There is a scene in “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” in which the newly reanimated Powers says, “I can’t believe that Liberace was gay. I mean, women loved him. I never saw that one coming.”
I think that many of us baby boomers have experienced that feeling when one of our heroes — in entertainment or politics or some other walk of life — turns out not what we expected them to be. To be fair, it’s often just not what we wanted them to be.
One of the most persistent (and pernicious) Republican mantras is that all teachers are dangerously liberal. GOP shouters blame unions or Hollywood or the education departments at universities for brainwashing teachers into becoming liberal monsters who, in turn, indoctrinate their students into believing in things like equality and stuff.
I’ve always thought that it was just natural for someone with an open mind (and possibly, a liberal family background) to be drawn to teaching, as opposed to chasing after money on Wall Street. And then, after spending time in the classroom and learning about some of the crap that kids have to endure outside of the school just to be a student, how could they not become more empathetic and more liberal?
Every now and then, you get surprised. Like, who would expect a gay tech titan to be a Trump supporter? After watching the first season of “Silicon Valley,” who would expect any successful tech person to be anything but a post-modern hippie who wants to help create world peace? And yet, there is Peter Thiel.
The contradiction that has thrown me for the biggest loop is the growing emergence of baby boomer music legends turning out to be walking rectums, spewing bile, racism, disinformation, and dangerous kookiness. I never expected them to be Brian May, the guitarist from Queen who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
I sincerely was fine with their being brain-dead savants whom the Gods of Music had hit in the hands or the throat with a lightning bolt, enabling them to hear things that we couldn’t hear — and then share those things with us.
Then, after having done so, they could get a lot of money, a bunch of drugs, and fleeting female companionship. It seemed like a good deal. We could learn and explore and protest, while they could be the perfectly apolitical them.
But lately, some ugly cracks have appeared in what we assumed would be a lifetime of symbiosis. The examples range from bizarre to appalling. Roger Waters, the 80-year-old co-founder of the legendary British band Pink Floyd, has gone way around the bend. He is accused of making anti-Semitic remarks, and this was before the war broke out with Hamas. He has also said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “not unprovoked.”
Carlos Santana, who had been playing the Pima County Fairgrounds before the Music Gods gave him a second chance with the album “Supernatural” (one of the biggest-selling albums of all time), should have been spending the rest of his life basking in his twice-found glory. Instead, he has turned into Right Wing Get Off My Lawn Guy. At a recent concert, Santana stepped out of sweet guitar sounds to opine that “a woman is a woman, and a man is a man — that’s it.”
The two most egregious examples of this involve one guy whom I have always admired and another whom I just about worshiped. The former, Eric Clapton, has lived a professional and personal life with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. He anchored three legendary British bands (The Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith) before going out on his own. He has created a huge library of rock and blues classics that will live on for centuries. But in the present, he done lost his mind.
About a month ago, he hosted an all-star concert for The Crossroads, a drug rehab facility that Clapton founded on the island of Antigua. The concert brought together such musical luminaries as Stevie Wonder, Steven Stills, John Mayer and Sheryl Crow. They say that it was quite a show.
A few days earlier, Clapton had appeared at a private fundraiser for political crackpot Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the idiot who claims that the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab and was designed not to infect Chinese people or Ashkenazi Jews. Kennedy also falsely claims that vaccines cause autism. Helping that nutjob raise money to run for president is insane.
The one that really hurts me is Van Morrison. I’ve been a Morrison fan since he fronted Them and sang “Baby, Please Don’t Go” and “Gloria.” His album “Moondance” is one of my all-time favorites. I used to pride myself with owning every piece of music Morrison ever made.
And then, during the pandemic, he released a 28-track double album with songs complaining about welfare cheats, government mind control, and the possible Jewish control of the media. He and Clapton even collaborated on a song that blasted pandemic lockdowns with lyrics like, “Do you want to be a slave…?”
I can no longer say that I have everything Morrison made.
I’m not going to be like one of those rednecks who screamed at the Dixie Chicks to just “shut up and sing.” I’ll make it simpler.
Just shut up.
