Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

I think there is also a misguided belief in the existence of raw, pure, unmediated art that has avoided the need for tuition or graft or ambition, has side-stepped disappointment, compromise, commercialisation or the creative dead end. If you are working with that set of criteria to hand what would be more worthy of our approval than the kind of art we have been discussing here?

That is of course nonsensical. Show me a "holy fool" creating genius work in any field of art, though music is probably the toughest, and I'll show you someone who has sweated to develop the craft that gives them the tools to run wild. The bonds of conventional thought and behaviour may have needed to be cut for the creative leap to happen but without the bedrock of facility there could be no leap in the first place. Some rock n roll people prefer to think in more romantic terms but the list of people without a hard-won technical facility who can make truly free art worth listening to is very short indeed.

This is also the dark side of the Primitivist movement who denied the non European artist an indentity or even the notion of talent (so much easier to plunder from the unnamed and the unskilled!) while praising them for being more in touch than the European bourgeoisie with nature, "the spirit world" and, of course, their sexuality. There's Jim Morrison shtick for you in a nutshell. Add the idea that their technique is raw and their rhythms repetetive or unsophisticated and you have a very good parallel for rock n roll's obsession with the work of the unhinged.

So the question for me is when are middle class rock n rollers going to stop hating themselves just enough that they can get away from these nonsensical ideas about where art comes from?