Being a pop journalist for 30 years, as I have been, teaches you many things.
That Adele at the height of her multi-million-selling 21 success in 2011 wore “one pound comedy knickers from Primark; that the pompous Jon Bon Jovi in the 1980s was what might be called an “ass”; that only a Brit like Robbie Williams, who the US rejected as a pop star, could say of the planet’s music journalists: “You lot just do what you do ‘cos you’re not strong enough to lift furniture.”
Frankly Americans would never be so rude. British and American pop stars, unquestionably, are two completely different species.
In 1986 I joined Britain’s best-selling pop magazine Smash Hits as a naïve rookie reporter (from the provinces of east coast Scotland) and have studied, ever since, these glorious differences in identical “laboratory” conditions. Smash Hits was profoundly British, its uniquely crafted ways with ego-busting irreverence often lost on our American friends.
LL Cool J, for example, was indeed so cool he couldn’t admit to owning a pet goldfish and when asked, on the phone, to verify this fact, indignantly hung up (a scenario known to the Smash Hits staff as “a click! Brrr…situation”). Being British, we were always asking about booze, wondering if stars had ever been sick in inappropriate places.
Carol Decker, yodelling songbird in 1980s UK group T’Pau, had once been sick, spectacularly, “in my cowboy boots!” Jon Bon Jovi, when asked if he’d suffered the same fate, merely pitied the flame-haired Decker. “She puked in her boots?” he balked, witheringly. “Poor kid. I always make the sink.” Which was the nearest Jon Bon Jovi ever came to a reasonably amusing quip.
@caroldecker Your first appearance in Smash Hits! pic.twitter.com/J8w7C2nAAi
— Darren Rigby-O'Neill (@DazBear1969) March 1, 2016
Both Brits and Americans, naturally, think their way is the only way. The Americans embody gargantuan self-belief, unwavering confidence, positive professionalism and a “can do” attitude (often “truly blessed” by God). The Brits are defined by self-deprecation, permanent doubt, plucky amateurism and a “can you believe I did anything?!” attitude which only seems, to us, polite (while their God, more often to quote the Faithless tune, is “a DJ”).
It goes back as far as the 1960s, the chirpy cheekiness of The Beatles in sharp relief to the equally revolutionary yet somberly earnest Bob Dylan. Only a Brit, in the 70s, could invent the art-prank archness of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, while only Americans could cruise along rock’s lost highway as harmoniously sunbaked Eagles.
By the 80s, as Britain’s Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Frankie Goes To Hollywood defined sexual chaos, speedy drugs and the quickfire quips of sarcasm, Americans ruled the planet with the silent Holy Triumvirate, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. The Americans were, and remain, the best there’s even been in being untouchable superstars who live atop lofty plinths; unreachable, unknowable, permanently in control.
No such thing could ever be said of Oasis and the Britpop movement a prismatic explosion of narcotics, booze and belligerence that was Britain’s reaction to the glum-faced giants of fame-averse American grunge.
Noel Gallagher, famously, mocked the newly deceased Kurt Cobain’s perceived mantra “I hate myself and want to die” with a less than charitable “he’s a sad cunt who couldn’t handle the fame” (while Oasis played a song called Live Forever).
Paul Heaton, 80s Housemartin and 90s leader of The Beautiful South, took me on a pub crawl around Seattle in 1995 dressed in a cartoon grunge outfit of straw wig and rope tied dressing gown who, on discovering no bars were open after 10pm, howled a willfully non-PC “no wonder he fookin’ topped himself!” (Today, both Gallagher and Heaton would be “no platformed” everywhere and forced to attend seminars on mental health…)
Since 2000 pop culture has become increasingly unrecognizable, the internet, reality TV and gossip mags fueling a celebrity showbiz world run on tabloid clickbait headlines, causing an irreversible rupture in the once symbiotic relationship between journalists and stars.
In 2003, the year of Crazy In Love, Beyoncé already defined the 21st century American pop star’s formidably ambitious new goals: global power, absolute control and vast amounts of corporate sponsorship dollars. That year Madonna and Missy Elliot appeared in a Gap ad together while Beyoncé was sponsored by both L’Oreal and Pepsi.
When I interviewed Beyoncé in a New York restaurant I wondered why the world’s biggest entities did these things when they clearly didn’t need the money. “It’s an honor to do a Pepsi commercial,” she told me, bewildered. “It’s historical, Michael Jackson. The L’Oreal pictures are beautiful, I have L’Oreal ads all different places, Japan, France, so I’m able to be exp….y’know, it just makes you… a bigger star.” Her ambitions were no less than to become “a mega superstar”and furthermore “to make history”.
Over in Britain, meanwhile, Amy Winehouse was newly emerging, drug-free at the time, a punk rock maverick spirit who wished to be nobody’s historical role model. “I’m the role model,” she scoffed, “for people who don’t give a fuck, yeah?”
Talking to her in 2007, as Back To Black rose to No.1, she spoke as only a British artist could. “It’s not particularly special to be able to sing,” announced the planet’s greatest new musical force. “I’m good at singing,” she assured, “but I’m also good at sewing, do’youknowhatImean?”
Today, the characteristics of our biggest transatlantic exports remain as polarized as ever, Taylor Swift defining disciplined America, Adele determined to amuse. In 2011, 22-year-old Adele sat in a photo studio in London, a bawdy, sweary, irreverently carefree personality contemplating the upcoming Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton.
She’d be celebrating with friends “in a tiny garden in Brixton” (south London) with Union Flag bunting, a vintage 70s TV “and homemade Coronation Chicken, with my nails done in Union Jack”. She especially loved the unruly Prince Harry. “He cracks me up, I wanna be his best mate,” she chirped, while chain-smoking “fags” (cigarettes).
“You don’t get more British than me!” Adele declared. “William should be marrying me. God, imagine how mortified the country would be? Queenie would hate me, boy. ‘Got any Sambuca darlin’?’ Nahahaha!”
Over in L.A two years later, the 23 year-old Taylor Swift proved a differently impressive character, coolly analytical, contemplating the media’s obsession with her “boy crazy” reputation. “What I’ve learned recently,” she mused, “is if you reach a point in your career where things are going very well, public perception needs a ‘yeah, but’. Like, ‘yeah, but she’s been on a lotta dates apparently’. ‘Yeah, but I hear she’s crazy.’ It has a lot to do with being a woman. I resent that. That there has to be some downside to your personality or lifestyle if you’re a woman and successful.”
That year, 2013, she embodied a generational characteristic which all pop stars share today, outright suspicion of the media, a symptom of the internet, social media and the negative agendas of what we know call Entertainment Journalism. Worse, paranoid PRs almost always police the highest profile encounters.
In 2011 a phone conversation with Britney Spears took place under insanely limited conditions, my questions approved beforehand (only the anodyne let through) while four of Britney’s “people” listened in.
It’s not only, however, The Americans: as far back as 2007, an interview with Britain’s most famous Celebrity Couple, David and Victoria Beckham, was conducted under similarly pointless conditions: pre-approved questions, no divergence allowed, four journalists present together, all of us contributing that year to the 100% positive press campaign that helped secure a $13.7 million deal to launch David Beckham’s individual fragrance line in the States.
“When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.” Bette Midler #Travel #NewYork @ChelsiaMarcius pic.twitter.com/nGWdbSfrch
— Regina Kenney (@Regina_Kenney) February 10, 2016
We’re all working now in advertising. There are, though, mercifully, still fantastically differing personalities to celebrate below the surface. A character like Kanye West, certainly, could only be American, an invincibly confident comedy egomaniac, while his self-deprecating pal Chris Martin could only be British, less prone to the statement “I am the greatest living rock star on the planet” (as Kanye blared at Glastonbury, 2015) than the Coldplay frontman’s meek address to the crowd in Manchester last June:“Thank you for taking all the shit for being into Coldplay”.
Martin’s most memorable quip ever, meanwhile, might be his positively Hugh Grantesque 2003 classic as Coldplay began their global ascent; “I couldn’t be happier if you gave me a biscuit”.
That’s “a cookie”, of course, to you fabulously unfathomable Americans.
Sylvia Patterson’s book I’m Not with the Band was recently published by Sphere and is available on Amazon.