Hey, Nietzsche! Leave them kids alone

by Craig Schuftan

  Gerard Way: ‘Feel something!’

  Emotional People

  BECAUSE THEY’RE YOUNG, American and wear a lot of black; because they play melodic punk rock with their hearts on their sleeves; and because they’re fond of eyeliner and introspection, My Chemical Romance is, in the eyes of the world, an emo band. In fact, last year in the UK, they became the emo band — the only one people over the age of thirty would be able to identify in a line-up. Gerard Way’s face, covered in make-up, screaming into a microphone, or just looking moody and mysterious, stared out from the cover of thousands of music weeklies and tabloid rags. His lyrics were the subject of urgent debate, the band’s Black Parade tour was a news story. But this newfound notoriety did not please My Chemical Romance one little bit. The band’s press coverage was up, but the quality of that coverage had plummeted out of all proportion. Way and the band rolled into town ready to talk redemption and rock and roll — what they got was a barrage of questions about things that, to them, had nothing to do with My Chemical Romance: things like Marilyn Manson, Mexican homophobia, teen suicide and — worst of all — emo.1

  ‘Emo’, Gerard Way says, ‘is a pile of shit’.2 He’s not the only one who feels that way. Not only is the sentiment echoed by thousands of punks, goths, and indie-rock fans, it’s a conviction shared by most of the bands people think of as emo — members of Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, The Get Up Kids, Saves the Day, Weezer, and Jimmy Eat World have all, at one time or another, declared that they want nothing to do with it. It seems to be one of those genres that’s only useful to music journalists and record store owners, along with other much maligned terms such as trip-hop, new rave and electroclash. Unlike these, however, emo has proved surprisingly durable — the history of the genre is long, and its fans are passionate about it. Whatever else it might be, emo — like punk — is important enough for people to keep arguing about it.

  Meanwhile, the sheer diversity of the music demonstrates just how unstable emo is as a concept. Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary sounds nothing like Weezer’s Pinkerton, but both are emo landmarks. This diversity is the very reason why many insist that the term is useless. In the beginning emo referred to a very specific handful of Washington DC hardcore bands, beginning with Rites of Spring, who traded political rage for emotional angst and were thus labelled ‘emo-core’. Now it seems any band whose singer is pale and pretty looking (or not) and sings about his feelings, accompanied by loud guitars (or not) is emo. Emo can sound like mall-punk, synthpop, goth, glam, country, classic rock, or Morrissey fronting a hardcore band.

  So it’s impossible to work out whether My Chemical Romance is emo or not based on the sound of their music. Nor is it possible to peg them on the basis of their lineage. My Chemical Romance does occupy one of the outer branches of the emo family tree — they were supported early on by Geoff Rickley from Thursday, they’ve recorded a cover of David Bowie and Queen’s ‘Under Pressure’ with The Used, and they’ve been touring and writing with James DeWees of the Get Up Kids. But by that logic both The Mars Volta and The Foo Fighters would also be emo — and nobody would argue that they are.

  Surely at this point, say the critics, it’s time to either find a more precise definition for this thing, or forget about it entirely. In 2008 Tonie Joy, whose band Moss Icon was one of the first to be described as emo, had this to say:

  Over the years it’s been diluted and shifted so much, it’s pretty inaccurate compared to what the term was first pinned to. I think Ian MacKaye summed it up best when the term was first coined… He just thought it was stupid, saying that any music that’s real is emotional, whatever the genre.3

  William Goldsmith, formerly of Sunny Day Real Estate, agrees:

  Emo means emotional, right? Human emotions have been the driving force of all art since the beginning of the beginning. To say that…emotionally driven music is a new thing…it just doesn’t make sense to me.4

  Here, these two veterans of the scene have hit the nail on the head. When all the musical and genealogical arguments have been worn out, the only grounds for finding that My Chemical Romance is emo is that they’re emotional artists who write emotional music. This they will admit to. ‘We’re all very sincere, emotional people’, Way once told Spin magazine.5 Way’s lyrics come from feelings, and his goal is to make you feel those feelings too. ‘Feel something. That’s what we’ve always been fighting for,’ said the singer in 2007.6 But if that’s your definition of emo, does that mean Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Robert Smith, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Richard Wagner and Beethoven are all emo too?

  For the term emo to exist, and for it to last as long as it has, implies that there is some kind of music which is less emotional, or not emotional at all. This is exactly how emo began, as an alternative to staunchly un-emotional music. In the late 1980s, American hardcore bands were singing about society and the world, and the kids at their shows, while enjoying the power of the music and the feeling of community it created, were virtually screaming, ‘Sing about my feelings!’ Over the next ten years, the history of emo would be written by the bands that answered this silent prayer. Rites of Spring, Mineral, Texas is the Reason, Sunny Day Real Estate and Drive Like Jehu turned the steely gaze of hardcore inward, the ruthless critique of the world became a ruthless critique of oneself and one’s feelings. This rebellion against punk orthodoxy from within is as old as punk itself.

  Buzzcocks

  IN 1977 MANCHESTER band the Buzzcocks released their first EP, Spiral Scratch. In punk’s year zero it was the punkest thing you ever saw — recorded in a couple of hours using mostly first takes and one overdub, and released on the band’s own label, using money borrowed from guitarist Pete Shelley’s dad. On ‘Boredom’, singer Howard Devoto spat out his lyrics in a fake cockney accent at breakneck speed, pausing only to make room for Shelley’s two-note guitar solo — a snot-nosed act of defiance toward prog-wankers and school music teachers alike. Music, Spiral Scratch seemed to say to its audience, is easy. All you need is a feeling and the will to express it. Blag a couple of quid off the old man, and you’re away.

  But, coming as early in punk’s history as it did, Spiral Scratch already contained an argument against punk — or against what it was becoming. The noise coming out of London, engineered in no small part by Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren and happily parroted by the music press and the papers, suggested a musical movement rising up from the streets; kids from council estates seizing the means of production and transforming everyday life. The Sex Pistols illustrated this with three singles that seemed to map out the road to revolution:

  1. Discredit and destroy the existing political system.

  2. Discredit and destroy the head of state.

  3. Discredit and destroy rock and roll.

  By 1977 punk had a recognisable uniform, a mandate to critique the conditions of everyday life, and the momentum of a mass movement. But there was nothing in its charter about the importance of self-expression. With the possible exception of righteous rage, emotions were considered a luxury the punk singer could not afford to indulge in. And love, as Jon Savage notes in England’s Dreaming, was the one topic punk bands (and punk critics) considered totally out of bounds. Love songs were stupid songs, chart songs, product. Love confined rock and roll to the teenage bedroom and the school dance. The love song was mere escapism; an easy way out. Punk, as Savage puts it, was ‘determinedly in the world’.1 Punk saw myriad injustices and humiliations wreaked on the world by conservatives and capitalists — all of these needed to be exposed. Of course you like love songs, punk says, they let you off the hook. They want you to like love songs — as long as you’re obsessing over your feelings, you won’t notice what’s really going on.

  But no amount of Marxist rhetoric or agit-prop sloganeering could convince teenagers, then or now, that their feelings are not important. This is the key to the success — and the continuing importance of — the Buzzcocks. Pete Shelley’s songs are as punk as you
like — fast, unpretentious and full of bile and snot. There’re no clichés, no grandiose gestures, and very little ornament — but there’s also none of the pious preaching or undergraduate politicking that characterises the work of agit-punk heroes like Tom Robinson Band or Sham 69. Shelley wrote about what he knew, his voice was the bitter voice of teenage experience. ‘I just want a lover like any other,’ he yelps on 1978’s ‘What Do I Get?’:

  For you things seem to turn out right

  If it could only happen to me instead!

  What do I get?2

  ‘You didn’t have to be a political rebel or riotous anarchist to relate to Buzzcocks’ lyrics,’ writes Annie Zaleski in Alternative Press, ‘being a bored, disgruntled teenager or introverted social misfit was good enough’.3 Seventeen-year-old Robert Smith of Crawley was a little of both.

  Robert Smith: The melancholy man should make the best use of his moods.

  The Cure

  ROBERT SMITH WAS galvanised by the energy of punk in 1976. But in the sprawling suburbs south of London where he lived, the call to riot in the streets seemed oddly useless. ‘Living in Crawley you really didn’t have to go out of your way to get beaten up,’ says Smith. ‘I couldn’t really see the point in putting a safety pin through my nose.’1 The fury of the Sex Pistols was a much-needed shot in the arm, but in the Buzzcocks’ nervy love songs for loners, Smith heard something of more lasting value, something he could use. The Buzzcocks had sent a signal out into the suburbs saying it was okay to be a punk and sing about your feelings, and Smith was about to take unprecedented liberties with this idea.

  Smith formed The Cure in 1976. The band released their first single ‘Killing an Arab’ two years later, and a debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, in 1979. The accompanying single ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ had all the nervous adrenalin charge of punk, but the lyric was introspective and confessional. ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ made perfect and immediate sense in the musical climate of 1979, and The Cure were regarded as promising.

  Then — as far as the critics were concerned — they blew it. From a band that seemed to have such a perfect grasp of the post-punk pop song, The Cure’s next single, ‘A Forest’, was a baffling move. The song hardly seemed to be a song at all, more like a ghostly moan over three minutes of bleak Eurodisco. Smith’s sense of humour and irony — the ‘oh well, don’t worry about me’ — tone that had made ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ so charming, had seemingly vanished along with the girl he was chasing in the gloomy lyric of ‘A Forest’. And given that the song had no discernable hook or chorus, the only thing that seemed left was the singer’s unhappiness. The faint twinge of despair that added spice to ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ had become the entire musical world of ‘A Forest’.

  Sadly, for those who still held out some hope for The Cure as the future of New Wave, ‘A Forest’ proved to be a sign of things to come. The Cure’s second album, Seventeen Seconds was — like its single — a ghostly, impenetrable affair. Amazingly, it reached the Top 20 in the UK charts — but neither this, nor the critics’ griping had much of an effect on Smith. From this point on, Smith’s main goal was not to have hits or get good reviews, but to describe emotions.

  Over the course of three increasingly troubled records — Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography — Smith would document his failing relationships and secret fears with unflinching honesty. These albums form one of the most important — and most misunderstood — bodies of work in the history of rock. They were hard to understand at the time of their release precisely because they were so personal, so singular, so much the product of one man’s inner turmoil. There are musical reference points in early eighties Cure — Joy Division, Bowie, Eno, psychedelic rock — but in the end, Smith’s most important influence seems to have been despair, of which he became an avid student. When Smith felt despair creeping up on him, he didn’t do what the rest of us do — shrug it off, think positive thoughts, and try not to make too big a deal about it — instead he grabbed despair by the scruff of the neck and looked right into its pitch-black eyes. ‘I was letting myself slip in order to write those songs,’ he later recalled. ‘I wasn’t fighting it, whereas in everyday life you have to fight those feelings.’2

  But the process of extracting and recording all this inner pain would take its toll, not just on Smith, but on the whole band. Recording an album like Faith was one thing, spending the next twelve months playing it in front of audiences was something else. Smith later admitted that Faith was the one record they shouldn’t have toured with at that point.3 But they did, and as a result, Smith’s gloom became self-perpetuating. By the time The Cure came to record Pornography, the singer was in the grip of a deep depression, further exacerbated by drugs and lack of sleep. Pornography opens with Smith howling, ‘It doesn’t matter if we all die’. Then it gets worse.

  Realising that he was driving the band into the ground and himself into an early grave, Smith called a halt in 1982, effectively declaring The Cure dead. He spent some time playing guitar on a Siouxsie and the Banshees tour. ‘Fat Boy just does what he’s told,’ Siouxsie explained at the time.4 This was fine with Fat Boy, who was enjoying the feeling of playing music in which he had no particular emotional investment. Learning from this experience he began, in 1982, to write songs again — but of a very different kind from the ones on Pornography. Instead of recording his inner turmoil, he tried writing songs around themes — as though he were setting himself an assignment rather than writing a confession. Previously he’d aimed for authenticity, emotional sincerity; now he was trying to write a song that worked. He came up with a tune, gave it a solid, catchy beat, and loaded up the chorus with slinky ‘doo doo doo doo’s. He had a feeling ‘Let’s Go to Bed’ would get played on the radio, and it did. He wrote another one called ‘The Walk’, and his mum told him, for the first time ever, that she liked it.5 Neither song had anything near the level of emotional honesty of those on Faith or Pornography. But Smith was done, for the time being, with ripping his guts out for his art. Form, not feeling, had become his goal.

  Rivers Cuomo: No feeling, no emotion.

  Weezer

  WRITING ABOUT EMOTIONS is hard — it demands a level of self-absorption that even the most well-balanced individual would find it difficult to maintain. And of course, it’s never the well-balanced individual who decides to pick up a guitar and pour the contents of his diary into a microphone — only a real lunatic would do that. So what’s the alternative? Well, you could write about social life or politics or the state of your neighbourhood. But what if you don’t care about any of that stuff? Is it possible to write a song that’s just…a song?

  In 1983, Robert Smith proved you could; and in 1997, Weezer singer Rivers Cuomo — similarly exhausted by the effort of emotional music — decided to give it a go. He’d always written songs about himself, now he decided to see if he couldn’t write a song about something that had never happened to him. Cuomo assembled a set of tried-and-true mythological images and set about describing them with words and music. He wrote a song about catching his sweetheart ‘out in the eve, deep in the shady glen’ in the arms of another man. The results surprised him. He’d always assumed great songs came directly from strong feelings triggered by personal experiences. But even though he’d never been in or near a shady glen, and the things in the song were entirely made up, the song still sounded great.1

  To have discovered a method of songwriting by which he revealed nothing of himself was a huge relief for Cuomo. Not long before this, Weezer had released its second album, Pinkerton, in which Cuomo laid his heart completely bare. He’d spared nothing of himself — all his insecurities, his childhood anxieties, his sexual fantasies and his darkest thoughts went down on the tape. It was an extraordinarily brave thing to do, and it earned him, for his trouble, a pile of scathing reviews and a place in Rolling Stone’s list of the Worst Albums of 1996.2

  These days, Pinkerton is rightly seen as a classic — many believe it’s Weezer’s finest hour. But it’s not im
possible, listening to it today, to hear the reasons why it was so badly received in its day. Pinkerton is, in a word, embarrassing. It’s embarrassing in the way that an unnecessarily maudlin twenty-first birthday speech can be, embarrassing in a reading-your-old-high-school-diary kind of way. It’s the kind of embarrassment we feel for someone when they’re over-sharing.

  Cuomo himself was not blind to this possibility. He’d first begun to experiment with this type of confessional songwriting in 1992, inspired by the example of New Radicals frontman, Gregg Alexander. In February of that year, he’d set about recording a cover of one of Alexander’s songs ‘The World We Love so Much’. He didn’t want the guys in his band to hear it — he didn’t want anyone to hear it. He didn’t even hit record until he’d covered the walls of the room he was subletting with acoustic foam — not to enhance the sound quality, but to make absolutely sure no-one could hear him while he was ‘emoting’.3

  But the events of the following year made Cuomo bolder. The success of Weezer’s insanely catchy — but surprisingly personal — debut album had given him reason to believe that there might be some level of interest out there in his emotions. So he decided to give them more emotions. Lots more. As a songwriter, he went into confessional mode — and he had plenty to confess.

  Cuomo was deeply uncomfortable with his newfound rock-star status. ‘He hated himself for achieving it,’ said music journalist Andy Greenwald, ‘and he hated himself for loving it.’4 Stardom only increased his isolation and magnified the problems in his life, problems which went right back to his childhood. Rivers and his brother, Leaves, were raised on an ashram, an experience which left them totally unprepared for the brutal world of high school in America. The Cuomo brothers got the crap beaten out of them. But worse than that, they were outcasts, unable to connect with all the nice normal kids with their nice normal lives. No wonder, he thinks, he turned out weird. No wonder he can’t communicate with people, except in the highly controlled form of songs like the one he’s singing now. In ‘Across the Sea’ Cuomo dumps the blame for all of this squarely at his mother’s feet. Then, disgusted by his own self-pity, and the entire song itself up to this point, he exclaims, ‘goddamn, this business is really lame!’.