I understand your argument, and being an old post-punk I have every sympathy with those who plant themselves firmly outside the mainstream. Everything is relative, of course. I doubt that they will ever commodify Throbbing Gristle, compared to whom The Smiths are easy listening.
Yes, and with all due respect to TG and those who place themselves outside the mainstream, the threat inherent in The Smiths was the fact that they stood in some realm that was neither mainstream or margin, radical or conservative, old or young, hetero or homo, pop or rock, indie or Top of the Pops, and (dare I say it) male or female. Over the years I've experienced Smiths-hate from emaciated anarchist poets, surly right-wing frat boys, and every flavor of individual inbetween. The Smiths unsettled everyone, but they did so because they were so
similar to so many different types of people. Morrissey's genius was best summed up in his most annoying and tiresome position: by not coming out as straight or gay, he allowed both groups to identify with him. He eats away at readymade categories from within, avoiding extremes in a delicate balancing act which holds various binaries together, in tension, rather than drifting toward either one. Whether we ask ourselves these questions explicitly or not, when we listen to his music we are pushed to reflect in some way on our lives: "This is pop, but it can also be this..." "This is straight, but it can also be this..." "This is love, but it can also be this..." "This is tragedy, but it can also be this..." The more extreme artists like TG can't accomplish that (though they can also do some things Morrissey can't).
But I must make a distinction:
However, The Beatles (through Apple Records) were trying to change the mainstream, and for this I give them every credit. Standing outside the establishment allows you to throw rocks, but becoming the establishment allows you to put your money where your mouth is. The fact that the establishment usually fails to change is always a profound disappointment.
For this particular kind of establishment, the one we're living in now, you can't change it from within. If you genuinely wish to change things you can't enter the mainstream hoping to give it the ol' college try, knowing it's going to end in disappointment. The beauty of The Smiths is that Morrissey ensured, both through the music and (especially) in his interviews, that The Smiths were always going to be outsiders. Not outsiders like TG, but certainly never welcome guests at the party. Just think of one example: Live Aid. When everyone in the world was praising Live Aid, Morrissey was the only major pop figure who offered the 100% correct opinion that the whole thing was a disgusting outbreak of sham liberalism. The governments of the world could cure hunger with a snap of their fingers, he pointed out, yet they chose to force the burden of saving starving Africans on citizens. That struck me as pretty savvy at the time, and I love his comments even more now in an age when things have gotten so ridiculous that programs like Social Security and Medicare are now slandered as "socialist" and "un-American" and put on the chopping block by a Democratic President. He understood which way the winds were blowing, and in my mind, though it would have taken a hell of a lot of courage, The Beatles could have too. Apple was noble, but they could have and should have known better.
In any case, Morrissey's perspective, as well as the inimitable way he wove it into his art, makes him a higher type of artist than Lennon or McCartney. The Smiths did not plant themselves totally outside the establishment, but listening to them you could at least get a vision of what an outside might look like. Nowhere in The Beatles' music is there such a vision-- or, more accurately, nowhere in The Beatles does one find a tenable, realistic, everyday vision of what an alternative world might be. Morrissey sang of a possible world in which we accepted ourselves, blemishes and all; The Smiths stand for the redemption of the world as it is, right under our noses, if we could only see it. The Smiths stand for the beatification of the common, the nobility of the rabble. It's what the name 'The Smiths'
means, for heaven's sake. Meanwhile, The Beatles promised tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
I find The Stones to be very distasteful in this regard because they blatantly commodified "rebellion" in a way that The Beatles never did.
Yes, that's true. I agree with you there. The Beatles weren't half as faux-rebellious as the Stones-- who were nevertheless, in their own way, very good too.
) The Manics, Happy Mondays, Shakin' Stevens, Kingmaker
