Forza Citeh, etc

[Herbert Augustus Chapman]

You don't think that a man who's never had an actual job masquerading as the bard of working class America is even the tiniest bit ludicrous?

Not as ludicrous as the nice Jewish son of an electrical retailer from Duluth, Minnesota masquerading as a hard-bitten, boxcar-ridin' hobo, of course, but still.

All in all, Woody Guthrie has a lot to answer for.

Oh totally ludicrous. As ludicrous as Joe Strummer, the son of a Second Secretary of the Foreign Service, posing as a street boy growing up under the shadow of The Westway - I make everyone in that band equally as pretentious.

Or Keef Richards and Shane McGowan having both been Westminster Choirboys. Everyone's at it b. Daniel Day Lewis has started reminiscing about his days on the Millwall terraces for fúck's sake - the son a poet Laureate!

[Burney]

Oh totally ludicrous. As ludicrous as Joe Strummer, the son of a Second Secretary of the Foreign Service, posing as a street boy growing up under the shadow of The Westway - I make everyone in that band equally as pretentious.

Or Keef Richards and Shane McGowan having both been Westminster Choirboys. Everyone's at it b. Daniel Day Lewis has started reminiscing about his days on the Millwall terraces for fúck's sake - the son a poet Laureate!

To be fair to Keef, he sang at Westminster Abbey, but was never at Westminster (unlike McGowan). Strictly Dartford Technical College was Keef.

Mick, by contrast, was Dartford Grammar and the LSE.

[Ash]

Oh totally ludicrous. As ludicrous as Joe Strummer, the son of a Second Secretary of the Foreign Service, posing as a street boy growing up under the shadow of The Westway - I make everyone in that band equally as pretentious.

I don't think the others were politically pretentious. Image-wise, in their cowboy boots, yes, but that's in the job description tbf. Oh, and all the crap Mick filled the second and third discs of Sandinista with.

It was only Joe that demanded that they should all be poor. Mick just wanted the cash, Topper the drugs.

[Burney]

I don't think the others were politically pretentious. Image-wise, in their cowboy boots, yes, but that's in the job description tbf. Oh, and all the crap Mick filled the second and third discs of Sandinista with.

It was only Joe that demanded that they should all be poor. Mick just wanted the cash, Topper the drugs.

I could never cotton to The Clash, I'm afraid. Mind you, I became musically conscious after Sandanista!, by which time they'd very much disappeared up their own arses.

[WES]

To be fair to Keef, he sang at Westminster Abbey, but was never at Westminster (unlike McGowan). Strictly Dartford Technical College was Keef.

Mick, by contrast, was Dartford Grammar and the LSE.

Mick never pretended to be anything other than middle class, tbf. He was always the intellectual, cultured one. I mean, writing one of their best and most famous songs based on Bulgakov's novel and Baudelaire hardly marks him out as a man of the streets, does it?

[Herbert Augustus Chapman]

Back in the pre-internet days of course, you could get away with all sorts of reinvention shít. Bowie originally allowed us to believe he was from Brixton rather than renting a bedsit there for a short while after he'd left home (or some such).

I'm sure I remember Strummer claiming in the NME circa 79/80 that he had never lived below the tenth floor of the Tower Block he grew up in by The Westway.

I think even Lydon's claims to have been a North Bank regular in the late 70's have a specious smack about them. I was on that terrace for most of '74 - 81 and I reckon he would have stood out like a dog's bollócks. Punks, if you remember, just did not do football.

(this was a response to Ash n Berni - can't be arsed to delete and re-post)

[Luis Anaconda]

Mick never pretended to be anything other than middle class, tbf. He was always the intellectual, cultured one. I mean, writing one of their best and most famous songs based on Bulgakov's novel and Baudelaire hardly marks him out as a man of the streets, does it?

Just found this quote from him on that: "I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire's, I think, but I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song."

[Burney]

Mick never pretended to be anything other than middle class, tbf. He was always the intellectual, cultured one. I mean, writing one of their best and most famous songs based on Bulgakov's novel and Baudelaire hardly marks him out as a man of the streets, does it?

No, but he did sing 'Streetfighting Man' and sing about knocking about with factory girls.

[Burney]

Just found this quote from him on that: "I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire's, I think, but I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song."

Come on, la! Which of us doesn't like to kick back with a slim volume of Les fleurs du mal?

[WES]

No, but he did sing 'Streetfighting Man' and sing about knocking about with factory girls.

I think you're getting carried away with this 'musician only sings about personal experiences' thing, Burney.

I mean, you would want Chuck Berry to be restricted to songs about p1ssing on white prostitutes and shagging 14 year old girls, would you?