January 02, 2016
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According to the obituary, his group “never betrayed its principles: noise, speed and obscenity.” It went on, “Its music? To be honest, lovers of lyrics and perfectly chiselled melodies would be left disappointed, but above all permanently deaf.”
One might wonder whether the death of a musician whose output was describable in such terms was worthy of the five pages of a national newspaper devoted to it. Whatever the negative value of his life’s work, however, he was certainly a phenomenon of sociological and social-psychological significance, at least in the Western world. And since it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, or only ill, let me try to mitigate my estimate a little.
Mr. Kilmister was born seventy years ago in Stoke-on-Trent: and, to be perfectly honest, whenever I have arrived in that dreadful place I have thought, though I have not said it out loud, “Oh, fuck!” You know at once when you arrive that nothing can save it; it induces immediately a kind of despairing nihilism even in the most optimistic of souls. Any means to leave Stoke-on-Trent might seem justified.
Then again, Mr. Kilmister seems to have been a man of slightly mordant wit. He said, “People don”t get better on dying. People remain fools, they are just dead fools.” (I retranslate from the watered-down, gentrified version of the original given in Libération: It is better than the original.) Or again, “With my diabetes, I”ve given up Coca Lite.” I could almost like a man who said that.
Of course, his role in life was destructive. He knew he was acting a part: He liked P.G. Wodehouse and (according to the newspaper) was personally very courteous, though songs with titles such as “Kill the Rich” were hardly calculated to spread courtesy. And since he considered people to be stupid, including those influenced by him, he knew it. Moreover, when one acts a part for long enough it ceases to be a mere act, and one eventually becomes what one pretends to be.
The overall result of careers such as Mr. Kilmister’s is to encourage a culture or subculture, almost unique in my experience, lacking all beauty, value, virtue, charm, or refinement. Its apotheosis would be the dictatorship of libertinism in which personal whim would play the part of the supposed word of God in the Islamic State.
