Here’s the table-setting for the thing I want to explore today – I was watching a compilation of things going wrong at concerts and it contained a clip of an actual physical altercation between elderly bandmates and I was like “Who the fuck was that?” Luckily a comment on the video mentioned it was from the “Infamous Melbourne Meltdown” of The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
And oh boy did I light up. I watched everything I could find on this incident. Here’s one of the best:
This gave me one quick revelation – I do have guilty pleasures. This is the thing I know I should be better than and I don’t care.
When I have sympathy for people with addiction issues I mean everyone except Anton Newcombe; when I talk about compassion for mental illness I mean everyone except Anton Newcombe; when I say anything about the world being a better place I mean for everyone except Anton Newcombe. You can feed me Anton Newcombe falling apart all day and I’ll eat that shit up.
Okay, so who is Anton Newcombe? Who is The Brian Jonestown Massacre?
TL:DW – There was a friendship-turned-rivalry between the bands Brian Jonestown Massacre, fronted by Anton Newcombe, and The Dandy Warhols, fronted by someone who isn’t a dumb piece of shit. The Warhols got a little bit of mainstream success and BJM didn’t and the rock n’ roll mythology became that Anton Newcombe was just too real, man, too much of genius to be a fucking sell out, man.
And the thing is… No. He’s an asshole whose music is boring and sucks.
But other assholes whose music is also boring and sucks identify with him and he represents a sort of wish-fulfillment. If he can act that way and still be lauded as a genius with an orbit of believers and enablers than I can too if I’m just un-self-aware enough.
You know how Charles Manson and David Koresh were both failed musicians before they fanatical cult leaders? It’s because that’s what they actually wanted to be – they wanted to be Rock Stars with a devoted following and a bunch of enablers and babysitters organizing the parts of life they couldn’t manage – but their music was so bad only delusional people found their way to them and the music became irrelevant in pursuit of what they were really seeking.
Anton is that but he also lacks the charisma.
Anton can’t keep a friend, a band mate, a wife, a record label, a roof over his head, or a sober streak of meaningful duration. And I’d have sympathy for him if he didn’t act like it was other people’s obligation, nay, privilege to provide him those things because he’s just such a genius.
Why am I able to generate such emotion about this obscure pop culture figure whose closest brush with relevance was 30 years ago? Because that absolutely could have been me. There’s some alternate universe out there where I got everything I wanted in my youth and became that much of a miserable joke ass piece of shit.
Although I think even that universe my music would at least be interesting and I wouldn’t go on stage looking like Neil Young in Mormon underwear so there’s still that.
But there was absolutely a part of me as kid that thought you have to be like to get famous and I just cursed myself for being too self-conscious and fearful most of the time to actually be enough of a delusional prick.
The thing is, what I really wanted was to be happy. To feel seen and heard and to have the pain of my childhood be valued for the art it became so that it wasn’t just something I had to mourn alone.
Delusional douche bags, of all musical genres and really of all fame-seeking lifestyles, aren’t happy. They’re angry and miserable all the time because life is a whirlwind of shit that they keep exacerbating. They have to keep turning friends into enemies so they have someone to be better than, and the best they can feel is a smug satisfaction when that happens but they can’t just feel the joy of hanging out with friends. Because everyone has to ultimately be divided into supporters and traitors.
And there’s people in my head going “Al’s being a hypocrite…” and no, because I am talking about myself and the worst sides of my personality that came out in my teens and twenties. There are people who do not like me and I’m like “Fair.” because I know what 100% of their sample of me is.
While also acknowledging those people probably think about me, like, twice a year when something jogs their memory and then they instantly go on with their lives.
And, sweetly, I know there are people who’ve never seen any bad or lesser side of me who would never believe we’re all talking about the same person. I think often about the conversations and comments at my inevitable funeral from people who knew me in different eras of my life.
Because, going down this rabbit hole that was meant to be a throwaway comment, I think a lot about how I ‘turned out’ and how that will make sense to different people. Like, for the people who knew me just as I was getting into fitness the vibe was that it was humorously out of character but good for me. Telling them I became a personal trainer would elicit very mild pleasant surprise whereas telling them I struggled with full blown alcoholism then killed myself probably wouldn’t elicit surprise of any kind.
But the people who knew me way way back? I think they’d be disappointed I turned out so normal. Of course I’m just projecting because I’m disappointed I turned out so normal and really all anyone from our pasts care about is “Not into MLMs? Great.”
Author/Athlete, Thinker/Doer
Alastair's Ego 