Read Online Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman - Free Book Online

yet they’re completely the same.
    What they shared is a human element; they seemed real. There was a certain depth to their character. Granted, this is partially due to their popularity; when the media covers a rock band, they really only cover the vocalist, so singers from the most popular bands always have more opportunities to seem interesting (the third person to follow in this lineage was Eddie Vedder, and for many of the same reasons). But this process works both ways. During their first months in the spotlight, there was something about Rose and Cobain (and, to a lesser extent, Vedder and Trent Reznor) that made me want to know more about them. It was an undefined fascination that I did not feel for people like Tom Keifer or Dave Pirner; though I liked Cinderella and Soul Asylum very much, my interest did not go too far beyond the musical product. Almost instantaneously, Axl Rose came across darker, more dangerous, and more credible than his peers. That’s partially to his credit and partially due to my own naivete. He put himself in a position where I could comfortably lionize him. Rose was hard rock’s equivalent to U2’s Bono.
    If you’re the type who thinks comparing Rose to Cobain is off-putting, the comparison to Bono might seem downright insulting. Serious U2 fans tend to be completely humorless (at least when they talk about early U2 records), and they award Bono an almost religious respect. This is because they feel Bono “standsfor something.” Even when U2 decided to become the ’90s version of KISS and evolved into a bloated commercial monster, U2 fans insisted this was “camp.” To rational outsiders, it seemed like U2 was ripping off the blind old fans who refused to judge them as a mortal rock band. And maybe they were. But—if that was truly the case—I give Bono well-deserved kudos for his ability to sell himself as a messianic figure during the 1980s and then reap the capitalistic rewards for that performance ten years later. He’s a cagey charlatan.
    Bono was able to morph himself into whatever his fans needed him to be: He could be angry, brooding, vulnerable, or romantic—and sometimes all at the same moment. Rose is the same kind of shape-shifter, but for a different, less stable audience. His style is even more schizophrenic. He swings from being openly violent and misogynistic (like on the song “It’s So Easy”) to acting utterly helpless (such as the brilliant closing two and a half minutes of “Rocket Queen,” my vote for the finest 171 seconds of ’80s rock). In the video for “Don’t Cry,” emotional juxtaposition is pretty much all Axl does. But unlike Bono, Guns N’ Roses never played “college rock.” It was never specifically directed at smart people. GNR wrote for a younger audience—the kind of people who still slammed bedroom doors and huffed gas in the garage.
    When Ross Raihala first tried to explain what Morrissey meant to him as a teenager, I didn’t get it; whenever I listen to the Smiths, I can sense homosexual overtones, but that’s mostly because I now actively look for them. It doesn’t seem “obvious” at all. But that says more about me than it does about the Smiths. My favorite Smiths songs are “Half a Person” and “Ask,” and—since I apply them to myself—I don’t see any indisputable gay imagery in either of those songs. Raihala thinks that assertion is ridiculous and he’s almost insulted by the suggestion. The reason he takes it as an insult is because it attacks the validity of the connection between Morrissey and the gay community. As a person, Morrissey has never publicly said “I’m gay,” nor has he written any songs that empirically state his sexual preference—yethe (apparently) drops hints constantly. It’s easy to understand why closeted gay teens could relate to that: Like