Why Beta Lyrics Make Alpha Musicians
I’ve been listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin lately, and I never cease to be amazed at how effectively they play the blues rock genre, especially early in their career. Particularly the lyrical character – a feral, scruffy guy who’s down on his luck, the musical version of Charlie Chaplin’s famous Tramp, but crossed over with a heavy dose of sexual advance or sexual frustration (or both) and the preying of femme fatales. Zeppelin’s first-class catalog included:
- A heartsick confession of unrequited love (Communication Breakdown)
- Singing Babe I’m Gonna Leave You and I Can’t Quit You Baby on the same album (make up your mind, man)
- Musically disjointed odysseys of getting taken by a woman (Dazed and Confused, Black Dog)
- Falling victim to an incorrigible user of men (Heartbreaker)
- Pure sexual deprivation (Rock and Roll)
Despite singing these songs and many like them night after night, singer Robert Plant and his bandmates still got their lemons squeezed like gangbusters. My pal Susan Walsh simply chalked it up to “Led Zeppelin was incredibly hot, all of them had great presence.” Is this contrast game, or an example of having so much alpha you can get away with some beta? If I got up at an open mic night and told real-life stories of getting rejected and ripped off, I’d walk out with a tingle factor of zero. What gives?
Then it hit me – performance is its own status, its own Game. The always-sharp Aldonza commented thusly on Tuesday’s post about groupies:
…the energy involved in getting up on stage, the confidence required to do that, and not only do it, but own it…that’s the stuff we’re talking about. Performers are sexy. I don’t care if you’ve got a guitar in your hand, or if you’re giving a talk to a bunch of geeks at a conference. Performing is performing.
There’s a key distinction between the performer and the character the performer is playing. People don’t see a guy on stage singing about his lost love and think “oh, he must be beta/omega, I’m not going to find him attractive (female reaction) or follow him (male reaction).” We don’t go to shows to evaluate if the singer or actor is alpha or beta in real life. We go to be let into the world they create for us. We go to shows because we want to feel something. That’s the job of performers. Whether they make us laugh, cry, high or low is to their taste; the better they do it, the more open we will be to feeling that way. They lead us into their world; that’s alpha.
Check out this live film of Zeppelin’s “The Ocean.” Robert Plant’s gyrations are conventionally disgusting (and vaguely androgynous), but I bet you there wasn’t a bored woman in the house. Power, rhythm, and a congruent presentation where the members themselves physically match the song’s energy. You could watch this with the sound off and you’d still know a great performance was taking place.
It’s easy to observe the performance frame in its absence. When the actor breaks character, or the drummer loses the beat, or the singer forgets the lyrics, the spell is broken – if only for a moment, but possibly forever. They’ve lost credibility in leading us, and it’s palpably uncomfortable – we’re no longer living in the performer’s world; he is living in ours, tacitly asking us for forgiveness while he gets himself back together to get back on the horse.
We don’t want to be asked; we want him to take that permission for himself. That’s why rock and roll stars get groupies, even if they spend the entire set whining about how life has done them wrong.
THE EXCEPTION THAT PROVES THE RULE
One of the few enduringly popular bands that did not embrace and exploit the rock band’s connection with the audience was Manchester, England’s wayward sons The Smiths - so named because frontman Steve Morrissey felt “it was an ordinary name and it was time ordinary people showed their faces.” (My first piece of advice to anyone going through depression or hardship is don’t listen to the Smiths. Leonard Cohen either.) Amid Johnny Marr’s tightly sculpted chordal bombasts, the highly literate Morrissey cultivated an aloof, bored, anti-heroic and sexually lost persona that extended to public statements and interview style. Strictly-business guitarist Marr never acted like a rock star himself, and the rhythm section was glorified session musicians (one of them was dumped from the band via a note left on his windshield).
Some artists’ personae are so bizarre and off the wall that you hope they aren’t making it up. If Morrissey has been acting his mercurial loser shtick for the past thirty years, he’s been doing an amazingly good job of it – probably too good a job. That’s not to say it hasn’t been fun to watch…the Morrissey-Marr songwriting team may not be a household name on the order of Lennon-McCartney, but they penned dozens of top-notch numbers.
It’s tough to classify the Smiths; they were way too early for the alternative scene, not exactly New Wave and far from Top 40 friendly. All of their albums reflect radically different musical sensibilities. They are sui generis – just their own.
