Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut by Rob Sheffield Page A
Authors: Rob Sheffield
Tags: United States, Literary, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Editors; Journalists; Publishers, music, Journalists, Biography, Genres & Styles, Rock Music, History and Criticism, Composers & Musicians, Rock, Journalists - United States, Music Critics, Sheffield; Rob, Music critics - United States, Rock music - History and criticism
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around?”
“Yes. They like the toilet paper hanging from the rolling thing.”
“But you can reach it. It’s just there on the sink and—”
“We just do.”
“It’s easier to—”
“We. Just. Do.”
So I put the toilet paper on the rolling thing.
One of the things she keeps reminding me, often in so many words, is that my sisters are right. About everything.
But when you’re a teenage boy, you can be narrow-minded about things that are girlie, things that are frivolous, things that are pop. Boys always want to be taken seriously, and they always want to transcend the tawdry emotion of the pop singer—it’s a fairly standard response to the rigors of young manhood. You could trace it through the past century back to Ezra Pound in 1915 denouncing the lyric poem as unmanly in his hugely influential essay “The Serious Artist.” The lyric was weak and feminine—a truly virile poet should be writing epics. This isn’t so different from how people talk about culture now. Rock epics are for boys; pop hits are for girls. When you’re a boy, pop is scary because it’s a maneater. You sing along with a pop song, you turn into a girl. That takes some degree of emotional risk.
One of my new-wave idols, Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, used to tell a story about the days when he was an abrasive art-school punk. One night in the spring of 1980, he was at the Electric Ballroom in Manchester, England, talking to Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, frustrated by the dead end of their doom-and-gloom musical styles. “I don’t think I was able to offer him any solace, nor he I,” Green said. “We were feeling pretty dejected and found our respective ways out of it.”
A week later, Ian Curtis killed himself, and Green began playing disco. Ian Curtis’s old bandmates went disco too, renaming themselves New Order. Green never looked back. As he proclaimed, “Fear of pop is an infantile disorder—you should face up to it like a man.”
ROXY MUSIC
“More Than This”
1982
One thing we all learned from our radios in the ’80s:
Taking Kenny Rogers’s advice? Always a good idea.
Walk away from trouble when you can.
Don’t fall in love with a dreamer.
Never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.
Love the world away.
The best part of life is the thinnest slice.
Actually that last one was Air Supply, but it sure sounds like something Kenny would say. I have no clue what it means, but like everything Kenny says, it drips with the wisdom of a silver-fox Zen sage.
Don’t take your love to town.
It don’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other cheek.
Love will turn you around.
He sang this in the movie Six Pack to his foster family of zany orphans who tagged along on his stock-car racing adventures. This song turned Diane Lane from a child actress to the mature, grown bombshell she became in the film Streets of Fire , where she got to sing Meat Loaf songs to Willem Dafoe and the guy from Eddie and the Cruisers . Love did turn her around!
Sail away with me, to another world.
Most often, one does not sail to another world, especially if one is an island, and Dolly Parton is the other island in the stream. But do not argue back with Kenny. He doesn’t need to hear your lip, buddy. K-Hova’s been around the block, and he knows what ladies like to hear, and it isn’t complaining about how they picked a fine time to leave you, with four hundred children and a crop in the field. Kenny knows how to give them what they want, without losing his mind. These are all good lessons, and I tried to learn them by heart. You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.
No woman made me break as many of these rules as Ms. Calasta.
Ms. Calasta always showed up late for class with a mug of coffee the size of a cinder block. She kept her hard pack of unfiltered cigarettes propped up on her desk, with a disturbing illustration of a salty old sea
“Yes. They like the toilet paper hanging from the rolling thing.”
“But you can reach it. It’s just there on the sink and—”
“We just do.”
“It’s easier to—”
“We. Just. Do.”
So I put the toilet paper on the rolling thing.
One of the things she keeps reminding me, often in so many words, is that my sisters are right. About everything.
But when you’re a teenage boy, you can be narrow-minded about things that are girlie, things that are frivolous, things that are pop. Boys always want to be taken seriously, and they always want to transcend the tawdry emotion of the pop singer—it’s a fairly standard response to the rigors of young manhood. You could trace it through the past century back to Ezra Pound in 1915 denouncing the lyric poem as unmanly in his hugely influential essay “The Serious Artist.” The lyric was weak and feminine—a truly virile poet should be writing epics. This isn’t so different from how people talk about culture now. Rock epics are for boys; pop hits are for girls. When you’re a boy, pop is scary because it’s a maneater. You sing along with a pop song, you turn into a girl. That takes some degree of emotional risk.
One of my new-wave idols, Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, used to tell a story about the days when he was an abrasive art-school punk. One night in the spring of 1980, he was at the Electric Ballroom in Manchester, England, talking to Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, frustrated by the dead end of their doom-and-gloom musical styles. “I don’t think I was able to offer him any solace, nor he I,” Green said. “We were feeling pretty dejected and found our respective ways out of it.”
A week later, Ian Curtis killed himself, and Green began playing disco. Ian Curtis’s old bandmates went disco too, renaming themselves New Order. Green never looked back. As he proclaimed, “Fear of pop is an infantile disorder—you should face up to it like a man.”
ROXY MUSIC
“More Than This”
1982
One thing we all learned from our radios in the ’80s:
Taking Kenny Rogers’s advice? Always a good idea.
Walk away from trouble when you can.
Don’t fall in love with a dreamer.
Never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.
Love the world away.
The best part of life is the thinnest slice.
Actually that last one was Air Supply, but it sure sounds like something Kenny would say. I have no clue what it means, but like everything Kenny says, it drips with the wisdom of a silver-fox Zen sage.
Don’t take your love to town.
It don’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other cheek.
Love will turn you around.
He sang this in the movie Six Pack to his foster family of zany orphans who tagged along on his stock-car racing adventures. This song turned Diane Lane from a child actress to the mature, grown bombshell she became in the film Streets of Fire , where she got to sing Meat Loaf songs to Willem Dafoe and the guy from Eddie and the Cruisers . Love did turn her around!
Sail away with me, to another world.
Most often, one does not sail to another world, especially if one is an island, and Dolly Parton is the other island in the stream. But do not argue back with Kenny. He doesn’t need to hear your lip, buddy. K-Hova’s been around the block, and he knows what ladies like to hear, and it isn’t complaining about how they picked a fine time to leave you, with four hundred children and a crop in the field. Kenny knows how to give them what they want, without losing his mind. These are all good lessons, and I tried to learn them by heart. You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.
No woman made me break as many of these rules as Ms. Calasta.
Ms. Calasta always showed up late for class with a mug of coffee the size of a cinder block. She kept her hard pack of unfiltered cigarettes propped up on her desk, with a disturbing illustration of a salty old sea
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