Pop Slop

THERE IS ALWAYS something vaguely amusing about the study of pop culture, especially when it's taken too seriously. Like a teacher reading all sorts of bogus significance into a student's simplistic works, so too do the great Makers of Pop Significance read profundity into the sometimes brainless meanderings of rock and movie stars.

Mick, Keith, Charlie, Bill, and Ron, then, must have gotten a laugh out of the latest attempt to mythologize the Rolling Stones, this one offered by veteran New York Times cliche-hurler Robert Palmer. This picture-book, large-type text, liberally prepared with color and black-and-white photos of the Stones at their decadent best, suffers from the same '60s-envy that makes otherwise rational human beings mythologize the pompous and overblown Jim Morrison or believe that the Grateful Dead were ever more than a bunch of dope fiends who knew a few chord changes.

But, Robert Palmer wants to know, what was the meaning of "You can't always get what you want?" a tuneful affirmation of that most uncontestable of truisms. Well, Palmer tells us:

The halcyon Sixties had held the promise of getting what one wanted, whether it was drugs or free love or simply the freedom to be what one wanted to be. The seventies were dawning dark and troubled, for the Stones and for their fans. It would be necessary to come to grips with radically reduced expectations, to forget about casual wanting and get down to basic necessities. You'd better figure out what your real needs are and go out after them, the Stones seemed to be saying, and even that might not be so easy: "If you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need." This was a message worth heeding.

Perhaps the problem is that the older Palmer still suffers from that most imbecilic of illusions: that rock and roll can provide a blueprint for living. Most pop criticism and documentary work since the '60s approach bands like the Stones from this perspective. Yet, if rock and pop in the '80s has shown anything, it is that rock is more a reflection of society than a catalyst for change. As recent Stones records have shown, the more closely music mimics the whims of the record-buying public, the greater the chance that the music will be successful. Rock is a commodity, just like movies, books, TV, or even religion--it is one in an endless number of options in society glutted with entertainment.

And, despite the mythos of such events as Woodstock, Altamont, Jim Morrison's death, and the Summer of Love in San Francisco, rock has always been little more than entertainment or release for the majority of Americans. Why, then, must Palmer insist on making the Stones significant, when it is easier--and probably more gratifying--just to appreciate their music?

Palmer tells us that the song Satisfaction "works as a classic rock single," but on another level "asserts that tensions and frustrations are inherent in a capitalist society with consumerist values." He concludes.

Satisfaction is a Trojan horse--a quasi-Marxist critique of Consumerism and its cost to society and to the individual, disguised as a mindlessly sexy rock and roll song.

Would Palmer have us read mid-'60s Stones lyrics side by side with The Communist Manifesto and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte? Will future courses of Marxism ask students to explain the relevance of the line. "He can't be a man cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me," to Marx's Alienation and Social Classes? For extra credit, what's the difference between Marxism and quasi-Marxism? Or post-modernist Marxism as developed in the sexual-political imagery of "She's so cold"?

THE POINT IS SIMPLE: the Stones are a great rock band--maybe the greatest ever--but they don't demand or deserve treatment on a serious intellectual level. Mick's misogyny, and Keith and Brian's juvenile glorification of the drug scene are beneath contempt, but Palmer almost applauds their nasty habits and in fact seems to wish he himself could get away with doing all of the drugs Mick and Keith did.

I'll just listen, thanks.