I'm a Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll [Paperback]

 

 

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Well, it's true. Hats off to Ruth Padel for a pretty ambitious project - there's very little in human culture that is simultaneously as fragmented and yet lumped together in one niche as popular music, and to try to find a unifying theory for all of it is a big job. You'll never please everyone, and you stand a good chance of alienating your audience if you tread on their chosen tribalism while doing the critic schtick.

If you've delved into the murky puddle that is cultural criticism, you'll probably be familiar with many of the concepts put forward in this tome; that white rock music owes everything to black music, that it's a testosterone thang, etc etc. Much of it can be found in various chapters of Mark Simpson's excellent 'Male Impersonators', with no po-faced extrapolation of Greek myth. Pretentiousness does occasionally rear its ugly head, but thankfully not too often, and much that's here is good. Padel sometimes gets her wires crossed (doesn't anyone check books for accuracy anymore?) and you tend to find yourself skimming the Graecocentric chapters to get back to the relating of the 20th Century evolution of rock. The author is sometimes a little too sketchy; most notably when she states baldly that the white American rapper Eminem has been accepted by his black peers. A closer look into this 'fact' would reveal the Col. Tom Parker-like presence of Dr. Dre as the driving force behind him, which points up the irony of certain critics comparing Eminem to Elvis... this time it's a black man making good on the idea that if you can get a white boy to do a black man's act, you'll sell a million....

For all the 'gender study' suggestiveness of the title, there's not as much here from women in pop as I would have liked as well. Not bad, but I won't be re-reading it soon.

Ruth Padel, the poet, has written some oddly disparate books, among them, a marvellous exploration of what the Tiger's future on this planet might consist in, together with books about her ancestor Darwin, as well as poetry collections and explorations of poetic form. Her questing intellect is brought, in this book, to a fascinating study of popular music, its meanings and its impact on the world, and its origins in archetypes and myths. It is not a comfortable book to read, but though there is some repetition, it is throughout both challenging and enlightening.

It tracks the rise of rock music, its beginnings in Rhythm and Blues, its transgressive power and the fantastic communities it engenders in the world of fandom. R&B was black before it was white and Padel depicts the way rock 'n' roll borrowed and stole from black music to create a `more acceptable' set of music heroes.

When it comes to today's incarnation of rock Padel argues that the defiance of transgression incorporates rock music's totem beliefs: "What we believe is true - and stuff the authorities, the rest of the world, gods, parents or society." She imparts this power - and it's darker corollaries - to music by virtue of its endurance and popularity. It's not just the teenager in the bedroom, mooning over a poster and painting her eyes like Souxie Soux, its big business. It's thousands of screaming fans at a stadium; it's the Beatles taking over the charts; it's Mick Jagger impersonating the devil at Altamont. It's Arthur Brown setting his own head on fire. It's modern myth.

Padel contends that rock is deeply misogynistic - as she says: "You can hate women without bossing them about; you can be misogynistic but not supremacist. But you cannot have sexism and supremacism - which rock music is full of - without a dash of misogyny somewhere." We know it these days as `laddism': "Rock culture expects its fans to stay teenage in a bit of their mind when they grow up." But as she also points out, "...from women's point of view, forty-year-old men clinging to the teenage boy mindset has an element of - well, to put it softly, disingenuousness."

I'm not sure I agree with Padel. Eminem's lyrics reflect his experiences in a trailer-trash life-style - it's not just another story but specific to his age-group and social status. Black rap and some white band's lyrics reflect macho posturing far too obviously out to shock to take seriously, and anyway - all rock music is posture - like Hendrix pretending his guitar is a gun or Morrisey symbolising his sexuality with gladioli. Rock is largely posture and play. Singing about the transgressive is what rock is all about - and who hasn't been through the phase of imagining she's astride the biggest motorbike?

Not all rock music can be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Where does the drama and depth of music like, for instance, Bruce Springsteen's mood-piece `Philedelphia' - and what about the work of women like Joan Armatrading and Kate Bush? I could name hundreds of classic rock songs that just don't conform to Padel's stereotype, or, if they do, subvert their own tendencies in other ways. It really does depend on what you want to listen to.
This is a fascinating book; too full of argument and contention to do justice to in a review, but brilliantly discursive and complex. Read it if you care about music.

I was blown away. This book was mentioned in Ian Rankin's A Question of Blood and I thought what on earth? Then when I got it and read it I thought, it's talking about me! Electric - everything about how you want to be a hero, how you see yourself, how you hear music, how the past reaches out and grabs you, how you hear yourself reflected in music, how you love.

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