Zach Musgrave / 28 October 2008
The last great rock ‘n roll man?
There’s this thing called the American Dream. Its most vanilla variety is the desired life progression: Grow up in a comfortable environment, do well in school, go to college, graduate. Then meet the perfect spouse, get married having obtained that solid job, have 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence. And do all this while going to church every Sunday, volunteering at the local United Way and sometimes idly dreaming of what it might be like to do something unusual. Not like that ever happens – it would contradict the American Dream.
Like I said, this is the most generic kind of Dream. Another is the “rock star” Dream: Start playing in a band, pioneer some new sub-genre, press some records, play some shows and live off the backs of throngs of adoring fans. A lot of young kids have this Dream; very few even try to get it. But once in a while, one does.
Sh! The Octopus is an independent rock band from Detroit, and their song “The Last Great Massacre” is easily one of the most honest, forthright tracks I’ve heard in the past year. It’s a narration of the life of one young man trying to be a rock star. He’s an unnamed protagonist, a Joe the Plumber with bigger dreams than 15 minutes of fame during election season, an everyman whose goal is that second Dream I outlined above. And he wants it so badly he’ll give up everything else to get it.
For the sake of reference, I’ll call the unnamed protagonist “Joe”, in honor of that humble tradesman so much in the news of late.
The song starts out talking about his upbringing. Joe’s mother wanted the vanilla Dream, the stable “corporate life” she had, thinking it best for him. Though Daddy drank a lot and a possible brother committed suicide - home life clearly wasn’t that great - Joe got most everything he wanted, including a guitar for Christmas.
If Mom wanted “corporate life” for Joe, the guitar was a really bad idea, because at that moment Joe decided he would be “The last great rock ‘n roll man / In the last great rock ‘n roll band.” And true to his American work ethic and determination, Joe never gave up.
All that childhood emotional scarring come back to haunt Joe, and some years later he throws away his family life. He severs ties with dear old Mom, knowing that even though she set him in position to try for glory, he can never get it with her “pushing” him in another direction. And thanks to disconnecting from what was previously Joe’s only reality, he starts “moving around towns” while entertaining delusions of grandeur – the John Lennon reference confirms this. Joe’s getting out of touch, but the downward spiral hasn’t started yet.
Whether or not Joe’s friends and bandmates agreed with his self-declared brilliance, they could probably tell around this time that something wasn’t quite right in his head. Convinced he “was gonna start a revolution”, Joe becomes the Prima Donna rock star of his own mind. Whether or not anyone was listening didn’t matter, it was “his way” or the highway. Joe probably becomes harder to work with at this point, convinced of his own unending brilliance since he “[talks] to God about shit”. But everyone around him thinks he’s talking to himself.
The song says Joe tries to “start a revolution” through his band, but he doesn’t allow anyone else creative control. And throughout his struggles to gain recognition the world looked on, “[wanting] to know what this kid was really about”. His artist’s disorder is becoming clear: the band’s shows are getting rowdier, filled with violence and anger. And the critics around him seal his fate – “They expected either a miracle or the devil to show his face” – and true to form Joe delivers. The spirals are getting tighter.
As Joe loses hold of reality and withdraws further into himself a predictable string of events are triggered - the band disbands, the fans move on, but Joe stays convinced he’s a superstar. He tries to continue, but since he can’t work well with others he “fades away,” just as he once wished others would do from him. Joe’s career ends, and it seems the only one who thought he was “the last great rock ‘n roll man” was his own ego.
But posterity is a funny thing. Vincent Van Gogh had no success as an artist while he was alive, but now his work is loved the world over. He’s famous, one of the “last greats”. And funnily enough, the same thing happens to Joe. The last verse reveals his career’s end didn’t ruin his “legend” – his work becomes more well known and a symbolic “kid walking through a record store” finds Joe’s album. The kid loves it and shows it to his friend, saying Joe was “The last great rock ‘n roll man / In the last great rock ‘n roll band.” With that, Joe’s validated. Wherever he is, he can rest easy.
In one way Joe never achieved his dream of stardom, with adoring fans and his picture on Rolling Stone as a “great rock ‘n roll man”. But in another way he did, over and over again – every kid who buys his record, from its release on to the next hundred years – can hear his greatness. And in that sense, Joe left an impression on modern culture and on rock ‘n roll – he got his wish even if he never knew it. By destroying himself Joe built something great. Just like Van Gogh cut off his ear Joe cut off normalcy in pursuit of doing his own thing “his way”. That individualism, perseverance and hardheadedness is the very heart of non-stereotypical America, and in that way Joe’s story is a better representation of the American Dream then any house with a white picket fence: Joe the Musician is the Last Great Rock ‘n Roll Man. He did something crazy and fulfilled the Dream.
