A Rock Star Detection Kit

Burnt espresso and smouldering impatience swirl through the restless queue; the shuffle of fidgety feet, the throb of blood hammering past yesterday’s hangover into this week’s anxieties. It’s a regular Monday morning in May and the clocks are on strike. Then, imperceptibly at first, time stirs, and the air tightens. A ripple runs through the crowd—a disturbance that no one acknowledges outright, yet everyone feels. It’s not Jesus Christ… It’s him.

Space and time bend to his presence. Heads turn at first, subtly, as if drawn by some unseen force. The queue loses its integrity—not in a chaotic rush, but in the slow unravelling of sanity. He is used to this reaction, of course. The unspoken recognition, the gravity of his presence. It follows him wherever he goes. He neither courts nor resists it. Yet, something in his posture suggests a quiet discomfort—an awareness of his own pull, his own inevitability.

Two autographs and twenty selfies later he reaches the counter, picks up the usual order, and walks out. Order is restored. Time begins to tick again. That is how one recognizes a rock star. Forgive me: a Rock Star. Not a rock-n-roll star, not a pop-idol, not a virtuoso or a diva, but a properly capitalised Rock Star. I shan’t give the gentleman’s name, and it isn’t important. Steven Tyler, David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, Freddie Mercury, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, the singer formerly known as ’the artist formerly known as Prince’… any of these names would fit the scene. Genre doesn’t matter. If a musical genre is a galaxy, the singularity at its centre is a Rock Star. Their gravity keeps other musicians in orbit, keeps the genre cohesive, and defines the genre itself. And, of course, there are as many galaxies as there are kinds of music…

Then, somewhere along the way, something changed.

The music industry attempted to deconstruct the Rock Star. Charisma, stage presence, musical ability, rebellion, style, sex-appeal—each was isolated, analysed, and repackaged; they sought to mass-produce what can only be singular; they broke down musicians into marketable archetypes: the bad boy, the sensitive one, the heartthrob, the goofy charmer. Likewise, girl bands had a cheerleader, a girl next door, a glamour girl, a tomboy… The Rock Star was sought to be replaced by multiple carefully calibrated personas. Boys and girls were assembled (often through televised contests), choreographed, and trotted out like marionettes to perform songs composed and written by anonymous musicians. The 1990s were the Dark Ages of this phenomenon, with New Kids on the Block paving the way for the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Take That, Boyzone, and Westlife; girl groups followed suit with TLC, Destiny’s Child, the Spice Girls, All Saints. These groups weren’t musicians; they were brands, designed for mass consumption.

There exists a sacred relationship between Rock Stars and teenagers. A Rock Star is often a teenager’s first philosopher, their first encounter with ideas that challenge authority, question convention, and push boundaries. Rock Stars can distil complex ideas into lyrics, presence, and attitude, making philosophy feel lived rather than studied. A teenager might first encounter existentialism not in a textbook, but in Kurt Cobain; understand their despair in Chestere Bennington; they might perceive the line between control and chaos because Hendrix made it electric; they learn satire from Zappa, and poetry from Dylan.

Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon, eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon, there is no sense in trying

Not so with boy-bands and the girl-groups (they don’t call them bands for some reason–because they don’t play any instruments? Neither do the boys…) Assembly-line stardom is like flat-pack furniture: appealing, low-maintenance, but ultimately disposable, even designed to be replaced with next year’s model. It may have talent, but it lacks that something….

What is this “something”? How does one identify a Rock Star amongst the crowd of pretenders? One utilises the Outsider’s Rock Star Detection Kit!

1. First and foremost: A Rock Star can do one or both of the following: sing live without a backing track; play a musical instrument. Songwriters and dancers cannot be Rock Stars: vocal range and musical ability matter, unless you’re Bob Dylan…(See #5)

2. A Rock Star does not lip-sync. If they lose their voice, they scream, or breathe seductively into the microphone; if they forget the lyrics, they scream, or create new ones on the spot; if they’re out of breath, they try to scream, and then breathe seductively into the microphone… Lip-syncing during a live performance has nothing to do with singing ability. Indeed, most rock stars aren’t virtuoso singers like Freddie Mercury, or genius musicians like Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa, or Jimi Hendrix. Notwithstanding musical ability, all Rock Stars sound fantastic then they sing live, and they do not lip-sync. If they do, they’re not Rock Stars. (Also see #4) (Ed’s note: Not even Beyoncé?)

3. A Rock Star may howl about love, scream about love or shriek about the existential black hole of a break-up —but they never, ever reduce love to three mushy syllables: “I love you”, “I miss you”, and variations thereof. This is a simple mush-test: Draw a pentagram on the floor with withered rose petals and play the song. If Dido is summoned into the pentagram, vomiting violently, the music has failed the test. I nearly killed Dido while testing the entire discography of Boyz to Men. How, then, does a Rock Star convey the knee-trembling, heart-thumping, bone-shuddering ecstasy of love in three syllables? This is how it’s done according to Donna Summer! Here’s a cover of the same song, sung live, at 100dB, by the effervescent Annette Strean. Led Zep inserted an orgasm into Whole lotta love… Not to my taste, but that leads to the next rule…

4. A Rock Star is never recognized by appearance—only by effect. A Rock Star may have scars, crooked teeth, missing limbs (or fingers or eyesight, or plums, though I have no links to offer that confirm this particular attribute), dreadlocks, no hair, or all of the above. They are not boy-men or girly-girls, by which I mean a Rock Star does not have pimples, zits, acne, or spots. A Rock Star does not wear make-up unless she’s a woman–in which case make-up and facial hair are optional. However, a Rock Star may appear on stage with white face paint, black lipstick, radioactive nail polish, and ultraviolet highlights on blood-red dreadlocks anointed with axle grease and cheese. Also, a Rock Star does not age. Time acknowledges them but does not govern them.

5. The Songwriter Rock Star is a rare creature. They wander a beautiful, silent galaxy powered almost entirely by the immense gravity of Bob Dylan’s poetry. These Rock Stars can sing–most do so quite well–but their vocal ability doesn’t matter, because their work can be sung by the mute and heard by the deaf; all the music in this galaxy can by created using four first-position chords and a pair of wooden spoons, but musical talent doesn’t matter either because their music exists without sound. Paul Simon, Robert Hunter, and Leonard Cohen roam this galaxy; as do hip-hop Rock Stars whose names I don’t know. (Ed’s note: Tupac?) If reading their work creates music in your head, they’re a Rock Star.

6. A Rock Star does not perform to choreography. However, a Rock Star can make playing air guitar, dancing in place, dancing with the microphone stand, dancing with mom, dancing like a short-circuited robot, or just walking down a street look cool, or hot, or simultaneously both–no other temperature-related adjectives are applicable. Choreography is for dancers.

7. A Rock Star doesn’t merely appeal to people—they imprint upon them. Rock Star’s don’t need to persuade you to listen to them, require you to “like and subscribe”, or wear a t-shirt with their face on it… They don’t have to… A Rock Star may ride out into a storm, walk out into the sunset, fly away, overdose on powdered Amazonian plants, take the highway to hell, the stairway to heaven, knock on heaven’s door, or go supernova, but their music remains alive in your soul.

The moment of recognition is never forgotten. When that moment arrives—unexpected, unprompted, whether it’s through the lyric, music, or a single note held just long enough—you realise that their music is the sound-track to your life. They were always there inside you, and always will be.

Editor’s notes:

1. Apologies to those who read yesterday’s draft. Most of the links were missing. This version has them all. Setting up the links to open in a new tab was possible but Meursault insisted that you, the reader, would enjoy the music more than this article. I agree. If you got this far without clicking away to YouTube, or returned here to finish reading, thank you!

2. Pica wanted to add this, but Meursault wouldn’t allow it into the copy: There is one exception to these rules–Michael Jackson. Do let us know if you can think of any others.

3. I’d like to add another exception to Meursault’s list that allows the Beatles (not that they need our permission) to qualify as Rock Stars: A Rock Star is allowed to sing or write one vomit-inducing love-lyric such as “I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah” in his or her career. (Meursault replies: The Beatles? “I wanna hold your hand”, “Please, please me”, “PS: I love you. You, you you”, “Love, Love me do.” Have we run out of vomit yet, or should we listen to Yoko Ono for a while? George Harrison? Yes. He’s a Rock Star. Or a Rock Sitar!)

4. Hip-hop wasn’t, and isn’t in Meursault’s collection of cassettes, CDs, and mp3 files. I suppose his point about teenagers being imprinted by Rock Stars is true.

5. One pair of headphones was harmed during the writing of this article.

6. The photograph by Dispatch photographer Min Kyung-bin is from Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

7. The photograph of Annette Strean is a screen capture from Youtube.

8. The photograph of Jimi Hendrix is a public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.