The Klosterman Files : Fargo Rock City
I don’t think there’s anyone left on Earth who still sincerely loves glam metal. Even fans of Steel Panther, arguably the last Mohicans of glam, love them ironically because their own existence is ironic. These guys wouldn’t get the time of day from labels (or fans) if they didn’t wear leopard pants and poofed up hair. Steel Panther is so egregiously post-modern that it was probably a gimmick to trick drunk girls into ironic sex to begin with, so that they can fulfill their fantasy of being Mötley Crüe from time to time.
I’m unsure if Chuck Klosterman still earnestly loves glam metal today, but he loved it enough to write Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural Nörth Daköta, long after it stopped being cool. In 2020, glam metal is still uncool and well on its way to become a forgotten genre. It is so ancient, the music that was cool when Fargo Rock City was written is now ironically cool. But the writing is still cool and more pertinent than ever. It is the best hope glam metal has of becoming a historical footnote and an oddly efficient reflection of our relationship to cultural constructs at large.
What makes Fargo Rock City such an thoughtful and exciting read is that chapter by chapter, Chuck Klosterman (implicitly) confronts glam metal to one its core elements: sex, drugs, Satan, virtuosity, artificiality, etc. Elements that are not exclusive to rock stars and the reason itself why their music resonate with large audiences. I’ve never really liked any glam bands myself (except for Guns N’ Roses), but they pioneered a relationship to music that was entirely new by eschewing authenticity.
In glam metal, the relationship between musicians and their audience no longer has to be meaningful and visceral. It just had to rock by any means necessary. Lyrics didn’t have to reflect the life of listeners, but create for them an artificial paradigm where they too were rock stars (three to four minutes at a time). Glam was about being somebody else and preferably someone who didn’t have the same shortcomings than your real self. That, you don’t need to like glam metal to understand or appreciate. Wanting temporary respite from your own existence is universal.
The Mötley Crues and Poisons of this world just built a market for it.
Perhaps my favorite chapter in Fargo Rock City explores glam metal’s relationship with fear and drugs and Chuck Klosterman shrewdly chooses pop culture boogeymen Marilyn Manson to make his point. Manson’s music wasn’t glam, but his persona was in every way. In order to appear dangerous, he always picked the themes of his songs quite carefully. Klosterman gives the example of his album Mechanical Animals, where he switched themes from occult to drugs because American fears had secularized in the nineties. He was what parents feared their kids would be.
Of course, he was eventually swallowed the monster he created and replaced by even more secular boogeymen since then (ahem… Kanye West, ahem), but this debate is for another day.
I believe Fargo Rock City is still an important read in 2020 because our relationship to artificiality is sill confused and troublesome. While Vince Neil and Brett Michaels were earnestly artificial, things have become more muddled with social media and particularly Instagram, a platform where you’re supposed to share moments from your real life in the most staged and artificial way possible. It is also a place where we’re supposed to champion “people like us” that inspire us to “live our best life”’, who end up giving an entire generation performance anxiety.
The nature of celebrity has changed since the heyday of glam metal, but not the nature of what they do. That is the one thing they have in common with influencers and your cool friend on Instagram, who gives everybody FOMO. Reading Fargo Rock City puts in perspective what they do and the somber seriousness with which we discuss them. Maybe they don’t deserve to be treated with such fearful reverence. The shallowness of influencers should be mocked and revered in the same way glam metal musicians were, because they are just as constructed.
Before I leave, I went on an angry tirade at the end of the original review because Chuck Klosterman called extreme metal “a subculture with no legs” in Fargo Rock City. I went on a juvenile, chest puffing rant that sounded like: “stick to what you know, bruh”, which is mildly funny in hindsight. I took it very personal that he questioned something I loved but he was only half-wrong. Slayer was filling up arenas twenty years after Mötley Crüe stopped doing so, but there’s nothing about their music that isn’t idiosyncratic. Either you love it for what it is or you don’t get it.
Slayer’s music is only universal to people who already appreciate this type of music (i.e. me)
I highly recommend that you read Fargo Rock City in 2020. It is a book about an almost forgotten musical genre and a problems that is still pervasive in popular culture today: our relationship to image and cultural constructs at large. There are ideas in it that apply to our lives more than ever. It’s even better than what I remembered it to be. It also inspired me to write about my own journey with extreme metal. Would you guys like to hear about the devil’s music?
