TEEN IDOLS

by Ian Whitcomb

Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books, and Songbooks by clicking here.

 
You can find Ian's main website at ianwhitcomb.com

    
    I'm assuming what is meant is an idol who appeals to teenagers as opposed to idols who actually are teenagers. There have been plenty of kid stars of screen and magazine fame whose sexual allure -- a sly wiggle, a knowing wink -- have over the years excited the blood streams of many an adult who ought to have known better: I'm thinking of a long tradition
stretching from at least Shirley Temple, through Brandon de Wilde and Sue Lyon and Ricky Nelson, to Leif Garrett and Shawn Cassidy -- all unwitting purveyors of onanistic comfort: America, a country in a state of permanent adolescence, has always had a soft spot for the eroticism of certain youths, fantasy in the flesh of the fresh.
    Be that as it may, here are my selections--both seemingly grown men when they came to prominence...

    MOST UNDERRATED TEEN IDOL: BILL HALEY
    The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll devotes 8 columns to The Rolling Stones, a mediocre and dated group. In contrast, Bill Haley, whose band The Comets was the first and the best and has always remained inimitable, gets a mere column and a quarter.  This is grossly unfair to the man who was the John The Baptist of a whole new business, a voice in the
wilderness of the floccinaucinihilipilific early Fifties. "Rock Around The Clock" remains the quintessence of rock & roll, yet, like all great art, it has never been successfully copied.
    In 1986, there was even resistance from heavy-thinking "rock critics" when it was first suggested that Bill Haley might be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.
    Back in 1954 Bill, plump and avuncular, with the voice of a friendly square dance caller, was conductor of a clickerty-clackerty train that brought the good news about a brand new style: "Rock Around The Clock", a "fox-trot" on the Decca label.  Harmless enough. But next year, when it went bouncing under the main title credits of "The Blackboard Jungle," a juvenile delinquency movie, all hell broke loose and the benign Haley was seen, by the authorities, as the leader of the dangerous dagger boy brigade.
    Musically, Bill was a gatherer of sturdy old roots sounds -- swinging country mixed with a blues minus the usual ethnic moans of complaint or the sexual boasting -- and his hit record was a call to healthy arms, a celebration of leaping about, of outdoor fun and frolics. Chestertonian beer rather than Verlainian laudanum: the latter taste was to be the ruin of the
Sixties.
    Bill's voice piped on one note but it was a good and honest one. He went on recording variations of "Rock Around The Clock" until he was informed that the game was up. After that he toured with the song, but never was it to sound as perfect as the Decca record. And never was Bill to understand his purpose as the piper at the gates of rock & roll. Worse, the pandoral box he'd opened up went screaming into the 60s, refusing to obey the call of Bill, the genial scoutmaster. In the Disco 70s I shook his hand and he smiled the smile of bemusement. Someone actually recognizing him -- in America?! He told me: "I'm the first to admit that I didn't invent that rockin' train that just keeps a-rollin', but I can lay claim to being its conductor. I got on
board at the very start and I've had a helluva good ride. Thank the Lord I got off safely".
    A few years later, in 1981, he died in a Texas trailer park madly bothered and bewildered.

    In contrast:
    THE MOST OVERRATED TEEN IDOL: MICK JAGGER
    Jagger, the man-boy with the permanent swagger, was always cocksure of himself. In 1969, as an era of excess self-destructed, he and his British Invasion hangovers, The Rolling Stones, were calling themselves "The World's
Greatest Rock & Roll Band," no questions asked. Jagger's only attractions were physical: grotesque rubber lips (in a perpetual sneer at authority, normality, tradition), an alarmingly engorged crotch (enhanced by bunched socks and other matter), and gorgeous natural hair. On stage he pranced about like a latter-day minstrel, in a third-rate impersonation of James Brown (a truly original shouter of the gospel-blues).
    Jagger, earth-savvy, knew from the start exactly what was going on, what he should do to be both a millionaire rocker and to stay alive: he studied at the London School of Economics, he studied black blues stars, he exercised and ate wisely, he surrounded himself with financial advisors, he loved cricket and stately homes. And then, out front, onstage, he conned a gullible mass into buying his crude sex and hoarse goadings and accepting it as some kind of rock art. Vocally, Jagger had less notes than Haley, but who cared?
-- Sixties youth, egged on by the new breed of "rock writers", suckered into the Rolling Stones not so much for their music but for their screw-you attitude.
    Jagger, as the lead propagandist, also groomed himself as a satanic figure, encouraging one and all to dope up to the gills, to challenge the rabbits in sex-indulgence (he's still fathering away even today), and to flirt with the truly evil simply for kicks (His hiring of  Hell's Angels as security guards at the Altamont concert resulted in their murdering an innocent black celebrant right in front of His Satanic Majesty).
    He has a lot to answer for, but this is conveniently ignored because he has made a pot of money and, as a senior citizen in Tony Blair's twisted Britain, he thus deserves to be made into Sir Mick. However, nature has etched her comment on his face---a crisscross of deep creases. "They're laugh lines, mate!" Sir Mick likes to explain to those concerned. Laugh lines?
Nothing's that funny.

Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books, and Songbooks by clicking here.

 
You can find Ian's main website at ianwhitcomb.com