Morat Photography

Are the latest bunch of frontmen a bunch of whiny piss-ants compared to the groupie-snorting, drug-fucking stars of yesteryear? Metal Hammer scribe and all-round legend Morat investigates!

I got a text from Nashville Pussy frontman Blaine Cartwright the other night that read as follows: “Just got kicked out of Wild At Heart in Berlin for spitting at the DJ for playing Duran Duran followed by the Ghostbusters theme. We ruled tonight!”

Obviously, after the obligatory ‘who is this? My bastard phone has eaten all my numbers!’ it was good to know that somewhere out there, on some far off crazy night, a rock n roll band was still raising a little hell in the obnoxious wee hours. Lemmy’s probably out there too, maybe propping up the bar at the Rainbow or Crazy Girls like he has (when he’s not on tour) since before you where even born. The trouble is that, as Blaine put it, a few albums back, they are “the last of the last of a dying breed,” an ever dwindling wild bunch, and without them rock n roll is going to be a desperately, desperately boring place, make no mistake about it.

You know why it’s called rock n roll, right? Fucking. Bumping uglies. Rocking and rolling. Ian Dury put the trinity together in a song for the first time in 1977 with ‘Sex and Drugs And Rock And Roll’, but it’s been around a lot longer than that, way back to Jerry Lee Lewis waving guns around and marrying his 13 year old cousin.

Rock n roll has always had the finest tradition of hellraisers and, on any given night, you could always guarantee that that fine tradition was being well represented. Somewhere out there Lux Interior was drinking wine out of his boots and smashing holes in the stage with his mic stand, Ozzy was snorting ants, the Dwarves were wrecking your favourite dive bar and giving your sister a dose of something contagious in the car park. It’s the devils’ music after all and these tales of extraordinary madness are the stuff of legend. Keith Moon driving a roller into the swimming pool, Led Zeppelin inserting fish into groupies, Ozzy (as ever) pissing on the Alamo, Nick Oliveri getting arrested, naked and often bloodied…

Bands will go on tour now with a laptop rather than a lapdancer, they’ll actually read their record contacts before signing them, and there’s a good chance they won’t overdose on horse tranquilizers, but, fuck me, are they dull.

When their lives, eventually, flash before them it will be a series of accounting decisions and endless hours of Metal Gear Solid and Facebook, they won’t need any blanks filling in like Iggy Pop or Motley Crue, bless ‘em and their crappy music, at least they went for it.

It may have become impossible to think but Lemmy’s not gonna live forever, baby, and what are you going to do when he’s gone? There are no replacements, no pretenders to the throne and nothing to live vicariously through on a dull winter night: welcome to the brave new world where we can discuss Brian Warner’s paintings rather than watch Marilyn Manson smash the shit out of everything on stage. No thanks. I prefer my rock n roll and bit more…well, rock n roll.

Morat. Los Angeles, November, 2010