{"id":94275,"date":"2016-04-27T07:45:37","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T15:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=94275"},"modified":"2016-04-28T04:28:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T12:28:58","slug":"why-are-rock-stars-so-fey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=94275","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Rock Stars Fey?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes<\/a>: Stars, of course, tend to be attention-seeking, which is not an extremely masculine trait.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a modest negative correlation between how much a star needs applause and his masculinity level. Broadway stars are the surest of getting their fix of applause nightly and are likely the gayest on average. Rock stars get tremendous ovations, but first they need to deliver in the loneliness of the studio. Movie stars must be able to perform in isolation, as in Gay Talese\u2019s story about what a movie star told her retired-ballplayer husband after a USO tour introduced her to the pleasures of performing in front of an audience:<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe,\u201d said Marilyn Monroe, just back from Korea, \u201cyou never heard such cheering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes I have,\u201d Joe DiMaggio answered.<\/p>\n

Team-sport athletes get their cheers, but they also play half their games on the road in front of hostile audiences, where they must be motivated by the masculine urge to ruin a crowd\u2019s evening.<\/p>\n

All this is not to say that rock stars tend to be particularly gay.<\/p>\n

The acid test of any profession\u2019s tendency toward male homosexuality was its AIDS death toll during the \u201980s and early \u201990s. For example, ballet lost Nureyev, Joffrey, and Ailey. Fashion icons Halston and Perry Ellis died of AIDS.<\/p>\n

In contrast, rock lost one big star, Freddie Mercury of Queen. But that Freddie was gay didn\u2019t really come as much of a surprise.<\/p>\n

COMMENTS<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* Here\u2019s an ancillary question: why do male pop stars so very often have unusually high vocal ranges, to the point that some sound almost feminine? And why, even in opera, are the tenors the glamor boys instead of the basses? Why isn\u2019t what seems to be the more masculine trait \u2014 i.e. a deep voice \u2014 rewarded with greater adulation?<\/p>\n

* 1. Freddie Mercury wasn\u2019t gay, he was bi\u2014or, more clearly, he was just into whatever sexual thrill was coming around. His lead guitarist and co-writer on many of the songs\u2013the astrophysicist guy\u2013has stated that Freddie wasn\u2019t gay, because astrophysicist\/guitarist dude was his roommate for many years, and saw him banging away happily at many a groupie. Think Charlie Sheen or some Roman Emperor\u2013basically, when sexual access comes so easy, people lose interest in the common, and up the ante a lot to get their thrills. See also: Mick Jagger.<\/p>\n

Freddie just had the bad luck of jumping into bed with men just after it exploded as ok (thanks to gay rights\u2019 movements of the 70s) but just as it was emerging that doing so was more than just risking a bit of itchiness or burning while peeing.<\/p>\n

2. Much of the feyness also probably comes from having to do the deed with record company executives in order to get radio play\/promoted albums. Albums are just advertising to most good rock stars\u2014money comes from tours, not albums, because the the record companies structure album deals heavily in their favor. But that advertising can be very helpful in turning a nobody into an arena-selling out artist quickly, or pumping you up from mid-level festival band to headliner.<\/p>\n

But so many record companies and MTV and such are run by homosexuals who demand the same kind of favors from wanna-bes as do the studios for Hollywood movies. Actors are trained to pretend to be something that they\u2019re not, but musicians don\u2019t have that training, so the effects of their ass-for-albums deals shows up more clearly on them.<\/p>\n

* The flamboyant male performer certainly has deep roots \u2013 19th century superstars like Liszt and Paganini would probably strike us as fey today. I bet Mozart performing live would as well. On the other hand at the court of the Sun King Prince would have seemed fairly normal. Somehow the music and stage world seem to have preserved the tradition of male peacocking that otherwise died out with the Industrial Revolution in more sober spheres of life such as business and politics.<\/p>\n

* \u201cFey\u201d means unworldly; rock stars are supposed to be able to tap into truths that are obscured from the rest of us, which they reveal using music, a language which few of us can speak but which we all understand, since it goes straight to our emotions.<\/p>\n

The root meaning of \u201cfey\u201d is \u201cfated to die soon\u201d; I don\u2019t need to go through all the deaths of pop stars to make that point.<\/p>\n

* The corollary of fey performers having better looking female offspring is that ultra-masculine men often have masculine looking ones \u2013 not a good look on a girl.<\/p>\n

* Brady Quinn\u2019s sister and Bill Cowher\u2019s daughters come to mind.<\/p>\n

* David Bowie often told a story of how his band members during his Ziggy Stardust days were very much \u201clads\u201d and hated they makeup he had them wear. He said that they quickly found out the makeup made it easier for them to get girls and stopped complaining.<\/p>\n

* Every opera needs a cruel, callous villain. I suppose an ultra-masculine baritone or bass is thought to be more credible in that role. So that leaves a high-voice part for the hero.<\/p>\n

In Handel\u2019s hit opera Julius Caesar (1724), Handel wrote Caesar\u2019s part for a castrato. In performance today, a female mezzo-soprano or male counter-tenor sing the part. The opera was written for a British audience.<\/p>\n

* Tom Petty\u2019s sister had a 30-year career as a police officer and command staff with the Gainesville, FL Police Department, rising to Chief of Police (I think). She\u2019s been the Sheriff of Alachua County for a few years now.<\/p>\n

* Is there an unwritten rule that a talented black musician has to be compared to another talented black musician? Stevie Wonder\u2019s talents are often compared to those of Ray Charles. (You\u2019ve got the black+blind+musician trifecta there.)<\/p>\n

I appreciate Prince\u2019s talents and success, but I don\u2019t recall hearing any new music from him since the 1980s. Granted, I\u2019m not that into his kind of music, but AFAIK he was not continuing to produce hits, unless I missed them.<\/p>\n

Glenn Frey, cofounder of the Eagles with Don Henley, was multi-talented as a singer, songwriter, and musician in one of the most successful bands of all time. Frey died in January 2016 and I don\u2019t recall his death getting anywhere near the attention that Prince\u2019s did. Of course Obama, that phony, had to issue a statement about Prince and said he listened to a couple of his songs while warming up for a meeting with the British pie minister, but that\u2019s just his usual \u201cI\u2019m black, y\u2019all\u201d shtick.<\/p>\n

* The same reason that white basketball players in college are compared to white basketball players in the NBA: they have a similar distribution of talents.<\/p>\n

You will notice that folk music is dominantly white and that funk and R&B is dominantly black. The occasional band like Average White Band (this one a double whammy: Scottish white guys playing American Black music), while impressive, doesn\u2019t move the average in the same way that Brent Barry winning a slam dunk contest, also impressive, doesn\u2019t erase the stereotype of white guys not being able to jump.<\/p>\n

* It certainly worked for Prince (whose severe lack of verticality barred him from getting picked for basketball games as a youth), as evidenced by the long list of lovelies that he romanced: Vanity (aka Denise Matthews), Kim Basinger, Sherilyn Fenn, Apollonia Kotero, Vanessa Marcil, etc<\/p>\n

Interesting to note how Prince was entirely conventional in his taste in women, as evidenced by his lack of interest in West African-looking girls. Foe example, Vanity would have had no problem passing a paper bag test at a \u201cBlack\u201d sorority.<\/p>\n

* My wife watches \u201cThe Voice,\u201d and I noticed the other night that each of the four coaches was asked to give a personal statement about what Prince meant to them.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall the show doing that when Merle Haggard \u2014 arguably more influential and certainly longer lived \u2014 passed away.<\/p>\n

It always makes me laugh when black coach Pharrell hears a contestant sing a country song and he says he\u2019s never heard it before.<\/p>\n

* I suppose a conspiracy theorist could propose that fey, androgynous rock stars were picked in order to mainstream androgynous cultural heroes and with them pave the way for sexual perversity. Did ghey marriage have its genesis in glam rock?<\/p>\n

But I think the better theory \u2013 or at least the equally plausible one \u2013 is that music, and particularly the kind of rock music that doesn\u2019t require years of musical training is an alternative path to popularity (both within one\u2019s peer group and possibly beyond) for the athletically useless and those who don\u2019t come from money. Substance abuse is also often an asset rather than a liability for the burgeoning garage rock star. Even though my high school experience was as an athlete in an U.S. Catholic Prep school and a rugby-mad Irish boarding school where the long-haired rock type wasn\u2019t prevalent or even tolerated, I think most of us can recall at some point a skinny long hair rock and roller type being forced into some kind of required athletic feat and marveling at the absolute physical awkwardness and propensity to hurt themselves solely under their own power.<\/p>\n

I think the Linklater film \u201cDazed and Confused\u201d also hints at a corollary with the commitment pledge distributed to the returning football players \u2013 coaches of athletes like to police the athletes\u2019 other interests and activities and steer them away from the drug and party scene, while also liking to fill their free time with other activities under the veil of training to crowd out those other influences. You just won\u2019t have time to be in a garage band if you\u2019re a competitive athlete under the guidance and direction of involved coaches.<\/p>\n

* A lot of athletes are big and strong but they are not manly in character.<\/p>\n

Some actually have beta-personalities. I thought Carl Lewis was like the Michael Jackson of track.
\nAnd Michael Jordan was often tongue-tied. He only came alive on the court.
\nAnd some boxers are tough in the ring but lost outside it.
\nThey are like Moose in Archie comic books.<\/p>\n

Music is artful and seductive, so it can favor the more flamboyant kind of male.
\n(Dancing more so) The whole idea of serenade is sort of \u2018fey\u2019 if not \u2018gay\u2019. Consider BREAKING AWAY.
\n