Yes, we expect, um, excesses, from rock stars. But, do those excesses — in drug use, sexually profligacy and financial fumbling — define rock starism? Cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal thinks so. He believes that such behaviors made the recently deceased Rick James a rock star.
James was a Rock Star — he lived every bit of the excesses that have come to define that experience. There has always been this myth of the Rock Star and indeed figures like Jerry Lee Lewis, David Crosby, Steven Tyler, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, and even Janice (sic) Joplin lived up to everything the myth suggested — sex, drugs, hedonism, 13-year-old girls (in the case of Lewis) and even jelly doughnuts.
Jelly doughnuts?
I must disagree with Neal for two reasons. First, I believe that production of work that attracts the attention of a mass audience is the major criterion for any kind of stardom. A musician who plays the blues derived music that can be described as rock-and-roll, lays adolescents, is in trouble with I.R.S., and eats jelly doughnuts three times a day is not a rock star unless he has attracted that kind of attention. Rick James (pictured) was a a rock star because he produced rock and roll and attracted the attention of a mass audience — mainly because of his music, but also because of his outrageous life style.
Neal provides his unacceptable definition of rock stardom while making another blunder. He believes that the soul man is a different type than the rock star.
The equally compelling myth of the Soul Man, has always suggested something much darker — something deeply connected to the spiritual and existential realities of the "people" with whom the songs of the Soul Man resonated most powerfully. Johnny Ace, Sam Cooke, Frankie Lymon, Otis Redding, Shorty Long, Billy Stewart, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Ronnie Dyson, Walter Jackson, Donny Hathaway, David Ruffin, Barry White — Wilson Pickett, Teddy Pendergrass, Al Green, Luther Vandross, Aaron Hall, R. Kelly (ya'll don't hear me now!) and even the mythical Eddie Cain, Jr. Complicated men, whose demons brought them in touch with the darkest aspects of our humanity and whose voices sang of the promise of transcendence — how Donny Hathaway put it? "Ya'll don't know what I'm talking about!" Rick James was arguably one of the few artists — if not the only of his generation — who embodied the myth of the Rock Star and the Soul Man.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
this is an excellent post and I agree with you that it's much more complicated than Neal presents it - I think James was both a rock star and a soul man