Re that Guardian article, it seems quite bitter to me. I get that we can't excuse all horrendous behaviour from the past by saying "it was different times" but they were different times, language was different, the realms of acceptability were different, it didn't mean people were hateful. Some were hateful, some weren't but the common tongue flowed in a different way back then and cherry picking random quotes from drunken, drug fuelled rock stars is not evidence of whatever Mr Price is accusing them of.
Well, of course they're hateful. They're the Gallaghers - the brothers that beat each other with a baseball bat. I can only hope they mellowed out with age, but I fail to see the difference between saying that I hope my rival Damon Albarn gets AIDS and die, having a fistfight with my brother and (while undoubtedly coked out of my mind) uttering some kind of slur that the journo with the crazy hair and the eyeliner considers to be the only unpardonable sin.
Thing is - so what? Rock and metal has cultivated an "evil" image, we're the bad guys, we're edgy. We have potty mouths, we like songs about serial killers and war, we dress in black and put pentangrams and shit everywhere (without regard as to what the pentagram actually
means - gee, Sir Gawain must have been a real tr00 kvlt Stanist to have a pentagram on his shield, amirite?), there was a time when it was also all about being coked up and collecting STDs, because you're so bad, baby I don't care and whatever. We burn churches, we murder people (and remember - for all the talk about some vague verbal "homophobia" so many people completely avoid
actual homophobic crimes done by some of the metalheads -
Faust and
Nodtveidt, in particular - and yet people still gush about
In the Nightside Eclipse and
Storm of the Light's Bane like there was no tomorrow)
Decapitating baby dolls, spraying the audience with pig blood and having crucified nuns onstage, telling vivid tales of molesting one's own daughter, making jokes about Columbine, having an album called (IIRC)
Carnivorous erection.
And suddenly, oh no, they're politically incorrect. They aren't socially
conscious and responsible! Ohmigosh *clutches pearls on breast* Because for once it's aimed against the thing
you hold dear. (that's a general "you", not Cat Milk Supreme "you", btw)