Good riddance
…to bad rubbish Ike Turner. Boo hoo, rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. Boo hoo, Rocket 88.
You know what? To borrow from Jamie Kenny, writing about another wife-beating arsehole, it meant nothing from the moment Ike first raised his hand to his wife.
Why do famous wife-beaters always get a ‘but’? Sure he hit his missus but did you see him play guitar? Sure he hit his missus but did you see him kick a ball? Sure he hit his missus but…
Tell you what, try this: spend ten minutes talking to someone who’s worked in a women’s refuge and see if these arseholes are still your heroes afterwards.
Fuck the lot of them.
Posted on December 17th, 2007 at 11:20am under Culture, media and sport
Does that apply to all art whose creators also cause misery and suffering, or only wife-beaters’ art?
Everyone. Time to instigate some zero tolerance, I reckon. I welcome a broad church.
It is not as if he was particularly rated at the time, “Rocket 88″ being very much identified retrospectively and not actually being much better than a Chuck Berry filler track in any case. It’s only because of the wife he beat that Ike Turner is even the answer to a pub quiz question, which frankly in my mind raises the spectre that there’s an awful lot of simpering music critics who admire him *because* of what he did, rather than *in spite* of it.
(also see – Cent, Fifty).
If there is a ‘but’, it’s probably because the artistic reputation is established before the criminal one.* (Besides which, I recall Paul Johnson trying a related ad hominem approach to taking down left-wing intellectuals he didn’t like.)
*Disclaimer: this is, of course, in no way meant to be taken as an endorsement of domestic violence.
Well said. Fuck the lot of them over at Harry’s Place.
Are all Decent Leftists wife-beaters, then?
I take dsquared’s point – it’s the difference between Eric Gill and the Marquis de Sade. Gill’s stonework and type are admirable in themselves and in spite of his personal life, whereas de Sade appeals only to people who think that raping peasant girls is Groovy and Bohemian.