As we see the parade of faces, some redacted or made into black boxes or blurred, throughout the Epstein files, there is the occasional rock star, and their approach to being there is much different due to their defiant and devilish non-dismissal.
Yes, they are shown there, but through the lens of their lyrics would say, some alleged related actions are not a good thing, but it is what it is. So let the world see us as we really are. Let the fans and pundits decide their and our merits, if any.
We are talking firstly and most prominently, Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones lead singer would probably give his famous shrug about his presence in the photos, as if to say, what did you expect? He’s answered the questions that are sure to come, in advance, through his astonishingly good lyrics, where he aptly admonishes himself and acknowledges his admittedly unfortunate predilections for rather young black women. Just I would say a bit of a womanizer.
Take songs like Paint it Black and Brown Sugar, (about a real life black lover.) Jagger knows what he likes and somewhat reluctantly takes it, although he “sees the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes. I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.” And adds that in his view, she dances like a (young or black) girl should, (although one predisposes that any of his lovers were actually of age, even if they looked younger. And none of the public figures named in this piece, except Epstein and Maxwell have been charged with a crime.)
“Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts. It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black.” But then Jagger changes colors, quite brilliantly, into a romantic: “I could not foresee this thing happening to you.
“If I look hard enough (and it takes a gaze) into the setting sun. My love will laugh with me before the morning comes.”
Not colors just in flashy cars, and doorways. Brilliantly, and unfortunately, real. Delve lyrically into red just briefly, then go uninhibitedly black, for a moment, if only just a moment. This is unfettered dark realism. In Brown Sugar, Jagger even delves into a story that’s part about whipping black slave women. Jagger as historian? Well, maybe.
In a recent single, Angry, Mick and the boys although aging, still have this lust (for rocking or womanizing) going after six decades, as he sings prior to a couple of lines about not having made love, that it’s been so long he can’t see straight.
But for in-concert, take a gander at how Jagger, while his voice shakes with rage, treats his female co-lead-singers in the anti-war classic Gimme Shelter, among a couple hundred named as a fave. He is nothing but a gentleman to Lisa Fischer, who plays with his hair, although they are at least once shown coyly placing their arms around each other after she sings provocactively about soldiers’ alleged rape and murder, enough to shake your soul and make you cry, and then even backs off, backpeddling from her as if in a way to restore her power. (He said he loved the way the voice of the other main co-singer Merry Clayton cracked at times on the high note.) This is much different than his approach when it was taken by Lady Gaga, and femmy powerful Jagger simply charged at her with manly fury. As has been at times deemed acceptable. Hello Robert Plant.
It also is recognized as so by a few apparently oft-photographed in the files noteworthy non-musical figures, such as former president Bill Clinton, who however by the way plays a seductive sax.
It is very dingy and not natural, but when you look at human nature, is a bit unfortunately understandable. Thus it of course goes all the way back to classic literature with the novel Lolita. (Now such is forgotten.)
Jagger’s presemed response to all this? Yes it is down to real earth and gritty and is that way and I hate it, but I love it too. And to a fault, can’t get enough of it.
Jagger’s lyrics work in Brown Sugar has been called by a music-based, evangelical Christian commentator as the best example of brilliant self-criticism he’s seen. So there.
And if that is not straight-up in-your-face reality, consider the promotional billboards that got so much flack way back in the day when, that said about an apparently fictitious woman, “I’m black and blue over the Rolling Stones and I love it.” A first musical recognition that there exists what even works its way up to, for better or worse, good or bad, especially in London, an established underground BDSM scene. Metaphor? Hard rock recognizes reality.
So now enter lyricist Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, with his first song, Prowler. It is about in my mind, someone who is creepy but is “just trying to find my way.” This guy exposes himself, peers in windows, hides in bushes and just goes walking around, but is simply doing his best to get along in a society where women are allowed to very physically “flash their legs and lashes.” But he is not.
And Clinton. He said to the press, release the Epstein files, period. Let them show what they may, and the public think what they may. If for example, I happen to graze my hand over someone’s decidedly bare navel and nothing more, then I grazed my hand over someone’s navel! Clinton is betting on the side that the files will be released, en masse with him in them, to the public at large and they will respond with a great big dismissive yawn, and not care one bit. Like with the woman who laughts a bit at your off-color joke, then suddenly is silent. Clinton, again good or bad, does not live his evocative life in a world of fear of what someone might think. (And although not present in his creepy corner at all, and remember that, all you feminists — as I am one — have to recognize the conflicted reality that in many of the file’s photos, Ms. Maxwell and others are shown wearing barely anything above their low-slung waist. As in nothing covering that navel. Is she somehow wavering in her unyieldingness? The devil may care?) And the public, too. As for I, there’s no bad wishes, or assumptions, here for anyone but Epstein.