You don’t make a stranger, you have to be born a stranger. You can pretend to be one of them, and you may even go as far as offering cheese to the audience, but you will never fool a true geek. Pop music is full of creatures like this. It actually came into existence because of creatures like that, people like Little Richard, who was gay and black and was making weird, subversive music. Of course, perhaps, before continuing, we should clarify what a whim is. Because in Spain, a freak is a freak, and the freak, unlike the Anglo-Saxon freak, is not an admirable being, but a miserable pauper whose only goal in life is to become an object of ridicule by others.
But if we apply the Anglo-Saxon term eccentric to our music scene we find figures like Bosch, Sergio Algora or Camilo Sesto himself. Is Camilo Sesto weird? Well, he sold millions of records, but he was a strange character, and I’m not talking about his final phase, when the Cathodic Heart Predators used him as a punching bag. However, the first rule of rock ‘n’ roll is to give carte blanche to subjectivity. Every stranger is a world, and each of those worlds has a guaranteed place in the history of pop music. This is what appears from reading Freaks out! (against), The new book by British musician Luke Hines.
Haines is an outsider himself. In the 1990s, he fronted The Auteurs, a British band that perhaps cashed in on Britpop fever. Instead, he chose to follow a path in which the revolutions of cultural chauvinism were not celebrated, but rather questioned. Haines has always been about developing atypical concepts. Release albums with titles like Oliver Twist Manifesto (2001) or a reworking of a collection of songs by The Auteurs accompanied by an orchestra, were the first steps to settling into his own world. Over the past decades, he has continued to record concept albums inspired by English wrestling, New York underground musicians of the 1970s or create a musical tale with animals inspired by real musicians like Nick Lowe.
He also issued a kind of memoir with a very clear title: Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall (Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall). And now it comes Freaks out!translated into Spanish by David Paradilla for Contra. “This book is also an opportunity to talk about myself,” Haines says via email. “In case you haven’t done so before, I thought it would be a good idea to wave the geeky flag all over the pages of this book. Being weird is what made me who I am, and the music I’ve listened to my whole life has shaped my identity. I’m a proud 58-year-old weirdo. The stories of the characters in the book are intertwined with my life and my identity.”
Humor, honesty and erudition
Freaks out! She does not have an encyclopedic career. It is a very personal choice in which we are talking about specific individuals who chose to be who they were without worrying about the consequences. The selection criteria were very clear: “I had to be very careful about who I gave space to. For example, I mention Adam & The Ants in passing, but the phenomenon they starred in in England is something that has been written about a lot. The same goes for Syd Barrett. Bowie is another key figure, but he’s also been written endlessly and there’s not much to add. We tend to overly destroy our rock stars. I didn’t have room to retell already known stories, so I focused on giving space to people like Les Rallizes Denude, Steve Took or Mick Farren, whose stories have not been widely disclosed.
We tend to over-destruct our rock stars. I didn’t have the space to retell already well-known stories, so I focused on giving space to people like Les Rallizes Denude, Steve Took or Mick Farren, whose stories were not widely disseminated.
Luke Haines
— Musician and writer
The book is an exercise in humour, honesty and erudition. Following the approach promoted by Haines in his previous books and articles for the media e.g Record collectorHumor and demystification prevail here. And again, subjectivity. Before the text begins, Haines issues a warning to a series of groups (those who preach, those who make lists, those on the left, those on the right, intellectuals, intellectuals…) that reaffirm the theory that the true freak belongs to no group. He is a being completely separate from any commandments or tradition. How does a monster know that another monster is in front of him? “There is a special intuition,” Haines answers. “You have to be eccentric to recognize another person.”
Recognizing those who are like you also means pointing out those who are not, even if it seems different. In his book, Haines is frank about those he considers eccentric. The prince, for example. Although he does not delve into this in the text, for him it is an author Purple rain It’s one of those cases.
“I think his songs fit right into ’80s culture, just like yuppies or Princess Diana… It sounds like aspirational music that goes hand in hand with conformity: new kitchens, boring apartments, people with empty careers, real estate agents who do cocaine on Friday nights and go to the gym on Sunday. In short, people who would be terrified by Sly Stone or Funkadelic. I find it interesting that I always end up being asked about my distaste for Prince, like ‘If I You have insulted the great holy man. He is nothing more than a prince. People take it on a very personal level and get upset. “It’s as if you’re mad at me because I say I don’t like a certain toothpaste or a certain brand of car.”
Another example: the shorts that grunge brought with it had nothing strange about them at all, despite cries of incomprehension from some of the musicians who wore them. “I thought Kurt (Cobain) was weird,” Haines points out. “I didn’t want to be a cult figure or anything like that. I don’t have anything negative to say about him, I thought he was great. But it’s hard to talk about him and not fall into the trap of the myth of male genius.” The theory of the myth of male genius, which consists of the sublimation of a romantic artist, often a man, with the risk of ending up being transformed into a morning kantamana, is one of the recurring themes in Freak out!
There is also a chapter that deals with the reunion of a legendary group and what happens when that group is at its peak, as was the case with the Velvet Underground. “My favorite version of Lou Reed is the one by the Velvets. I also love and love the 70s version.” Metal instrument music. On the subject of meetings, they are already part of the world we live in. You can blame Spotify for stealing artists’ royalties. Because there is amazing amounts of money in meetings, but there is very little money to be made without a meeting. “This is a reflection of the times we live in, like Trump.”
Perhaps that is why the era in which we live does not seem very suitable for the whims of yesterday. “Maybe it’s no longer possible to be a Barrett or a Marc Bolan, but in these times of populism, freaks are going to make a comeback, if they haven’t already. Young people don’t seem ready to show off their weirdness, and they might be better off doing the opposite, much better than continuing to try to be accepted on the right side of the world.”