Sometimes Sam Snort has to concede that the world of the big beat is so bent out of shape that even he can’t hope to straighten it out.
Take the recent induction at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel of Black Sabbath into America’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, with Metallica’s James Hetfield doing the honours. According to Rolling Stone, the world’s most sycophantic magazine this side of ‘Hello’,
Hetfield “fought back tears” in the course of an “emotional speech” during which he recalled raiding his big brother’s album collection as a kid.
Here’s a taste of what he said: “Those monstrous riffs lived inside him and spoke the feelings he could never put into words, sending chills of inspiration through him. They helped crack the shell he was stuck in
They have spread their wonderful disease through generations of musicians.”
It was somewhere around here, according to witnesses, that Jimmy began blubbing; afterwards he explained: “It was, like, ‘Oh no, I’m going to start crying. I’d never known it until I had to access all these emotions in front of that crowd, but it just goes to show how much Sabbath mean.”
Bad Space
Okay, there’s a couple of things that need to be said here. First, that tell-tale phrase about “accessing” emotions reveals that Jimbo is schooled in therapy-speak, that awful, deadening, pseudo-scientific new age lingo in which people don’t get fed-up - they “enter a bad space”.
They can’t fall in love without risking becoming “co-dependent”, they don’t take a chance, they “feel the fear and do it anyway”, and they never get pissed-off , they “take ownership of their feelings”.
Christ on a quad bike. Can you imagine the damage that would have been done to the roots of all things rock and, yes, roll, if the old blues guys and gals had been forced to deal with all that shite.
Instead of ‘Mannish Boy’, my old mucker Muddy would have had to holler “I’m an inner child” and by the time he finished spelling the damn thing there’d have been no room for a second verse.
Bo Diddley would have had to sing ‘Who Do You Feel Co-Dependent With?’, John Lee would have said the Serenity Prayer instead of going ‘Boom, Boom’, and rather than howling my man Wolf would have “shared.”
Before you know it, 12 steps would have replaced three steps to heaven and nobody would ever again wake up dis morning with a baaaad woman on mah mind.
So, anyway, there’s James Hatfield of self-styled ‘monsters of rock’ Metallica, “accessing his emotions” in full public view. Which is bad enough but, lest we forget, what moved him to tears, the big ditz was getting all soggy on our ass about
Black fucking Sabbath. To repeat, Jimmy was breaking down over the brutal Brummy blitzkrieg of Ozzy, Geezer, Iommi and, er, the other one.
I mean, we’re not talking Mozart, Elvis or even the Ted ‘The Fuckin’ Nuge’ Nugent here – no, the Metallica man falls to pieces at the merest memory of ‘Paranoid’, ‘War Pigs’ and all that other ear-bleeding sludge from the – no argument will be entertained – worst band in the world, ever. And I speak, with authority, as the former manager of Foghat.
Fact, no right-thinking person would even remember yer Sabbaff now if, nearly a century later, poor old Oz hadn’t his dragged his addled brain and bonkers brood in front of the cameras in return for the MTV big bucks. Think Johnny Thunders would have done something like that?
Piss Stain
Speaking of punk rock (RIP) the Sex Pistols were also inducted into the Hall of Fame at the same ceremony, except that the oldest punks in town refused to show up. Instead, ‘Rolling Stone’ majordomo Yawn Wenner drew smug laughs from the new rock establishment by reading out a statement from Johnny Rotten who declared that,
“Next to the Sex Pistols, the Hall of Fame is a piss stain”.
Oh, my aching sides, but isn’t that Johnny a gas man. Maybe it’s just me but I’d be able to place a lot more faith in John’s rebel attitude if he hadn’t reconvened the Pistols as a bunch of fat old losers for just a few dollars more and then made a total exhibition of himself by slumming it on a crap reality TV show for – guess what? – a few dollars more.
Never mind the piss stains, John boy, there’s the bollocks.
How much worse can it all get? Will Iggy end up weeping on his tux as he inducts Uriah Heep?
Will Van Morrison show up on the next edition of ‘Celebrity Jigs And Reels’. Will Pete Shambles write a self-help book?
Sam has often noted that when they get old and boring and stop having sex, the lesser rock scribes turn to writing columns in the national papers about classical music and wine.
Rest assured that the greatest rock crit of them all will never go down that safe, soulless, sexless cul de sac.
That ain’t the problem. The problem is that rock ‘n’ roll will sell-out Sam before Sam sells out rock ‘n’ roll.
Meantime, now that Easter is over, you must all come out to Snort Towers to celebrate the rising.
An’ ah thank the ladeez know jest what ahm a-talkin’ ‘bout.
Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq