REAL MEN, REAL GENTS, RIPPED JEANS

REAL MEN, REAL GENTS, RIPPED JEANS

John Mendelssohn

ELEGANZA

Behold how one may now achieve the trendiest new look in rock by doing that for which, in childhood, his or her mother used to wail, “Oy! Oy! How am I to patch these, you careless little monster, you source of limitless aggravation and migraine headaches? But how the neighbors would scorn us if we allowed you to go out with your ptupniks showing in such a way! Oy! Oy!”

As 1973 was the year of lurex and platform shoes, 1983 the year of the insane asylum haircut, and 1986 that of the bolo tie, 1987 is fast shaping up as the year of the jeans with ripped knees.

First former Sex Pistol Steve Jones was depicted in same in a much-reprinted portrait of him with collaborator Iggy Pop, an early sporter of the look. More important, Jon Bongiovi was then seen wearing them in his “Livin’ On A Prayer” video, or in his anti-drugs spot. Finally, a salesman in Nana, an excruciatingly hip Santa Monica boutique whose staff unmistakably takes hours putting its look together before they allow the public to glimpse them, reported for work one Saturday morning in March with his knees ripped out.

By the time this reaches impatient newsstands, designer renditions of such jeans are sure to be on sale in posher department stores for $79.95 the pair.

All but the eldest reader is too young to remember this, but in the so-called Summer of Love, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were imprisoned for possession of drugs. It has since been revealed in each of the 7,521 Stones’ biographies published since 1982, though, that the amphetamines for which Jagger took the rap weren’t even his, but then-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull’s.

Similarly, all but the eldest reader is too young to remember that, a few months before the Stones’ brief imprisonment, hip nightspots across the land used Lovin’ Spoonful album covers as doormats—with the albums still inside—as a gesture of outrage at two members of the group having finked on their pot dealer.

Columnists old enough to be most readers’ dads thought of these things recently when Billy Idol and his girlfriend were busted for possession of crack on the sidewalks of New York. According to newspaper accounts, wild Bill eagerly assured the arresting officers, “It’s hers.” Such a gent!

In a more sensible time, continued ownership of a Billy Idol album would be viewed as an act of the most grievous moral turpitude. Of course, in the glorious time in which Mick Did The Right Thing and Steve Boone and Zally Yanovsky dared not show their faces where the righteous resided, the loathsome poseur’s Elvis Reincarnate In Heat schtick would have been hooted out of rock ’n’ roll in less time than it took Bill to get his lace-up leather trousers and sneer on for his dreadful Grammy performance.

We now salute the Real Men of Manowar, a heavy metal group from New York that this column hasn’t had the great pleasure of hearing, but the transcribed utterances of whose Joey De Maio in the April METAL really opened this column’s eyes to the True Nature of heavy metal.

Get a load of the ultramasculine De Maio’s explication of what he and his similarly muscular, haiiy-chested, (presumably) raw-meat-gnawing pals’ music is and ain’t: “When we did the first album... people said to me, ‘It’s not heavy metal because it’s not fast.’ And I used to think, ‘My God, Black Sabbath started as a heavy metal band... and they never played fast.’ If you take a dictionary and look up the word heavy, you’ll find out that it doesn’t mean fast. The word heavy denotes weight, which does not denote speed because something heavy cannot move fast.”

“When it comes to Eric,” he says of his group’s doubtlessly ultratalented lead singer, “no one, but no one can compete with him and his voice. And Ross has the biggest guitar rig and I have the biggest bass rig in the world.” Notice how, if you weren’t listening attentively, you could swear that jovial Joe wasn’t talking about amplification, but about procreative organs!

“Like an elite military corps, we are set to strike hard without warning,” he warms. As best as I can determine, this doesn’t mean that the group prefers to play unnannounced, to have some less manly (but scheduled) act’s equipment swept from the stage and their own great big rigs erected in its place. But I could be mistaken. "We demolish, we kill, and we leave.” The guy’s testicles must be the size of cantaloupes! "Remember, we always survive and we always win.”

“I could never understand these bands who I’ve seen smiling on stage,” Joey confides. “What the hell are they smiling about? What the hell are they so happy about? When you’re on stage playing, you shouldn’t be smiling. You should concentrate on your playing and delivering power to the crowd in a real, convicted style. I’ve yet to see any serious musician—metal or otherwise—smile when they’re playing.”

What a fun guy, huh?. My own guess is that what other, probably much less masculine, groups are smiling about is that a great many more people enjoy their music than enjoy Manowar’s. But, again, I could be mistaken.

Somewhere on the opposite end of the continent, this column can just picture Sammy Hagar gnashing his teeth and pouting at the realization that he’s been supplanted as American rock ’n’ roll’s reigning horse’s ass.