Morning:
8°c
Never have the leaves seemed so brown or the sky so grey. I am in mourning for one of my favourite Sixties pop songs, California Dreamin', by The Mamas and the Papas. No longer will I be able to listen to it with unalloyed pleasure, for it has been sullied in my eyes — and in my ears — forever by the claim that its iconic songwriter, John Phillips, enjoyed an incestuous relationship with his daughter.
This sort of revelation cannot but colour one's appreciation of the song and its lyrics (“I'd be safe and warm if I was in LA … I got down on my knees and pretend to pray”). No wonder he was only pretending to pray.
So Phillips would now appear to be the Josef Fritzl of the pop world. After allegedly raping his daughter following a drugs binge on the eve of her wedding, the incest became consensual and lasted for 10 years. His daughter Mackenzie, who joined his band as part of The New Mamas and the Papas, later fell pregnant and Papa John paid for the abortion. The startling revelations have just emerged in her autobiography, published in America.
Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll is all very well but when incest and murder enter the equation it becomes a toxic mix. It poisons the whole artistic well. Killer facts about a musician's life can often impair one's enjoyment of a piece of music. Especially when the artist in question is a killer. I can now never listen to Phil Spector's You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling without recalling that, yes, Phil did lose that lovin' feeling when he shot and killed actress Lana Clarkson.
The same is true of all art forms, from literature to cinema. Chinatown is one of the great films of the Seventies but try as hard as I can, I can never expunge from my mind Roman Polanski's unlawful sexual intercourse with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. Especially as the denoument of the film is all about illicit sex.
Eric Gill's sculptures were never seen in the same light again after it emerged in a 1989 biography that he sexually abused his children, had an incestuous relationship with his sister and made love to his dog. Meanwhile, Andrew Motion's biography of Philip Larkin revealed him to be a smutty pornographer. The flower of art, wrote Motion, “sometimes grows on a long stem out of some very mucky stuff.”
All art is, in the end, inseparable from the artist. Perhaps the less we know about artists' private lives the better. For their sake and ours: I would rather dream of California than have Mackenzie Phillips rub our noses in her mucky stuff.
Simply a David Dimbleby tour de force
Happy birthday to Question Time, which is 30 today. Many have said David Dimbleby should be pensioned off now that he is 70 and make way for a younger man (or woman). There are also calls for Auntie to break the stranglehold of the Dimbleby mafia (brother Jonathan presents Any Questions?).
But I can forgive the Dimbleby mafia anything after David's sublime skewering of Tory MP Eric Pickles in March — the television highlight of the year. Pickles was attempting to justify why his parliamentary duties made it essential for him to keep a second taxpayer-subsidised home, despite the fact his main residence is only 37 miles from Parliament. The problem with Parliament is that you have to be there on the dot of 9.30am, said Pickles. “Like a job, you mean?” said Dimbleby to gales of laughter.
It was a brilliant encapsulation of the expenses scandal and left Pickles quivering with impotent rage. Dimbleby can stay on for another 30 years as far as I am concerned.
Perry's Cold War tactics
This week I returned to the Polish Hearth Club in Princes Gate for the launch of Victor Sebestyen's Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire.
It was a perfect venue for such an occasion, not least because the Polish Hearth Club has hosted some of London's most riotous parties since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A woman guest (I shall spare her blushes) fondly reminisced about the wild times she had enjoyed under its roof. On one occasion she got so drunk that she propositioned the snowy-haired former Sunday Telegraph editor, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne.
Given that Sir Perry is 85 (going on 150), you can only imagine how many White Russians she must have imbibed. Sir Perry promptly sent her on her way. A true Cold War warrior in every sense.
Peter Tatchell's calls to lower sex age to 14
We've had one school sex scandal after another. Now, with consummate timing, the ever-provocative Peter Tatchell calls for lowering the age of consent to 14. Sexual rights are human rights, he claims, and they are not the exclusive prerogative of adults.
Is Tatchell “a great man”, as Rod Liddle recently claimed to me over dinner (jaws dropped round the table) — or a rampant self-publicist? Or could he be both?
Tatchell may not be on a mission to save the world but he has done his bit to highlight some of its iniquities. After being reviled for years for outing gay people, Tatchell has rehabilitated himself as a plucky human rights campaigner who has twice attempted a citizen's arrest on Robert Mugabe. The day Tatchell performs a citizen's arrest on himself will be the day he should be canonised.
Reader views (1)
"For their sake and ours: I would rather dream of California than have Mackenzie Phillips rub our noses in her mucky stuff."
What, so Mackenzie (and, by extension, all others who have suffered at the hands of your favourite artists) should keep quiet about their abuse, rather than speak out? I am sorry but that is a completely revolting stance, rife with a sense of victim-blaming. Ugh.
- Jo, London, UK, 25/09/2009 15:58
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