The British Pop Dandy

Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture

Stan Hawkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351545853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

Who are pop dandies? Why are stars like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Pete Doherty and Robbie Williams so dandified? Taking up a wide range of British pop stars, Hawkins seeks to find out why so many have cast themselves in roles that often take style to absurd extremes. In this study, male pop artists are mapped against a cultural and historical background through a genealogy of personalities, such as Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, Andy Warhol, No Coward, Derek Jarmen, David Beckham and countless others. A critical analysis of issues and approaches to musical performance through masculinity becomes the focal point of this fascinating study. Ranging from the sixties to beyond the twentieth century, The British Pop Dandy considers the construction of the male pop icon through the spectacle of videos, live concerts and films. Why do we derive pleasure from the performing body, and how is entertainment linked to categories of gender and sexuality? The author insists that pop performances can be understood through human characteristics that relate to the particulars of dandyism, camp and glamour, and this he theorizes through the work of Charles Baudelaire. One of the political objectives of the dandy is to liberate himself through a denial of the structures that assume fixed identity. Not least, it is acts of queering in pop music that characterize entire generations of male artists in the UK. Setting out to discover what distinguishes the British pop dandy, Hawkins considers the role of music and performance in the articulation of hyperbolic display. It is argued that the recorded voice is a construction that idealizes self-representation, and absorbs the listener's attention. Particularly, camp address in singing practice is taken up in conjunction with a discussion of intimacy, which forms part of the strategy of the performer. In a range of songs and videos selected for music analysis, Hawkins points to the uniqueness of the voice as it expresses a transgressive quali

Chapter 1

Oh So Dandy! The Force of Peculiarity

Dandyism is a sunset; like the declining daystar, it is glorious, without heat and full of melancholy.

Charles Baudelaire¹

‘Dandyism is almost as difficult a thing to describe as it is to define’, proclaimed Jules-Amédée Barbey D’Aurevilly at the end of the nineteenth century.² ‘Those who see things only from a narrow point of view have imagined it to be especially the art of dress, a bold and felicitous dictatorship in the matter of clothes and exterior elegance. That it most certainly is, but much more besides’ (D’Aurevilly 1988, p. 31). Intrigued by George Brummell, D’Aurevilly’s fascination was not only for the person, but also for British society, of which the force of its originality defined for him a peculiarity. Only imagine how he would have viewed the cultural and social landscape one century later, or what he might have made of the unbridled eccentricity and frivolity of a small army of British rock and pop artists who took the world by storm. We shall see.

The dandy is a bewildering construction: a creature of alluring elegance, vanity and irony, who plays around with conventions to his own end. At the same time he is someone whose transient tastes never shirk from excess, protest or rebellion. Every age has possessed its own brand of dandies, and general characteristics distinguish one period from the other. From mannerisms to ways of posing and performing, the dandy revels in artifice simply for style’s sake as a mischievous play with masks of calculated elegance. All the same, dandifying one’s act is linked to self-thinking, sensibility and narcissism that exudes a put-on sense of social elevation. Now, despite their varying degrees of popularity, all the great dandies have been outsiders; they have been intellectual figures, artists and disaffected young men, eager to make themselves publicly visible through a conceit that is deemed their birthright. Driven by a desire to draw on a personal style, the dandy unabashedly states who he is and what he wants without giving a damn for what anyone cares.

I want to suggest that British pop dandies are the new arrivals and products of a post-industrialized society, following closely in the footsteps of Beau Brummell, Count D’Orsay, Lord Byron, Edward VIII, Noël Coward, Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, Cecil Beaton, and many others. Adopting opulent roles, they have taken style to absurd extremes with blasé sensibility and formidable panache. In the course of this chapter I will set out to trace some of the trends that have affected these pop artists, by considering how behaviour patterns are linked to performance always in impassioned ways. Inevitably, fathoming out pop subjectivities directs us to the principles and processes of musical performance and its function as entertainment, where individual agency is mapped against the forces that drive the music industry. Underlying this premise are questions of nationality and belongingness that define one’s social class. Let us say that the peculiarity of the pop persona is governed by rules of etiquette that are mediated by specific cultural practices. This is of sociomusicological relevance.

In the period following the Second World War, rock and roll spawned a host of new trends on both sides of the Atlantic. Perry Meisel, author of The Cowboy and the Dandy, traces the social and historic developments through the ‘long historical relation between Britain and its former American colonies’ (Meisel 1999, p. 116). He is in little doubt that the rock and roll of the British Invasion (1964 to 1966) privileged American styles as ‘original and a once-original British culture as copy’, where the affinity between British rock and American rhythm and blues was significant. Meisel also draws the reader’s attention to Jimi Hendrix, a black American from Seattle, and later an adopted British dandy, whose success in Britain was secured ‘when an American original shares in the invention of the heavy electric guitar’ (ibid., p. 118). Hendrix’s guitar playing was an ‘English version’ of Chuck Berry’s, albeit ‘from a safe and steady distance’, to the extent that the marriage between look and sound would be subliminal for its time. Playing ‘Purple Haze’ in public for the first time, Hendrix had on a jacket of polychrome blue-green-red-striped wool twill, finished off by gold, glittering buttons. His spectacle encapsulated the differences and oppositions that configured the ‘cowboy and dandy, black and white, English and American, electric and voice’ (ibid., p. 118).³

Meisel’s reading of Hendrix is interesting on a number of counts and is grounded in the ‘presumable inevitability’ of the canon, ‘a discursive necessity’ (ibid., p. 129), which not only perpetuates traditions, but also myths. ‘Like the novel in the nineteenth century’, Meisel insists, ‘rock and roll has become a protocol of life in the late twentieth, both as pop myth and as a kind of newly canonical music taken for granted as world culture’s dominant one’ (ibid., p. 132). So, if the pop myth gave rise to all sorts of pop dandies in the latter half of the twentieth century, then it was based upon the mediation of a new set of politics that crystallized into a historical moment in time.

In popular music ‘happenings’ speak volumes about the social processes that organize performance around values and tastes linked to musical preference. Further, the musical event is a blend of cultural and social signifiers that rouse intended responses. In this sense, the peculiarity of human behaviour exhibited through the popular song directs one’s attention to a range of subject positions. Like Meisel, I am keen to classify the pop dandy as a person constructed by diverse representations and interests, although my aim is not one of devising a typology of texts or a chronology of events. Rather, I am more interested in the stylistic inflections and indicators that categorize the pop figure. To this end, my focus falls on the mechanics of aestheticization within a narrative context, where visual and sonic mannerisms are a key element. Pop dandies, after all, are constructions of a visual music culture, where repeated viewings of them not only form a spectacle of entertainment, but also a sense of familiarity that perpetuates their myth.

Down the ages dandyism has been assigned characteristics that display the performativity of individuals. In itself a fascinating phenomenon, British popular music is distinguishable through attitude, imagination and style as much as language, the particularity of which draws on a long line of writers, musicians, composers and poets. Extending the aesthete of dandyism into pop culture, musical events have steadily led to a faddishness that signifies glamour and depth simultaneously. Moreover, pop’s preoccupation with difference through genderplay (androgyny, transvestism, drag, queering) has over time radicalized male behaviour, and, in the context of this study, it is not just a coincidence that the subject is white and supposedly heterosexual.⁴

Consider Bowie’s flirt with a range of unconventional sexual codes in the 1970s, which paved the way forward for an entire movement still in rage over the indictment of Oscar Wilde in Victoria’s England. As one of the first pop performers to flaunt the constructedness of his celebrity status, Bowie, at the beginning of his career, challenged gender norms to the point that he turned ‘barrow boys into screaming queens’, setting up a ‘sociological template’ that reached its ‘apotheosis with wedge haircuts and eyeshadow for a generation of teenage boys’ (Bracewell 1998, p. 194). Resurrecting androgyny and transvestism through intellectual stylishness, Bowie not only rejected heteronormative constraints, but also heaped scorn on the machismo that typified the rock music of the day. Following in Wilde’s footsteps, he ridiculed gender norms by rejecting the stultifying image of masculinity through an adventurous form of representation that set out to shock and amuse. London of the swinging Sixties, with all its happenings, was Bowie’s playground. His expression was a revolt against conventions. Tapping into a Warholian world, where displays of transgression were conjoined to the atomic age of astronauts and aliens from other planets, his theatricality provided a stimulus for the punk rock aesthetic that followed. Effectively, Bowie slipped into the role of dandy to create an ‘outsider figure for the modern age, the queer messiah from space’ (Bracewell 1998, p. 194), which gave rise to an entire cult of imitators who became committed followers. Playing out narcissism and alienation from everyday life to extremes, Bowie’s many impersonators channelled the glamour of pop representation (in the form of henna hair dye, dark eyeshadow, lip gloss and satin-sequin catsuits) onto the high streets of Britain. Most of all, the celebration of androgyny would call into question patriarchy and conservative attitudes.

Collisions of styles in the 1960s and 1970s gelled into some extraordinary performances. Take the band Roxy Music, a counterpart to Bowie, who turned nostalgic romance into a central reference point. Styled on the 1930s and 1940s inter-World War period, their performances marketed the glamour of dandyism. It was as if everything that Roxy Music stood for was contra the serious-mindedness of American rock, as they altered the pop scene into a domain of soft velvet and swooning boys and girls intent on romance and fancy dress. Like Bowie, Ferry’s art education had a strong bearing on his music, where the fad for identifying art in everyday life became a new concept for its time (Frith and Horne 1987). Also inspired by Warhol, Ferry took on the task of packaging his glamour into music and glossy photo shots that redefined Romantic notions of creativity. Together with sound guru Brian Eno, Ferry aided the Roxy Music project in breaking away from traditional rock. Crafting a new stylistic direction, with their roots in the art-school tradition, Ferry, as with Bowie, placed as much emphasis on look and mannerism as on musical expression. As David Buckley puts it: ‘Both Bowie and Ferry saw stage performances as drama and milked theatricality for all it was worth’ (Buckley 2000, p. 143). Unlike Bowie, however, Roxy Music did not consider themselves part of the glam-rock movement on any count. Rather, their aim was to celebrate the ordinary and mundane through a fascination for objects of mass production. Essentially, this was pre-Warholian. Such tendencies can be traced back to the early 1950s when a small group of British intellectuals, the Independent Group, opened a shop at the ICA in Dover Street, London. Their enthralment with paraphernalia, in the form of billboards, pinups and posters, turned them into subcultural objects that confronted notions of ‘good taste’, while at the same time upholding the American Dream. Roxy Music’s theatrical ability to turn pop culture into art, and vice versa, led to scorn and condemnation, for, as Buckley explains, they were not convincing enough as ‘proper rockers’, for their music and disposition was ‘too arty and therefore fake’ (ibid., p. 145). Further, Brian Eno’s androgyny made Roxy the ‘ultimate in heterosexual gender-bending’ (ibid., p. 146), whose constructedness was for many too contrived. Notwithstanding such scepticism, Roxy Music’s third album, Stranded, must have appealed to a wide audience as it reached number one in the UK charts in 1973, further riling those who cringed at the glamour and artifice in popular music.

Seen in a historical light, what directly preceded the explosion of punk ‘turned the fans of David Bowie and Roxy Music into the stars of post-punk’ (ibid., p. 202). Meanwhile, Bowie, in a stroke of genius, would shift his identity once again, this time in reference to Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth. Just in time for the punk movement and the wave of robo-groups who suddenly swept through pop music, he reconfigured himself. The year was 1976 when punk destabilized pop masculinities by repudiating heavy rock and reviving early rock ’n’ roll styles.⁵

Two years later, The Great British Music Festival at Wembley marked the Mod revival with The Jam, who made their appearance through a revival style that was underpinned by the sound of 1960s Mod bands. Their lead singer, Paul Weller, who would be affectionately referred to as the Modfather by the media in the 1990s, seemed the epitome of the dandy in look, attitude and sound. Weller’s most dandified moments are captured during the early part of his career with The Jam, a period when Mod revivalists signalled a nostalgic return to 1960s suits, and clothing items such as Fred Perry tennis shirts, fishtail parkas and jeans. Musically, The Jam’s origins were in the 1960s Mod and beat bands, The Who, The Kinks, the Beatles and the Small Faces, with a curious blend of 1970s New Wave, punk rock and pub rock styles. The Mod revival also aroused interest in R&B and soul music, traceable in bands such as The Chords, The Merton Parkas, The Lambrettas, The Jolt, 007, The Mods, The Scene, Purple Hearts and Secret Affair.⁶ Unashamedly nostalgic, these bands would articulate a British sensibility to a point of parody in a bid to emphasize their working-class roots, often turning to symbols of nationality, such as the RAF roundel and the Union Jack.

Happenings in Britain during the 1980s were also matched by a schizophrenic response to Thatcherism, with a move towards style culture (Hawkins 2002). In fact, the gendered ambiguity of the New Romantics and the Mod revival provided a critique of Thatcher’s vision of Britain, as well as pandering to elitism and materialistic gain. A rush for new forms of pop expression were headed by the New Romantics – Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Japan, Visage, Ultravox, Duran Duran and Human League. To be sure, MTV’s dawn in 1981 saw a febrile production of pop videos by this new generation of pop celebrities who turned to an ironic sensibility that was distinctly British. Once again, London was the epicentre of design, fashion and video culture, as young men and women reinvented notions of Englishness in a context that was multicultural and media-fixated. Bracewell insists that the New Romantics ‘took the machine aesthetic as its foundation, celebrating the triumph of cosmetics and computers over convictions’ (Bracewell 1998, p. 212). And, with the dandies of the MTV era, skilfully commodified concepts and styles would amalgamate 1960s and 1970s popular styles into something new. The social, political and cultural implications of this would be far-reaching as we will see later on, but for the meantime I want to rewind to perhaps the most legendary British dandy of all time, Brummell, and a Frenchman, D’Aurevilly, who ‘could not get him out of his head’.

Britain, Brummell and Barbey

Prime exhibit A: George Bryan Brummell, born in London, 7 June 1778. Ever since his rise and fall, this arbiter of Regency fashion has been a great source of fascination for the French as much as the British. The younger Barbey D’Aurevilly (from now on Barbey), born in 1808, would turn his notes on the Englishman’s life into a study of attitude and lifestyle.⁷ Entitled Du Dandysme et de Georges Brummell (1845), Barbey’s book superbly captured the charismatic George Bryan Brummell (from now on Beau Brummell), as everything the dandy should be. Much emphasis would be placed on Beau Brummell’s moral revolt against the ideas and conventions of the day, and his self-elevation in relation to his world.⁸

It was while studying in the Normandy town of Caen in the 1830s that Barbey first caught sight of Beau Brummell, where the sheer spectacle of him was enough to prompt Barbey to write a most compelling documentation of the age of the dandy. This was a time when social advance in the preoccupation with style and elegance and colourful affectation gave rise to new attitudes and trends among men. Impertinent and sartorial in its elegance, the Regency period dawned in England, a country where mundane conventions had prevailed, and where an acute sensitivity for any nuance, variation, deviation and difference in mannerism would be immediately detected.

Perhaps most revealing in Barbey’s treatise on dandyism is his genuine curiosity in the nationality of his subject. Although it must be said France has had more than its fair share of dandies. Sarah Niblock asserts: ‘Dandyism arose in France and later in England as a protest against the rule of kings over fashion, just as democracy rose against the rule of kings in politics’ (Niblock 2005, p. 309). In France, where there has never been a lack of fashion and elegance, the dandy figure in Britain might have seemed something of an anachronism. Well, at least on first glance. With Beau Brummell, though, things would be different. An obsession with detail distinguished him from anything seen before. A product of the cold, Northern, pale race, his identity was manifested in a stifling, puritanical devotion to style. Indeed, the emergence of such an eccentric figure in a British landscape, as Barbey noted, could only highlight the constraints placed upon individuals in a country over-regulated by laws and rules. Yet, Barbey would marvel at a culture that excelled in role-playing; a culture that instantly could caricature anything that was abstract, sublime or just different.

A flair for frivolity, coupled with a talent for reaching heights of impertinence, revealed Beau Brummell’s propensity for social climbing, which, for its day, must have been exceptional; a rare feat for one whose career started in the army. In 1798 at the age of 21, having reached the rank of captain, he decided to leave, for fortune would have it that he inherited the princely sum of 30,000 pounds, enabling him to set up a bachelor establishment in fashionable Mayfair. Soon he would become the arbiter elegantiarum, throwing lavish dinner parties for celebrities such as the Prince Regent. Added to this, his membership in the most exclusive of all gentlemen’s clubs, Whites, led him to while away his hours socializing with select groups. Picture him reclining in the opulent surrounds of this club, in the famous bow window, observing, with acerbic wit, all and sundry walk by. Possessing a remarkable talent for converting the most ordinary circumstances into the most amusing anecdotes, Beau Brummell’s every utterance soon resonated in all aristocratic circles: ‘A word from George Brummell, whether of praise or blame, was at that time final. He was the autocrat of opinion’ (D’Aurevilly 1988, p. 48). In fact, so intoxicated was he by his own elevated social standing that Beau Brummell eventually abandoned dancing, deeming it to be beneath his dignity. Barbey recounts:

He used to stand for a few minutes at the door of the ballroom, glance round, criticize it in a sentence, and disappear, applying the famous maxim of Dandyism:–‘In society, stop until you have made your impression, then go.’ He knew his own overpowering prestige, and that with him to remain was unnecessary (ibid., pp. 48–9).

Quite awar...