Fandom, like certain forms of destructive romantic love, should only be the province of the young. To be a fan is to suspend critical appreciation in favor of adoration, and thus imperil one's artistic soul. The fan never judges; the fan celebrates. While every artist crave fans, artists really prize those intelligent critics who can hold up to them an unwrapped and pristine mirror. Such a relationship requires courage on both sides.
When I was an uncertain 14 year old I became a Bowie fan. I craved, I needed masks with which to shield my face from a world I now know was not that interested in the first place --- or at all. Bowie created great music, but what drew me more than the music, I now realize, was his ability to create and inhabit masked characters. Like all fans I waited for the his next iteration of persona the way an addict waits for the next dose, completely certain that, of everything in the world, this was not just what I needed the most but all I needed. Later, thankfully if only a bit more confidently, when Bowie wrote a crap song I knew it was a crap song. And just as fortunately, Bowie also created masks so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with them. As a former fan, I thank him for this.
I was permanently cured of any tendencies towards fandom in the 90's by another artist, or rather by his fans. This would be Morrissey, an artist who inspires fandom like no one else. A recent photo of a now mid 50's Morrissey shirtless and manipulating what can only be described as one of his man tits made me feel sorry for him; likely the majority of his fans of all ages and sexes chopped it up and smoked, shot or sniffed it, grateful for another fix.
But what cured me of fandom was spending time in the the chat on morrissey-solo.com. The site remains, ebbing and flowing with the rumors of new tours (almost always true) and albums (rarely true in reality or in the sense that one will hear something "new") but the chat is dead. Many of the habitués in that chat were delightful --- intelligent, well read, and more than willing to talk about someone other than the eponymous excuse for the chat --- and I remember them fondly the way one remembers a dead relative. However, the majority of the chatters were Morrissey fans, and like all fans were easy to deal with, if a bit dull, unless one said anything that contradicted their view of their hero. A particularly rabid and illustrative subset were those girl fans who were convinced that Morrissey would one day have a romantic relationship with them, many of whom wrote sexulized fan fiction about Moz that could make the dead cringe. To suggest that Morrissey might not be interested in girls created some memorable wars in that chat. I started a few of those wars myself and consider them time well spent.
But this is no different in kind really than the reactions of Bieliebers (awful, awful word) or kids who like One Direction. And this is why it is so deadly, if lucrative, for the artist to be controlled by their fans. Ultimately, the relationship is even more one sided than it might seem, but not in the direction one supposes. In the end, fans are only interested in themselves. Their idol serves them as those liars of mirror and moon served Sylvia Plath --- to create an idealization of self that will conquer the need for self knowledge and growth. In order to hold this sort of fan, the artist must achieve a sort of stasis where there is an appearance of change. Morrissey has managed this better than most (as did The Grateful Dead), but Bowie was too clever or too manic to manage the same trick. Interestingly enough, Bowie is richer by far than Morrissey and still a very credible, if currently less heeded than he was, artist.
The supposedly celibate Morrissey has in a sense let everyone who professes love for him use him in the most shameful ways, and if they leave a twenty on the night stand well and good, but the smarter of them likely do not return. Bowie, a notorious rake, is as likely to leave the twenty in the room as to receive it. In the end, it is all money, and he who steals my purse, as we know, steals trash.
Occasional posts about my music, process and theories about music and musicianship
