David Bowie and Paul McCartney: boats against the current…
I watched a couple of documentaries (thank you Open Culture) this week featuring rock stars from the classic era, one about a living musician, the other about one who has, alas, shuffled off this mortal coil. What I found most interesting about each of these films is the reminder that it is very difficult for any successful artist, especially for a David Bowie or Paul McCartney, who have enjoyed success at the highest level of their art, to move forward. In a popular art form such as rock music has been, part of the problem is commerce; one who is successful and whose art is embraced by a wide public sells much “plastic ware,” as Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman wrote. They feel constant commercial pressure to repeat their sales success – a pressure that can make any artist choose a safe route.
Another, perhaps even greater part of the problem, especially for an artist like Bowie or McCartney, comes from those whose admiration (and money) made them acclaimed, and wealthy: fans. Any artist like Bowie or McCartney with a long career arc (given that the average length of a popular musical star’s career is 18 months, the nearly 50 year career of Bowie and the 50+ year career of McCartney are by any measure remarkable) is bound to have to deal with one of the strongest desires of fans as they, like their heroes, age – nostalgia for past works which form, after all, the soundtracks of their lives.
Paul McCartney, as I have written before, often hides his own pain and desire behind a facade of charm and ingratiating pleasantness. In the 2005 documentary, Paul McCartney: Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road, McCartney couches his pitch for his then newest album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard to a select audience in Abbey Road’s Studio B (where the Beatles recorded some of the most famous songs in the history of popular music) in a nostalgic look back at the studio’s history.
By: Jim Booth
Source: Scholars and Rogues
