Has the Internet killed the myth of the rock star
"In the last three or four years the internet's taken a stranglehold and killed off the myth of the rock star," Tom Meighan of Kasabian told Bangshowbiz last week. "You know when you used to buy records and there was a myth behind them? There's too much on blogs now and I think it's killed it off. There are so many rock stars writing these self-pitying blogs and it's not in the spirit of rock'n'roll."
The irony of giving such a headline-grabbing opinion to an internet-only news service seems to have been lost on Meighan, but as a singer clearly in thrall to the mystique of Bowie, Bolan and Björk, he makes a good point. For all the wrong reasons.
We are in danger of losing the enigma of the rock star: you only have to stand Grizzly Bear next to pop stars like Dizzee Rascal, Florence Welch, or Lady Gaga in her blowtorch bra to see that the mainstream has gazumped alt-rock in terms of retina-frying freakishness. Dolled up in Napoleon outfits for their last promo stint Kasabian seem like a throwback to a time when rock favoured the fantastical. A time before hair metal made dressing up seem corny, long before lad rock forced music to be "real", and long before Pitchfork made a star of the bearded troubadour.
But it's not Twitter that has exploded the myths behind the rock star.
If anything it's magnified them, making it easier to sort the say-nothing chaff from the proper-bizarre wheat. Yes, Calvin Harris and Mike Skinner go on a bit with tweets about sandwich fillings and train delays, but that's because they're fundamentally ordinary blokey-blokes; only a particularly naive T4 guest booker would kid themselves that they were "pop stars". Follow the Proper Rock Stars on Twitter and there's plenty of propagated myths – there are pictures of Muse playing futuristic digital clarinets in Japanese airports, while Liam Gallagher roars expletives about his brother's haircut. Even if it's not actually the star in question doing the tweeting, the fact that an impostor can convincingly impersonate them is testament to a heroic or cartoonish character in the best rock-myth tradition.
