12

I Confess

JULY 20, 1985

 

Two nights before the affair, I had not known it would take place. The woman on my right at dinner, whose husband is professionally engaged in the production of rock music, told me she had not been disposed to go to Philadelphia for “the concert,” but now she thought that if she did not go, she might in fact be passing up a historic event. With that prompting, before going out for dinner on Saturday I hooked up my VCR to catch the three-hour abbreviation of the sixteen-hour marathon, and when I got back, sat down with my wife and watched the last twenty minutes, which began with Jack Nicholson introducing Bob Dylan and his two accompanists. Jack Nicholson said that, for the finale, they had saved someone who “transcended history,” no less.

Here was an event, philanthropic in design (all proceeds would go to Africans being systematically starved by the implementation of Marxist doctrine in Ethiopia) and impulse. The show-biz aspect of the great Live Aid spectacular was not what engages the attention. It is, rather, a plight one needs to explore. Not a purely private problem. I would not write a column to explore the difficulties I experience in virtue, say, of having a sixth toe. I have become a truth-seeker in the matter of the rock culture, and my problems aren‘t, I think, unique.

1. More people tuned in on Live Aid, we are told, than tuned in on the Summer Olympics. This datum is absolutely extraordinary, given that sports have been the lingua franca of internationalism through much of recorded history, and that there is an instantly communicable excitement to a sports event (Who’s going to win?) that does not attach to a musical event, the excitement of which comes in through a different sensory apparatus. What is being said for rock music, in effect, is that the entire world is at its feet, that the undisputed international celebrities of the world are the rock stars.

2. If this is so, then why is it that they do not appeal—well, to me? My other appetites are normal. Could it be that there is a dirty little secret no one is prepared publicly to discuss, namely that that kind of thing does not appeal to a whole lot of people who are not willing to confess their alienation from the overwhelming majority of the young?

3. “‘That kind of thing’? Come on now, Buckley, what exactly do you mean?”

Fair enough. Bob Dylan comes on stage, and on either side of him are two famous guitarists from the Rolling Stones. He last shaved, oh, three days before (Why?). He is wearing blue jeans and a scruffy T-shirt arrangement of sorts (Why? Trademark? Change trademarks?). The two guitarists arrive smoking cigarettes, which dangle from their lips for the first minute or so of the first song (Why?). Their arms are entirely bare, and they otherwise wear what looks like a stripped-down dark-colored T-shirt (Why? Heat?). Then intense concentration on Dylan, and neither I nor spouse can pick up a single word he has sung, and we frankly doubt that anyone else could (Why?). The songs were without discernible melody, the voice was whiny, with enough gravel in it to stop Jean-Claude Killy in mid-slope, the guitarists were hard to listen to (Why? Why? Why?). But we were engaged in transcending history.

Of one thing I am absolutely convinced, and that is that there is no doubting the sincerity of the rock-worshipers. I know one or two who are without affectation, and they will, in stretches of solitude, clap on their Walkmans and listen to Bob Dylan before they will listen to Vivaldi, or Verdi, or Strauss, or Cole Porter. Obviously there is a generational imbalance, and that should not surprise, whether one asks about relative young-old enthusiasm for the Rolling Stones, or relative young-old enthusiasm for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But the totality of the mobilization of the young appears to have swept with it the not-young, and one wonders whether the capitulation of the middle-aged suggests a cultural insecurity. If all the world thinks Picasso’s double-jawed, cockeyed dames are masterpieces, ought one to defer to universal sentiment? If one does not master rock and roll, is one closing the door on a transformative experience? Is it the equivalent of inviting color blindness? Deafness? Impotence?

Well, I have said it, and in payment for exercising the privilege of skipping the first two and a half hours of tape, I’ll make a contribution to Live Aid, reviving the movement of sticking a dime in the nickelodeon to buy five minutes of silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

—POLICY: CONFUSIONS ABOUNDING