"It's only rock'n'roll ... isn't it?"
During my research for Metal Month I came across something that concerned me, and it's been niggling at me ever since. You can say of course that it's a knee-jerk reaction, that I'm just being a girl, or that I'm taking things too seriously, but I wonder. Most of you presumably reading this know of the band Mayhem. They're not my poison at all, but that's beside the point. The Batlord mentioned them some time ago, in particular the fact that their lead singer, who called himself Dead, was, well, dead. I wasn't that surprised, reading of his habit of breathing in from a bag containing a days/weeks/who knows-old dead crow before going on stage, and thought at the time that he had just died from being an idiot; had contacted some sort of disease as a result of doing something patently stupid that basically flips the finger to the Grim Reaper and says "Come on you big pussy! Take me if you can!" And the Hooded One had obliged.
That was what I assumed had happened. But no. Turns out Dead wasn't happy with living, so killed himself. Cut his throat with a razor and then blew his head off with a shotgun. How, as Dougal Maguire once wondered about Kurt Cobain, had he managed to survive that? Well, he didn't, and he had now made his pseduonym literal. He was dead. But even that didn't faze me too much: Mayhem were Black Metal, and odd things go on in such bands, as each tries to outdo the other in terms of being "evil". Even the fact that his compatriot in the band, a guy who went by the name of Euronymus, thought it was "so cool" that he had killed himself, wasn't too surprising, though a little unsettling.
No. It was when I read deeper into the philosophy of Mayhem, or at least Dead, real name Per Yngve Ohlim, known to his small circle of friends and his family as Pelle, that I began to worry. You see, Black Metal bands have never concerned me but I do wonder about the idea behind them. Some, like Venom, wanted really nothing to do with Satanism and the occult, and used it only for shock value and to sell records, a cheap marketing ploy, while others, like Watain, to whom I will return later, are deadly serious about what they see as their religion. Extreme Metal bands of most stripes, be they Death, Doom, Black or whatever, often subscribe to odd notions and roles, holding themselves up as the "blackest", "doomiest", "angriest" or "most evil" bands in the world. But mostly, so far as I can see, it's empty posturing.
I mentioned it with Manowar in my review of "Hail to England". They espoused fighting the good fight, keeping metal pure and killing the unbeliever. But did they strap on broadswords every time they went for a walk or limo-ride through Manhattan? Did they arrive at parties loaded down with shields and helmets? Did they ride the streets of New York on fiery battle chargers? Well no they didn't of course, because however serious Manowar were about their music, they knew that the image behind it was nothing more than a gimmick, a ploy to draw the fans in. Most likely Eric Adams, Ross the Boss et al never handled a real sword outside of a photo-session for an album cover or during an onstage performance, and would not know what to do with one if they were actually faced with a situation that required real combat. It's all fantasy; a joke, a
PR stunt, and they know it. They know when to turn it on, and when to switch it off. They don't take it seriously, outside of the band dynamic.
Mayhem, it seems, do, or did. I'm still not sure whether to take the words of Dead at face value, but it seemed he declared his hatred for fun, enjoyment, peace, happiness, laughter. Euronymous, the guitarist (who is also now dead, surprise surprise) claimed he wanted to spread sorrow, hatred and evil through his music. He claimed to be against freedom, to worship death, oh, and Satan. For real.
Now, you may say and you may be right, all of this was theatre, that neither Dead nor Euronymous meant what they said. It could, indeed, be the Manowar idea: all an image created to sell records. The problem lies in this: although people may have been suckered into believing that Joey DeMaio went to bed in a lionskin loincloth and with a dagger at his side and a sword under his pillow, and may even in extreme cases have emulated such behaviour, Manowar never preached anything except rock and roll. Oh yes, they said "death to false metal!" but they just meant --- and it was understood --- don't listen to that sort of music, ridicule and revile it. I think everyone could see they were just playing a part, revelling in the roles they had created and having one hell of a time doing so.
But Mayhem, whether or not they were serious, held some very dark beliefs and --- and this is extremely important --- made it seem like they meant every word they said. Now, we all know kids are impressionable and who's going to fall under the spell of Black Metal --- or any really aggressive, angry music form --- more than kids? Teenagers, adolescents, in some cases even younger. People who are very open to suggestion and to some degree take an awful lot literally. So if your hero is Dead, or Euronymous, and they say life is wrong, everyone should worship death and spread evil and misery, how are the kids going to react to that? Oh for certain, the larger percentage will not do anything: most people know, even at that age, that music exists within often the framework of its own fantasy world.
But for the small, perhaps miniscule percentage that believe, truly believe, every word that falls from their idols' mouths, how are they likely to respond? Can we be certain that no Mayhem fan took their own life, or killed someone else, in reaction to what they were told was "the way to be"? Well no of course we can't, and if there were instances they could hardly be traced directly and provable beyond a reasonable doubt back to the utterances of some unhappy rock star. But that's not the point.
The point is: these guys have to realise that they are standing up there as an example, an influence, role models. Anything they say, any feelings they espouse or any "directions" they give to their fans can be misinterpreted with tragic consequences. I don't know; from what I read of Mayhem, I think Dead and Euronymous (God not rest their dark evil souls) would possibly be delighted to know that their "teachings" had resulted in deaths, injury, sorrow and mayhem with a small "m". But if The Stones or U2 or Metallica started telling people at gigs or in interviews to kill their parents, don't you think there'd be an outcry and wouldn't this be irresponsible behaviour? And yet, because perhaps Mayhem were part of a smaller, more insular scene in the Black Metal movement in Norway, and never grew into a global phenomenon like the three bands mentioned above, they never seem to have been taken to task for their views. Mind you, I can't say that Mayhem ever encouraged anyone to kill their parents, but they were seemingly all about evil, and spreading that message so that sort of influence could certainly --- theoretically, at least --- lead to such misunderstandings.
Then you have Watain. Their frontman, Erik Danielsson, seems to be seriously into Satanism and black magic. He literally worships the Devil. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying who can practice what religion and I'd never interfere in anyone's beliefs, no matter how opposed to them I might be. But again it's the impression this can make, the example to fans, the message sent. If Venom laughed at Satan, their fans knew it and though they all made the sign and pretended to worship Lucifer, they knew it was a crock. But now you have Danielsson telling his fans that Satan is real (which he may be, I don't know) and that he should be adored. Mind you, let's be fair: in an interview with
Metal Hammer he did make it clear that he does not expect anyone to follow him, and he is not a dark messiah of any kind. But you know, kids will think what kids will think, and if they think "Oh cool! Satan's real and we should worship him!" then who knows where that might end?
The point I'm trying to make here is that I believe that public figures of any kind have a responsibility to be, well, responsible for what they say. Whether you're a politician or an author or a musician or a football star, you need to realise that people hang on your words, and something you say which is not perhaps meant in an offhand or casual manner, or even in humour, if not explained properly or contextualised, may very well ne taken literally. Words have power, and fame has power, and put the two together and you have one hell of a dangerous weapon. I just think it's incumbent upon those who stand up on the soapbox to realise that what they say reverberates through their fans, perhaps even down through years, perhaps even in the case of Mayhem's Dead and Euronymous, beyond the very grave.
The old cliche, with great power comes great responsibility, is never truer than when dealing with rock icons, and the more influence you have, and the larger and more malleable your audience, the more careful I believe you have to be not to give the wrong impression and start in motion a chain of events that can have tragic and unforseen consequences. After all, why give the Moral Majority and those who denounce rock --- and Metal in particular --- as "the devil's music" any more ammunition? Doing what Mayhem were doing is I believe playing right into the hands of those who would expunge rock music from this Earth, had they the ability, and showing those who do not hold those views that, you know, maybe these guys have something after all. I mean, who wants their kid coming home saying "I'm just going out to bury my clothes in the ground so they'll make me smell like a corpse"? And if you read into the history of Mayhem, that seems to be the least of what they expounded.
Music is, in the final analysis, to me at any rate, meant to heal, to help, to bring together, not torture, destroy and rip apart.
That
ain't rock and roll, and I don't like it.