P L A I N T E X T P L E A S E ! !]
From: "James Heartfield" <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: Britpap Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:08:11 -0000
THE SHAMING OF BRITPOP Brendan O'Neill on the Blairite conformism of Coldplay and other safe, smug middle-class bands.
THE SPECTATOR, 15 October 2005
When Noel Gallagher of Oasis visited Downing Street in July 1997 to congratulate the incumbent New Labour regime on its stunning victory, it was the end of Britpop as we knew it. The sight of this Mancunian rocker - the bad boy of Britpop, who together with his brother Liam had injected some much-needed laddish abandon into a music scene dominated by skinny art students and millionaires' daughters - taking tea with Tony and nibbling canapes with Cherie ...well, it was too much for some to take. A friend of mine even threw out his Oasis CDs in disgust (though he bought them all again a couple of weeks later). What kind of working-class hero is it, we wondered, who takes part in an official orgy of brown-nosing for a Prime Minister as unhip and illiberal as Blair?
Now, however, I am almost willing to forgive Gallagher. For today's stars of British indie rock have committed a treason far graver than his. Never mind chatting to Blair over champers; this new generation of Britpoppers is made in Blair's image - they look like Blair, sound like Blair and think Blair is 'BRILLIANT'. And they espouse every mealy-mouthed prejudice of the Blairite age, taking a safety-first, shrink-wrapped approach to life, love and politics that would have been anathema to the punks and grunts of yesteryear. From Coldplay to Keane, James Blunt to Franz Ferdinand (the band, that is, not the assassinated Austrian archduke), the independent music scene is dominated by the most insufferable, middle-class, non-smoking, anti-drugs, safe-sex-observing bunch of Blairite bores and arse-kissers you could ever have the misfortune to clap eyes on. We've gone from Britpop to Blairpop. The kids, I'm afraid, are not all right.
I'm not joking when I say they think Blair is 'BRILLIANT'. Chris Martin of the inexplicably huge Coldplay (whose position as the most boring person in Britain is challenged only by the fact that his even more pallid American wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, has recently taken up residence here) really does think Blair is brill. Earlier this year he sent a handwritten note to Blair, via a journalist, that said: 'Dear Mr Blair, My name is Chris. I am the singer in a band called Coldplay.... I think all the stuff you're doing this year in terms of trying to sort the whole place out is BRILLIANT. The Make Poverty History campaign that you're behind is not just a slogan, it's a real possibility and most of my friends feel like you're one of the only politicians on the world stage who actually wants to achieve it.' He also offered Blair guitar lessons and wrote down his mobile phone number and, sure enough, he received a call from Blair's people a few days later.
Martin is the rock star Blair once dreamt of becoming: ethical, earnest and respectable, the kind you could introduce to your granny with no need to worry that something obscene or outrageous would occur. Martin and Blair even look alike: both have thinning hair and possess overly toothy grins. They sound alike, speaking in the stuttering, self-effacing, slightly slangish tones adopted by those sections of the British middle classes that are embarrassed by their wealth and privilege. They were both expensively educated (Blair at Fettes and Martin at Sherborne) and both set up bands while at Ivy League universities: Blair was the lead singer of a mercifully shortlived maudlin rock cover band called Ugly Rumours at Oxford, while Martin set up a somewhat more successful musical outfit while studying Ancient World Studies at University College London in the 1990s (he got a first). The insidious spread of Blairism, which demands conformism from each and every one of us, means that even our toppermost pop star is now little more than a mini-me version of our Dear Leader.
Coldplay has spawned copycats, each of them as dull as the other. There is Keane, three men and a piano, who - get this - are named after the housemistress at Tonbridge school, where they were all educated (to the tune of 22,100 pounds a year). The email gossip-sheet Popbitch - occasionally reliable, sometimes slanderous - has a section that describes the antics of the rich and famous as spotted by members of the public. You know the kind of thing: model heard snorting in a toilet; pop star spied snogging his male roadie, etc. It recently had this to say about Keane's lead singer Tom Chaplin: 'On the train going to his parents' house last weekend, drinking Ribena, and doing the Daily Telegraph Book of Sudoku.' Keane do not drink or - heaven forbid - do drugs. 'Why should we get falling-down drunk all the time just to fit in? Drugs have never been our thing. I'm sure fear plays a part,' Chaplin said in an interview last year. For Christ's sake, even David Cameron has dropped a big stinking hint that he might have experimented with some kind of substance at uni. But not our pop stars; they're too 'scared'.
Even the edgier of the new Britpop bands have absorbed today's culture of fear, and urge their fans to behave responsibly. The Kaiser Chiefs - five young men from Leeds who sound a bit like Madness (though not nearly as good) - recently had a big hit with 'I Predict A Riot'. Its lyrics could have been written by Tessa Jowell or one of the other New Labour apparatchiks who have been banging on for months about the problem of working-class youth getting drunk and disorderly. It goes: 'Watching the people get lairy/ Is not very pretty I tell thee/ Walking through town is quite scary ... I tried to get in my taxi/ A man in a tracksuit attacked me ... I predict a riot! I predict a riot!' Those pesky 'men in tracksuits' (read drunken chavs), they're always ruining nights out for nice middle-class kids. The Kaiser Chiefs' view of city centres as a riot waiting to happen is pure New Labour, and it's a far cry from when punk rockers The Clash sang 'White Riot' in the late 1970s. That song expressed envy that only black kids got to riot: 'White riot, I wanna riot, a riot of my own!' it went.
The Scottish band Franz Ferdinand do not have sexual relations with their fans because they consider it a 'form of abuse' (tell that to Mick Jagger). They have clearly internalised officialdom's warning that personal relationships - especially sexual ones - are potentially harmful and that we all have to be ultra-careful. Alex Kapranos, the lead singer of Franz Ferdinand, even writes a weekly column for the Guardian. On food. Can you get more mind-numbingly middle-of-the-road than that? Then there is James Blunt, the Harrow-educated author of self-pitying hits such as 'You're Beautiful', who before becoming the Latest Big Thing was in the pay of the Blairite state. He fought in Kosovo, that most Blairite of wars. (I say 'fought'. He actually, in his own words, strolled through Serb villages singing 'All we are saying is give peace a chance'. As if the Serbs didn't have enough troubles.) Blunt says he is now a pacifist. Every time I see his smug mug I feel like committing an act of violence. He also, as part of his soldiering duties, stood guard at the Queen Mother's coffin in 2002. It seems a long time ago that the Sex Pistols set youthful pulses racing - and the establishment's temperature raging - with their derogatory punk-rock version of 'God Save the Queen'.
Of course, there is nothing big or clever about being a drunk or a junkie in the mould of the late Sid Vicious (the former Sex Pistol killed by heroin in New York in 1979). And you only have to look at Pete Doherty, Kate Moss's partner in crime and the singer with Babyshambles, to see that you can take binbags of drugs and still be breathtakingly boring. But being rebellious - or at least feeling rebellious - has normally been the natural state for young people. Between the ages of about 13 and 18, youth usually resist the rules and mores of their rulers and instead identify with mods, punks or rockers - the more outrageous the better. Today they listen to bland bands that preach safety, caution, respectability and good manners, and become good little Blairites even before they reach adulthood. It is testament to the extraordinary levels of conformism and compliance in New Labour's Britain that even rock stars now sing from the same hymn sheet as Blair. Come back, Noel - all is (almost) forgiven.
Brendan O'Neill is deputy editor of spiked (<http://www.spiked-online.com>).