Cultural Capital

Reflections on books and the arts from the New Statesman culture desk

Why are there so few right-wing rock stars?

An NME writer suggests that it's thanks to the influence of Britain's music press.

By Pat Long Published 08 March 2012 9:22

It's a curious fact that, in public at least, there are very few right-wing rock stars. Some, like Phil Collins, who made good on his promise to leave the country if Labour won the 2005 General Election, vote Tory for tax reasons. Some, like Spandau Ballet singer Tony Hadley, who was rumoured to be seeking a Conservative electoral seat, espouse pro-Thatcherite views because it reminds them of the time in the 1980s when they were still having hits, rather than slogging round the revival circuit playing august rock venues like Lowestoft's Marina Theatre.

Collins and Hadley are very much in the minority, however. Rock music's default political stance is a version of libertarianism - a lot of rock stars like to imagine themselves as outlaw figures at odds with the strictures of workaday society, and a small state means, like, less hassle from The Man, man.

In Britain at least, the long-term guardian of rock music's conscience - and occasional antagonist - was the music press, principally the weekly New Musical Express. Founded in 1952 as a tabloid for musicians advertising the latest harmonicas or guitar strings, by the time it reached its peak of influence in the mid-'70s, the NME was providing a steady wage and a willing audience to a whole generation of troublemakers and dissidents who'd learned their craft writing for the underground press.

NME was owned by the International Publishing Company, part of packaging company Reed International, publishers of Woman and Home, Horse and Hound and magazines about fishing, football and kid's comics. The staff of the NME gleefully exploited their position to take the values, ideals and interests of the hippy underground - amplified rock music, drugs, sex, astrology, radical politics - and sneak them into the mainstream through IPC's distribution network.

At its peak in the 1970s, the magazine was bought by a quarter of a million people weekly, but IPC estimated that it was read by four times as many - most NME readers being impoverished students or sixth formers who pass on the paper to friends when they'd finished with it. The values and causes that they discovered through the pages of the NME - along, of course, with the vibrant soundtrack - permeated way beyond the pages of a weekly rock newspaper into the wider culture.

Writing in 1980, the cultural commentator Peter York expressed amazement at what he found in the pages of a magazine sold alongside Shoot!, Bunty or the Sun in WH Smiths. "Peter York wrote a piece on NME for Harpers and Queen," remembers Tony Parsons, one of the many household names who got his break writing for the paper, "and he said 'you wouldn't believe the stuff that's in this paper: politics, drugs'. And this was true. There were people coming to work who'd had just fallen out of a drug den with Keith Richards."

At a time when the TUC conference ended with a round of (female) strippers, or when Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served? was the only gay character on television, the NME advocated feminism and gay rights. It ran passionate cover stories about nuclear disarmament or green politics way before they were mainstream political issues. It advocated relaxing British marijuana laws and covered music festivals long before either became acceptable middle-class pastimes.

After a drunken concert appearance by Eric Clapton in August 1976 where the guitarist repeatedly shouted the National Front's slogan "Keep Britain White" and called for action to be taken to "get the coons out", it was on the letters pages of the NME that the Rock Against Racism movement coalesced. In the 1980s, during Neil Kinnock's latter period as leader of the Labour party, no daily newspaper would give him even the smallest piece of positive coverage: NME put him on the cover twice, once, to their publisher's chagrin, the week before the 1987 general election.

NME writers attended early meetings of the Red Wedge movement, rubbing shoulders with future New Labour architects like Peter Mandelson and Phillip Gould, who noticed how powerful rock music could be when it came to trying to court the youth vote. The result was Britain's first rock'n'roll premier, the first British Prime Minister who'd grown up reading the NME every week. The ignominy of the Blair years aside Britain is a more accepting, more tolerant and more liberal place than it was forty years ago. The persistent influence of the New Musical Express, sixty years old next month, did much to make it that way.

Pat Long's book "The History of The NME" is published on 12 March by Portico. For more information click here

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23 comments

Fri, 2012-04-13 17:07 — sara from nj (not verified)

you certainly don't know springsteen

Sun, 2012-03-11 11:05 — Paul Danon (not verified)

Could it also be that rock-music is part of the same social problem as socialism?

Sun, 2012-03-11 11:23 — TheRedBladder (not verified)

Be that as it may. The NME's influence does not extend to the USA. Apart from 'The Ballard of the Green Berets' there has been precious little right wing influence on music over there. Not just rock but folk and broadly popular as well. An interesting idea but a bit wider than a single publication in a single country.

Tue, 2012-03-13 19:32 — demonax3

Surely Mr Brown was one -A Northern Rocker.

Sun, 2012-03-11 11:41 — John P Reid (not verified)

The fact that Other papers wouldn't give Kinock the time of day in '87, dodne's t say much apart form taking on Militant, innock had turned A blind eye to Livingstone, Scargill and Bernie grant, If Kinnock had done anything more of merit ,his publicity may have been worth it, didn't the NME on relfection fo tehir backing for him, say'trust us tob ack a loser' more cynacism.

Sun, 2012-03-11 11:42 — Paul Hillyard (not verified)

The writer seems to misunderstand both politics and rock music.
Most rock musicians are right wing, they are not revolutionaries.
Take Bruce Springsteen, he sings about the Badlands, Jungleland etc but his solution is to escape not change.
Please go away and rethink this nonsense.

Mon, 2012-03-12 12:28 — Smiler (not verified)

Gary Numan was/is a Tory

Mon, 2012-03-12 13:09 — KG (not verified)

Surely this is just a case of demographics. Generally the bands with the most buzz are young people who either have little interest in politics or are liberal leaning as they move in creative circles? Maybe the NME mirrored it's audience and offered a platform but I think talking about it having a large influence is incorrectly flipping the cause and effect here.

Sun, 2012-03-11 13:32 — gerry (not verified)

Paul hillyard - excellent post..

Most pop/rock artists are intrinsically right-wing..the medium is 100% individualistic, look-at-me, capitalistic, and if they become successful their naked capitalism becomes even more shameless..

All that doesnt mean that right wing pop artists cant make great music.. far-right artists (at least for a time) like David Bowie in the 70s, Bryan Ferry made some of the best music of all time...so the news that Maureen Tucker, of the (lyrically and musically) radical Velvet Underground is today a Tea Party apparatchik should come as no surprise..

In fact, the NME/Red Wedge stuff proves the reverse! The vast majority of pop artists in the 70s and 80s and ever since were right wing or apolitical - hence the need for the Rock against racism/red wedge stuff...

Mon, 2012-03-12 14:15 — Freeman2

What a load of twaddle.

Sun, 2012-03-11 14:47 — Trojan Horace

There's absolutely no shortage of them... accepting MBEs OBEs hunting shooting private clubbing... they just tend to lie low... as do republicans in Hollywood. We don't have a UK Springsteen... famous - successful - talented and out and proud of the left - check out the fury in the lyrics of his new CD - the UK celebs are in general a sad disgrace to issues of social justice

Sun, 2012-03-11 15:47 — Paul Hillyard (not verified)

Trojan - Bruce Springsteen is not left wing in any way that I recognise.

He comes from a long line of American rebels who drive cars, sing about their girls, how bad the city is etc, but then advocate escaping and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It's gangster rap for the white boys.
I love the music but the message is pure libertarian capitalist.

Sun, 2012-03-11 16:51 — mike cobley (not verified)

sorry, but Springsteen is not a libertarian. See interview done by Jon Stewart in latest Rolling Stone...

Mon, 2012-03-12 17:15 — frances smith (not verified)

no this is easy, i have read the telegraph, its because right wingers have less imagination.

wasn't there a study done of how the brains of right wingers were different, and the left wingers were more able to respond to conflicting information, while the right wingers were big wusses scared of anyone who looked weird, how could you survive in the music industry if you are scared of people who look weird.

though having said that on the telegraph website..................

Sun, 2012-03-11 18:34 — TG (not verified)

So because you dare to show some individuality and free thinking, you're automatically labelled as a selfish, uber-right wing capitalist with no soul.

What do you want? Blank faced people all dressed in boiler suits singing in monotone voices about collectivisation and how great the next five year plan will be (''We reached the quota of 5 million tanks/and to dear leader we owe our thanks'')?

This stupid viewpoint held by the less intelligent people on the left make the ones with a brain cringe.

@RedBladder

I'm pretty sure there has been lots of right-wing influence on US music. Just look at the modern day country scene and the 'Outlaw' country that preceded it, i.e. Hank Williams III and David Allan Coe; they have some pretty fascistic songs about gays, minorities etc.

Also the gangster offshoot of the rap genre is obsessed with personal wealth and property, and has quite a socially Darwinistic view of the world (i.e. kill your competition).

Mon, 2012-03-12 17:42 — sam (not verified)

Nope, this is the same as the "why are all comedians left wing?" thing. They aren't. They just say they are.

Sun, 2012-03-11 19:07 — Hamish (not verified)

So the NME helped New Labour exploit the musically and artistic-driven youth to vote in an unprecedented right wing Labour government?

Give yourselves a pat on the back.

Sun, 2012-03-11 19:14 — Hamish (not verified)

Also, please recognise that just because someone doesn't announce that they vote Conservative does not make them left wing. And just because someone votes Labour certainly does not make them left wing.

Sun, 2012-03-11 22:53 — vonbakk

I've been reading NME for 15 years and I can assure you they are politically apathetic to anything other than changes to music venue licensing legislation.

Mon, 2012-03-12 20:30 — Tesco Shelf Stacker (not verified)

Not sure if his personal political views were so-called 'right-wing' but I once read that Ian Curtis of Joy Division voted for Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHYOXyy1ToI&ob=av2e

Tue, 2012-03-13 17:52 — thinkov

commodification is right wing it doesn't mean that the commodified are

Mon, 2012-03-12 05:15 — jess (not verified)

Alex James (Blur bassist, cheese connoissuer) is proudly aligning himself with the conservatives.

@john reid, I thought Jarvis was misquoted by NME for that GQ interview where he supposedly said he supported the Tories. You know NME loves to pick choice words then publish them as headlines. Poor guy had to explain himself afterwards to clear the matter. His mum is a conservative though.

Sun, 2012-03-11 10:12 — John P Reid (not verified)

Morrisey of course, started to come out with right wing comments,as Did jarvis Cocker, regarding the 50p tax rate and that at least the Tories would sort out the economy,the NME didn't liek them afterwards, Since Led zeppelin's day's Not so many people have cared what the Music press thought, I recall a British bonjovi style band called Thunder saying 'If it wasn't for the fact that the NME was so cynical it probably caused people to vote Tory, I'd be worried oterh wise what Labour (of the late 80's) stood for if the NME supported them,

It's intereesting that Some bands Have both tory and Labour supporting members
the Stone Bill wyman,Jagger Tories, Ron wood laobur.

same As the Who, Townsend Labour, Their 1978-1983 Drummer Kenny jones tory.

Spice girls, Mel C labour Geri Haliwell tory.

Genisis Gabriel Labour, Collins tory,
Spandau Gary Kemo labour, Hadley tory.

For the record,there has been Bryan ferry, joan armaatrading, TRoger waters, Joe Perry and Ian Hunter all right wing, and recently Mo tucker from the Velvet Underground backing the Tea Party!!!

the NME had Kinnock on the cover from red Wedge, I recall Ben Elton who attended red wedge said it did more harm than good. Did Blair ever invite anyone from red wedge to downing street for drinks 10 years later!