Blog 5:

“KILL THE FATHER, FUCK THE MOTHER”

         Morrison called his father, the youngest admiral in the history of the Navy, a “eunuch” and accused him of having molested him. The others weren’t any kinder about their old men.

         Elvis, though he professed to love his daddy, considered him a "steercoddled" slacker and had threatened to kill him several times. Lennon called Freddie “a Bowery bum” and had threatened to bury him at sea. Cobain called Don “a fucking asshole.” In drunken rages, Al Hendrix beat Jimi regularly: “He was a brutal man,” recalled a childhood friend, “It was a rough scene. Straight up ugly.” Jimi never forgave his father for forbidding him to attend his mother’s funeral, but instead giving him his first shot of Seagrams 7.

         An historic study of creative genius and the Oedipus complex has yet to be done. But, undeniably, art owes a debt to mama’s boys. The childish condition goes beyond an inordinate love and attachment to the mother, and hatred, estrangement, or resentment of the father. Figuratively or literally a compulsion to fuck the one, and kill the other  -- Morrison’s mantra.

         When once asked if he really wanted to fuck his mother, the Erotic Politician replied: “No, I want to fuck yours.”

         The Doors’ producer, Paul Rothchild, explained it all like this to Crawdaddy magazine: “Kill the father means kill all of those things in yourself which are instilled in you and not of yourself… those things must die… ‘Fuck the mother’ means get back to the essence… the reality.”

         In other words, embrace the nurturing, loving mother; reject the controlling, authoritarian father. And a rebel is born. All great artists are rebels on some fundamental level. More than that, the men among them tend to have strong female sides. Sensitive, intuitive, romantic.

         The wo/men superstars of rock  – Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, etc. etc. – follow the original beacon: The King himself. Elvis, as has often been observed, would never have become the greatest pop phenomenon in history – the King – had it not been for his “androgynous” magnetism, especially for young girls. Elvis was 100% his adoring, immaculate mother’s child. "There wasn't a dime's worth of difference between them -- they were the same person," observed Elvis's minder, Lamar Fike. His father had as much to do with the King as Joseph with Jesus. Vernon was at the Nativity and saw a star in the east, but that’s about it. 

         Elvis slept with Gladys till the age of 13. Later, his gossipy step-mother, the ex-wife of General Patton’s personal bodyguard, would say that he consummated with his Gladys, but it seems unlikely. Their relationship was one of cuddling, fawning, and babytalking. Later, he preferred being mothered in this way by the many starlets in his life, than having sex. He gave his first recording, My Happiness, to Gladys, his greatest worshipper, as a birthday present. This was followed by his hit, That’s Alright Mama.

         “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror,” wrote Freud.

         When Gladys died, Elvis, then 23, wept inconsolably, “My life is over!” And, indeed, in many ways it was.

         Wendy Cobain remembered being “totaled out” on little Kurt. High strung and high maintenance like the other stars as children, Kurt had an equally insatiable appetite for attention.  Then when he was 9, his parents divorced and “I went from being a happy kid to a seriously depressed kid,” he later recalled. “I HATE MOM. I HATE DAD,” he crayoned his bedroom wall. Before becoming homeless, he suffered torturous years with his mother’s macho boyfriends who called him “faggot.”

         Five of the seven stars were bisexual. Kurt --who later “made out with half the men in Seattle,” according to his wife – often performed in skirts and panties. In spite of the theatrics, his struggle with his sexual identity was the greatest of all the stars. But this is the subject for another discussion.

         Next, let’s talk about the greatest trauma in the childhoods of most of the stars which haunted them forever: the deaths in their families which fed their insecurities and their later fatal isolations….