In its natural state, rock and roll is a very ugly thing. Sweaty, noisy and likely to leave a nasty mark on the rug that all the bicarbonate soda in the world simply can’t move, it’s the very opposite of pretty. Indeed, true rock music is practiced by those of a grizzled visage who – but for their ability to rock out – would only be of use to society for their ability to scare small children. The balance, however, has now tipped. Having seen the kind of adoration that even ugly people can inspire when accompanied by the right kind of musical backdrop, beautiful people have decided to muscle in on the action. This must be stopped – it’s time to get back to ugly.
In its natural state, rock and roll is a very ugly thing. Sweaty, noisy and likely to leave a nasty mark on the rug that all the bicarbonate soda in the world simply can’t move, it’s the very opposite of pretty. Indeed, true rock music is practiced by those of a grizzled visage who – but for their ability to rock out – would only be of use to society for their ability to scare small children. The balance, however, has now tipped. Having seen the kind of adoration that even ugly people can inspire when accompanied by the right kind of musical backdrop, beautiful people have decided to muscle in on the action. This must be stopped – it’s time to get back to ugly.
If proof is what you need, look no further than a video clip from the early 1980s. It was an era when chiseled good looks were, if not superfluous to requirements, then at least an optional extra. Whilst watching music videos one Saturday morning, I was struck by two things – the first was a loose light fitting, which descended from the roof with all the haste of a post-morbidity bird. The second was how funny it was to see the video to ‘Uptown Girl’ by Billy Joel.
I do not mean to unkind, but Billy was not then or now an especially good looking man. In the song ‘Uptown Girl’, he tells the story of a rich young woman, who has tired of men who occupy society’s upper echelons and, instead, longs for the simple, good old fashioned honesty of a hardworking man from ‘downtown’. The music is a nostalgic pastiche of doo-wop music and the ‘uptown girl’ is played in the video by Christie Brinkley, then a model, and later, wife of Billy Joel. Not a tall man, he looks like something of a Lilliputian in Brinkley’s shadow. But it matters not – Joel has the musical chops necessary to win her over both in song and in real life.
It was an age in which rock stars could afford to be plug-ugly, with a view to ‘buying in’ some beauty for the video clip. If Billy Joel can be described as not being an oil painting, the members of band ‘Toto’ are best described as either a finger painting or papier-mâché. As session musicians, they were virtuoso players who had played on hundreds of albums during the 1970s, including those by giants of the era like Boz Scaggs, Steely Dan and, er, Sonny and Cher. But in spite of a past that might kindly be described as ‘chequered’, like wayward superheroes they banded together to create something more powerful. They mixed both music and ugliness in equal proportions.
The video to the song ‘Rosanna’ is either a case in point or the first witness for the prosecution. The band performs on a set made to look like a gritty, urban environment, complete with graffiti and chain-mesh fences. This, of course, is in substitution for using an actual gritty urban environment. Unaccustomed to the glare of the outdoors, they display their studio-tan in all its pale glory. Many of the band members even wear sunglasses. That is in spite of the fact of being indoors and the film clip being set at night. Truly, these were men unused to getting out.
Pale of pallor but sturdy of pant, ‘Toto’ were – to a man – blessed with heads like cabbages. Nor did they have youth on their side. To look at the video, all the members were at risk of being turned away from the local ‘over-28s’ night on the grounds of their advancing years. But it matters not. What becomes apparent over the course of the song is that in spite of grim visual being served up to the unsuspecting viewer; ‘Toto’ and all its constituent parts know how to rock out.
They do this with absolute aplomb over the five and a half minutes of ‘Rosanna’ (clearly, the band was in no rush to finish). With every keyboard flourish and awkward shake of mullets that were as curled and cultivated as a bonsai forest, the band brings the rock. They were great days until the inevitable shift took hold. Youth and beauty were suddenly elevated above traditional strengths such as musical talent or a really big mullet. It’s hard to imagine that a group of men well into their thirties and beyond could be regarded as hot pop property in this day and age.
Don’t get me wrong – music has always had its teen idols. When I was growing up it was ‘Bros’. They had songs like ‘Drop the Boy’ and ‘When Will I Be Famous?’ Unlike Toto, they were not ugly. For whilst the band ‘Bros’ could be accused of many things, having a face that looked as though it had just lost an argument with the business end of shovel was not one of them. Instead, they were perfectly preened with facial features that could just as easily have been cast from wax. Now it’s ‘One Direction’, making the kind of music in which computers seem to do much of the heavy lifting. Whether they ultimately create the kind of music that visits the charts before setting off in pursuit of obscurity will be something that only time will reveal. From a distance, it seems like 90% haircut, perhaps 10% music.
Music doesn’t have to be ugly but it probably helps. I’d like to think that it doesn’t matter if you were cruelly denied the good looks afforded to others, so long as you can still deliver the goods. Perhaps it’s because I look like I could be a member of Toto rather than One Direction that I feel that way. That’s just fine by me.