So much for Street Fighting Man

Max McGuinness gets conservatively stoned.

I wrote on this blog a few weeks ago about fascist rock stars in South Africa and Croatia. No such political swear words apply to the Rolling Stones but Saturday's concert at Slane reminded me how Mick and Keith are  right of centre on many levels.

Firstly, we have to contend with the decidedly un-PC lyrics of their encore - Brown Sugar.
Here are the lyrics for the opening verse:

"Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in a market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
Hear him whip the women just around midnight"

Make no mistake. This is a song about a brutal rape which is now being belted out by a wrinkled old man on the verge of retirement...and it's brilliant.

Tom Stoppard never paused to consider the blatant immorality of these words when turning the Rolling Stones into poster boys for the victory of liberal capitalism in last year's nonetheless superb Rock 'n Roll. The play's thesis is clear enough - Mick Jagger brought down the Berlin Wall. Indeed the final scene is a Stones concert in Prague just after the Vaclav Havel-led "Velvet revolution".

Attempts at reforming Communism from within - notably, the "Prague Spring" - which sought to replace Stalinism with a liberal form of Socialism were brutally crushed. This meant that the New Right were the only ones left to pick up the pieces when the Iron Curtain came crashing down.

The Rolling Stones encompass this attitude perfectly. They appalled the conservative establishment through their unabashedly dissolute antics but the same spirit of radical individualism made them part of the Thatcherite avant-garde. The Rolling Stones are still as obsessed by money and extravagance as they ever were and continue to have an extreme aversion to paying taxes but, perhaps predictably, they've forgotten about the other half of the liberal package - the band has regularly played gigs in China where they uncomplainingly accept having their lyrics censored.

I suppose it's always easier to stick up for one's wallet rather than one's right to free speech.

Comments

[Ian Thal]

Keep in mind that "The Plastic People of the Universe" were an apolitical band who by virtue of being persecuted by the Czechoslovakian government for their non-conformity inspired the Charter 77 movement. The American and British bands most cited as musical inspirations for the Plastic People as well as Vaclav Havel-- The Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, The Rolling Stones, and the Fugs, were, with the exception of The Fugs, never political bands (at least not political in an ideologically coherent manner)

To the extent most of these bands were counter-cultural, it was because they advocated non-conformity-- not liberalism. Non-conformity, though it leads to no coherent political philosophy, is a powerful opposing force to authoritatianism. The Stones deserve some credit-- the music made the dissisdents who toppled the communist regime, dance in an unauthorized manner-- even if the lyrics described another form of tyranny.