MUSICIANS can’t be content with writing tunes and feel the need to pretend they’re hard. Here are some of the least convincing:
Mötley Crüe
Every band photo was supposedly dripping with menace but they just looked like drag queens impersonating popular busty horror host Elvira. Their biker look for Girls, Girls, Girls was equally camp, and they were so full of smack and Jack Daniels they’d have lost a fight before they knew one was taking place.
Elton John, specifically Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
In which parallel universe pub did Elton go scrapping in his star-shaped glasses and flared silver jumpsuit? The Tantrum and Tiara? Okay, the lyrics were by Bernie Taupin, but as essentially a poet he seems equally unlikely to be wielding a flick knife.
Oasis
There were scuffles between the Gallaghers, but their family wasn’t troubled enough for either to be psychopathic enough to finish the job. Liam did hit Noel over the head with a tambourine once, but it’s not a weapon favoured by elite troops or gangland enforcers.
Eminem
Despite his songs being extremely violent, Eminem is no more hard than the bloke who played Freddie Krueger. In real life, Mr Mathers is probably of average hardness at best and unlikely to slowly skin you alive with a hedge trimmer, or whatever his latest baroque rap fantasy is.
Status Quo, specifically In the Army Now
A weird account of combat clearly written by non-combatants: ‘Hand grenades flying over your head, missiles flying over your head, if you want to survive get out of bed’. So clunky and unrealistic it may as well contain the line ‘If atom bombs hit you won’t be fine, try to make sure you don’t tread on a landmine’.
Michael Jackson
Leaving aside his actual sickening crimes, Jackson claimed to be both Bad – really, really bad – and a Smooth Criminal in a confusing ditty about a murdered woman. Both prove showbiz kids pretending to be tough is laughable. The dancing zombie was more frightening, and that was bollocks.
