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As you get older you become, bizarrely, both more and less tolerant. A reality I can own up to, and which makes me wonder, paradoxical conundrum aside, what my impression of a younger me would be if we met. There’s a real chance I wouldn’t like me either way: for flaking out (older) or outspoken solipsism (younger), a comparison which suggests life, with experience, becomes less clear-cut. Into an angry young life of black and white bleeds increasing shades of gray; not unlike your hair. One morning you wake up and, as if overnight, gray has arrived in the oddest of places.
Which leads me to discussion of Nikki Sixx--a man, I suspect, whose jet-black mane is a high-contrast example of chemically achieved pitch; either that or, contrary to suspicion, rampant hard-drug abuse, multiple flat-lines and close, prolonged proximity to Vince Neil, doesn’t hammer your hair. No, Sixx is clearly not a dude who does gray; follically or philosophical, given his recent spat with Facebook--which, when held up against the color-chart of reason, reveals him most definitely shaded Adolescent Monochrome.
While promoting his new book – “This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life, Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx” –on Facebook, Sixx took exception when administrators removed an image of a nude 350-pound porn actress for being, well, pornographic. True to his rocker roots, Sixx rebelled, posting new images of the same actress taken from the video of his side-band Sixx AM’s new single, “Lies of the Beautiful People.”
When these images were also removed, Sixx rallied his fans to replace their profile pictures with one of the offending stills. Which 250,000 duly did; and with numerous accounts having been subsequently deleted, Sixx is claiming his art is being unduly censored. All of which dovetails rather neatly with the fact that Sixx’s book and corresponding new music all focus on alternative (read: underground) issues of beauty: amputation, scarring, various degrees of burns, dwarfism, etc.
In Sixx’s mind, Facebook--and by extension, society in general--should quit being so uptight. Yet, when a 52-year old millionaire rock-star starts feuding with Facebook simply because they won’t let him post pictures of porn actors plying their, er, trade on his page, I do find myself sighing like, well, the person I never thought I’d become. And as I do, another few percent of my nearly-depleted youth fades one-way to gray.
Because I grew up devouring music culture, and the luxury of being born when I was allowed me to consume, with relish, much of rock’s greatest mythology--tales which crackled with edge and risk. “Who would break a butterfly on the wheel?” William Rees Mogg famously editorialized in the British newspaper "The Times" back in July 1967, as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards stared down near-damnation by the British establishment, for drug-taking. An event which, aside from figuring as one of rock’s earliest major scandals, occurred in far less tolerant times. Now, we get George Michael colliding (at very low speed, I add) with Snappy Snaps, a high street photo-processing shop, while stoned at the wheel of his urban 4x4.
Even at the less intellectually sharp end of the morality stick, when Jim Morrison drunkenly goaded Miami cops from The Doors’ stage in 1969, rock music was still risking something. Granted, Morrison was blind-wasted and sticking his thumb through the fly of his leather pants, as if exposing himself, but pushing the boundaries he still was. Not just of sanity, but in a generational standoff dominated by the Vietnam War call-up his was an exercise in what was doable before The Man unleashed a billy-club beating with slammer-stretch chaser.
Yet, squint as I may, the only true rebelliousness I see in Sixx’s recent Facebook poke is his state of perpetually arrested development. And I’m not sure what makes me feel more sad: Sixx, writer of the mighty “Dr. Feelgood” and “Kickstart My Heart”, for stooping to justify his pop-star petulance as some kind of intellectual protest; or, the existence of the desperate reporters who puffed this otherwise innocuous event up under dramatic headlines like “Nikki Sixx Slams Facebook”.
No, this whole affair is mere pantomime, just as Sixx’s book of underground imagery was when Marilyn Manson mined the same fetishistic schtick some fifteen years ago. Rock and roll merely needs such outrage upon which to thrive; because without the kids in the audience going wild and slashing up the seats, it’s just another act. Equally, without fresh allusions to sell, the media is a show without spectacle.
Don’t be fooled: Nikki Sixx versus Facebook is the same old circus, just a different illusion: with Sixx as the smoke, and the media his assisting mirror. I’m just not sure who are the bigger clowns--these performers, or us, his audience.
Photo: Facebook