next 12 months, Kurt’s face would become an integral part of the iconography of rock ‘n’ roll –and not just here in the United States. Eastern Europe was awash in t-shirts emblazoned with beatific image of “Saint Kurt.” Posters depicted Kurt Cobain with bleeding stigmata and a crown of thorns. “Fans of music are really involved with the identity of the musicians that they admire,” says poet Paul Dickinson. “But to us, the whole punk rock thing was against hero worship. That gulf between audience and bands kind of disappeared.” Just a few months earlier, Nirvana had been criticized for lackluster sales. Since Christmas, their big follow-up album In Utero had been trailing in the charts. Music journalists had begun to speculate that maybe Nirvana had lost the magic touch. But all this was forgotten in the wake of Cobain’s death. As a rock ‘n’ roll suicide, Kurt Cobain could do no wrong. He’d been elevated to the highest ranks of the music pantheon to join the ranks of the immortals: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and all the other members of “that stupid club.” In what was perhaps the most shameless attempt to cash in on the tragedy, a hardbound coffee table book entitled A Tribute to Kurt Cobain was rushed into print by the editors of Rolling Stone –a magazine which Kurt had once lampooned by appearing on the cover wearing a t-shirt that said: “Corporate magazines still suck.” “THIS IS A SONG ABOUT A GIRL”
By 1994, the pendulum was swinging back again. After the surprise success of Nevermind, Kurt Cobain had proven difficult to control. He kept making these unlistenable records and insulting his loyal fans. A message on the back of Insesticide chastised the listeners: "If any of you don't like gays or women or blacks, please leave us the fuck alone.” Grunge was on its way out. All this talk of angst and despair was proving to be “a major bummer.” It was bad for business. And grunge musicians had an annoying habit of turning up dead. Two months after Cobain blew his brains out, Hole’s bassist Kristin Pfaff—formerly a member of the band Janitor Joe—was found floating in a bathtub next to a dirty syringe. While the entertainment industry was busy milking Cobain’s suicide for every penny it was worth, a man named Billie Joe Armstrong was waiting in the wings. Grunge had cleared the way for loud guitars, but it was time for something more upbeat. What followed was a massive teen pop marketing campaign. The journalists had been given their talking points: Green Day was spearheading a “punk revival.” It was “1977 all over again.” Snottiness was “in.” “Punk is making a comeback,” declared the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Berkeley Band Green Day Helps Lead a Punk Revival,” said the Portland Oregonian. “[A] punk revival helped ease the burden during a year of loss in rock 'n' roll,” Brendan Kelly told the readers of the Montreal Gazette. “It wouldn't surprise me if we started to see a few other bands who we haven't heard of before," predicted Anthony Violanti in the Buffalo News… while the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel proclaimed that the tattooed triumvirate of Rancid, Green Day, and the Offspring were leading: “a three-pronged punk revival.” As the stars of Woodstock ‘94, Green Day was tailor-made for MTV. The green hair gave them street-cred, while Green Day’s simple pop songs and insipid lyrics served as the perfect antidote to the Riot Grrrls’ increasingly loud demands for a revolution based on feminist principles. “Why is Green Day such a sellout?” said former New York Times cartoonist Ted Rall, “It’s not because they sell millions of records; it’s because they don’t say anything.”(9) By the end of 1994, Green Day’s Dookie was competing with the Offspring’s Smash (and the hit song “Come Out and Play,”), eventually selling 10 million copies worldwide. Hoping to lure the Berkeley punk band Rancid into signing with the majors, Epic Records executive Michael Goldstein dyed his hair blue, and offered the band $1.5 million in advance.(10)
PULL MY STRINGS
For a movement that “didn’t last long,” the punks had been surprisingly active throughout the 1980’s. Black Flag had cut a swathe across the entire continent, doing three U.S. tours within the space of nine months; the Dead Kennedys were charged with criminal obscenity; Hüsker Dü had appeared on The Today Show; Bob Stinson licked the camera lens on Saturday Night Live, while Crass’ tape splices of Ronald Reagan threatening to “nuke” Western Europe had drawn heated denials from the U.S. State Department. In 1984, singer Dave Dictor had released the P.E.A.C.E. compilation –a benefit album containing 56 tracks by 55 bands from 13 countries, together with a 72-page booklet. (“A ‘punk revival’?! It never went away!”) Yet now we were supposed to believe that the events of the previous decade had never taken place; that punk was nothing but a bunch of spiky teen idols singing songs about making out with girls. Such things don’t happen by accident. The journalists weren’t ignorant; they simply had their own agenda. The so-called “Punk Revival of 1994” was a deliberate attempt to depoliticize the movement, to rewrite history from the corporate perspective. For 15 years, American punk and hardcore had been completely ignored. Now, the industry wasattempting to recreate the alternative in its own image, framing the former underground as an American success story. Once pilloried as social deviants, former punk musicians such as Henry Rollins were hailed as hardworking individuals who had really “pulled-themselves-up-by-their-bootstraps.” Black Flag had become the new standard bearers for the Protestant work ethic. Traveling writer (and former Green Day roadie) Aaron Cometbus likens his friends’ relationship to the entertainment industry to that of worms being devoured by a flock of hungry birds:
Then came the coffee table books, tell-all biographies, and photographic retrospectives detailing the “glory days” of early punk. The survivors of CBGB’s and the Whisky a Go Go finally got their due. But let’s face it: a bunch of white people doing heroin together really isn’t all that interesting. (Nor, for that matter, is the music of Darby Crash.) If the Germs were all there was to punk, the critics would be right to dismiss it as just a bunch of noise. There must be some other reason why punk continues to capture the imagination, 35 years after it burst out of Detroit. By 1997, the transformation was complete: punk was the new mainstream. Hot on the heels of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, the Offspring scored a Top 40 hit with the political backlash song “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” (clever plagiarists, the Offspring stole the tune from the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”). The dark side of the Do-It-Yourself ethos was finally beginning to bear fruit.
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