Pop music
Weed spotting
Marcus Berkmann
Arid now on BBC 2, the Glastonbury Festival. Followed at 10.30 by the Glaston- bury Festival. And after midnight, high- lights from today at the Glastonbury Festival . . . ' Well, not exactly, but it was a long haul last weekend for lovers of popu- lar music, even if we did have the advan- tage of watching on TV, comfortable in our homes, sipping warming drinks in front of roaring log fires. Wasn't it wonderful not to be there? Every year I enjoy not going more than the previous year — and already I can't wait not to go next year. Let's face it: Sofa v. Mud makes Holland v. Yugo- slavia look like a close game.
But what wonders we witnessed. David Bowie, ageless (which is to say very old indeed) in some exciting curtaining materi- al, his hair fetchingly waved, his voice pret- ty much destroyed by the years if not by the acoustics. The crazed Kelis, with her even more barking backing singers roaring through some engagingly shambolic hip- hop/soul. Jo Whiley and Jamie Theakston, drivelling for Britain from their bespoke arboretum, cutting to Groove Armada for a full 30 seconds before moving on to something else. And perhaps most extraor- dinary of all, Moby, the American produc- er/performer/dance music guru responsible for the big crossover album of the moment. Play has transcended its dance origins; it's the soundtrack of every ad in the world; it oozes from every salesman's Vauxhall in queues on the M25. I don't know a groovy 40-year-old who hasn't bought it. And now, finally, we saw the man who had created this Meisterwerk. Tiny, completely bald and wearing a shapeless grey T-shirt (you know the type — it was white until someone put a black sweater in as well by mistake), he was possibly the least convincing superstar ever seen on a British stage. And for a dance music guru, he danced like some- one's dad. It was magnificent. And the crowd couldn't have cared less.
It's funny, really, this assumption that pop stars should be good-looking, or have a full head of hair, or even be able to operate a washing-machine. Too many years of watching Top of the Pops in a blind rage have left many of us convinced that all you need to succeed in the music business are a pretty face and a fat homosexual manager who's on 20 per cent of the gross. In the shiny world of daytime Radio One, of course, this may be the case, but pop is a broader church than that, and the full gamut of physical repulsiveness has always been able to find a home there. Men as tiny and bald as Paul Simon have become icons, and not just the type you can fit on your mantelpiece. Huge wobbly fat blokes like Meat Loaf continue to prosper. And nerdy, geeky men are everywhere, nerding and geeking as though biceps hadn't been invented. The Chemical Brothers: fantasti- cally gawky. Jarvis Cocker out of Pulp: kick sand in that man's face. Dance music, with its boffiny reputation, must take some of the blame, and the drugs don't exactly help (the H-plan diet never fails to make its mark). But weedy blokes have always gravi- tated towards pop music, just as men with unnaturally thick necks go for rugby union. `If you ask any rock musician he'll tell you he got into the music business primarily to get laid,' says Pamela des Barres, the leg- endary groupie. For weedy men, short men, fat men, bald men, it's probably the only opportunity they'll ever have. (And if they don't become rock musicians they become rock journalists, ha ha ha.) If anything, the genuinely good-looking rock idol is almost at a disadvantage. Poor little Ronan Keating of Boyzone, who would like to be President of Ireland one day, is taken seriously only by the crazed young girls who have made him a multi- millionaire. Whereas Van Morrison, who now resembles a more than averagely ill- tempered troll, is universally revered. The more disgusting Iggy Pop looks — and he consistently extends the boundaries — the more seriously he is taken. Any other man in his fifties who grew his hair that long would be an object of pity. And that's even before he took his tackle out.
Still, Iggy was pretty weedy in his youth, as was Bowie, who according to Monday's Evening Standard stole the show at Glaston- bury, although that may have just been because they had a good picture of him. Moby won't be the last little baldy to have number one records, or be regularly pho- tographed in the company of girls twice his height. Mr Muscle? Loves the jobs you hate.
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