Outlaw Pete
I saw Gene Simmons yesterday in the Hagstrom booth at NAMM. I’d like to tell you there were groupies, clamoring to be added to the tongued-one’s Polaroid collection, but there were just a few geeks, looking at this intelligent man not quite as smart as he’d like us to believe who’s great at selling and mediocre at music.
Gene didn’t need to be a rock star. He was once a teacher. He can sell ice to Inuits. But timing is everything, as Malcolm Gladwell says. Rock was making all the money in the seventies, so that’s what Gene created, an over the top rock and roll circus. With one certifiable hit, "Rock And Roll All Nite". But as the seventies wore on, the band had no luck with anybody other than its acne-scarred fans, so it did what every loser act does when it gets desperate…IT FOLLOWED THE TREND! KISS went DISCO!
The result was "I Was Made For Lovin’ You". KISS’ highest charting single ever! It peaked at number 11 in 1979.
There was a bit of MTV fame thereafter, with different players and no makeup, but ever since KISS has been running on fumes. Mr. Simmons boasting how great they are as they reunite with the old players, put the makeup back on, twist the little cred they’ve got with their nitwit fans into a new concoction and then sell the same fourth-rate rock one more time.
Maybe if you were prepubescent in the seventies you got KISS. Anybody whose testicles had descended scratched his head and ignored the act. Figuring if they wanted theatrics, they’d at least go for Alice Cooper, who wasn’t purely about entertainment, who was truly testing limits, whose songs had something to say.
Yes, Alice Cooper deserves to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. KISS? We’ve been living in a Simmons-free zone for eons. Gene’s the only one who doesn’t know it. With the Internet and a zillion cable TV stations we can avoid him, let him grub for his money. After all, Gene’s no Bruce Springsteen.
Then again, is Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen anymore?
Maybe this is a different Bruce. Not the same one who was married to Julianne Phillips and lived in Los Angeles. Yes, that’s why he got a divorce. IT’S NOT THE SAME GUY! He married Patti and retired to the wilds of his native New Jersey. Even broke up the band. I mean how could the NEW Bruce play with Clarence and the old guys? They’d spot a fake in a minute.
As for the music going downhill… Like Tupac and John Lennon, the old Bruce left a couple of songs in the can. "Human Touch" and "Streets Of Philadelphia". But then, with the old songs gone and the E-Street Band starving, Jon Landau concocted a "reunion".
Have you seen this new act? Listened to the records? "The Rising"? The old Bruce was an outsider, not a cheerleader.
Worse, the old Bruce stood up for the little guy. The old Bruce wouldn’t allow an exclusive to be sold at a big box retailer that locked its employees inside. He’d pen an anthem protesting the abuse. He’d skip the Super Bowl, after all, didn’t high school football players chide him for his long hair, beat him up?
I gotta believe this is the case. That it’s just not the same Springsteen, because "Outlaw Pete" IS A DIRECT LIFT OF KISS’ "I Was Made For Lovin’ You"! It’s the same hook! Even worse, it’s the opening track on Springsteen’s new album!
We’re supposed to believe in a man who’s turned on everything he ever believed in, who has resorted to copying the work of hacks and pawning it off as his own?
What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where NO ONE involved, not the producer, the manager, the band or the label could let the supposed Boss know his newfangled track is actually thirty years old?
One in which selling has eclipsed art. Where bucks are more important than music. Where Pollstar grosses are more important than listenability.
I read they were the same song in today’s "Wall Street Journal", but when I actually listened I was positively stunned. At least Charles Barkley speaks the truth. He wanted a little oral sex. But Bruce Springsteen and Columbia Records want the entire country to blow him, like he’s still the same guy who penned "Born To Run". Thank god he’s not. As for the real Bruce Springsteen, I heard someone say they saw him working the counter at the 7-11 in Tulare. Or was it Tehachapi?
