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Pre-release excerpts from Kim Gordon's forthcoming biography have got The Internet good and pissed at her ex-husband and former Sonic Youth bandmate, Thurston Moore. She describes the bass player's attitude at the band's last show in Brazil as "So phoney, so childish."
So once again that age-old question rears its head; should bandmates form relationships or will the music always suffer? It's Point vs. Point.
JACK SAYS:
Relationships are fragile, combustible things. Creative partnerships are still more delicate and prone to abrupt disintegration. To combine the two in the hellbent pressure cooker of a working rock band is demented.
We'll never know what future masterpieces we've been deprived of by the inability of certain people to keep it in their pants. Who can say what further pop gems ABBA might have come up with if acrimonious divorces hadn't forced them to call it a day after only eight albums?
JON SAYS:
Admittedly, that's one way of looking at things. But the very best creative output comes when emotions are running high, not from shuttered feelings and pleasantries, running so high as to spill forth from the tangled minds of musical geniuses. The throes of love create the ideal environment for timeless, lovelorn classics.
Would 'Rumors' have ever happened if Fleetwood Mac hadn't found themselves in the unenviable position of being torn apart by disintegrating relationships? The McVies had just divorced. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were at each other's throats. The result was one of the greatest albums of the last 50 years. All thanks to their breaking hearts.
JACK SAYS:
Sure enough there you go with the Fleetwood Mac theory of emotional pain leading to great music. You know who else thinks that? Glee. But let's assume you're right and musicians really are inspired to their greatest creative heights by unhappy love affairs (although 'Crazy In Love' would beg to differ) does it have to be with each other?
Imagine if Stevie Nicks had instead met and fallen in love with a glass blower from Edmonton. It ends badly - he cheats on her with a cocktail waitress from East Barnet - but she works with Lindsey Buckingham to channel that pain into a song called 'Blow Your Own Way'. Great music and Fleetwood Mac can go on to happily record together for many years to come.
JON SAYS:
Ah yes, 'Crazy In Love'. A prime example of a romantic creative partnership leading to disaster. I guess it never went double platinum in the US and the careers of both Jay-Z and Beyonce have dramatically nose-dived while their relationship lies in tatters. And if Stevie Nicks had in fact penned a song about an illicit act of fellatio, it's debatable whether 'The Mac' would've in fact been invited to go on for many years to come.
Intra-band relationships add a vital, thrilling extra dimension to the act. Love songs are two a penny, my friend, and they've all got to be about someone. But a love song performed by two people ABOUT EACH OTHER is rare musical nectar. Could Sonny and Cher so accurately have captured love's smugness on 'I Got You Babe' - gazing sickeningly into each other's eyes as they omm-bap-baa'd along - if Sonny knew it was someone else's love Cher was planning on paying the rent with?
JACK SAYS:
Please. I love Mr and Mrs Zed as much as anyone but their relationship has all the romantic sincerity of a FTSE 100 merger. In fact, 'Crazy In Love' is a great example of a brilliant love song produced with absolutely no personal emotion at stake whatsoever, so you've shot yourself in the foot there. Devising and performing a love song with the active participation of its subject is like involving someone in their own mugging; it's inefficient, inappropriate and sooner or later they'll come to wish it had never happened.
Take The Subways. How do you think poor Billy Lunn feels? Having to see his former childhood sweetheart and muse day in, day out? Watching helplessly as the already yawning gulf between their respective physical attractiveness grows ever wider? It's all a mad bag of cats best left in the canal.
JON SAYS:
I have in fact been involved in a one-man mugging, and both parties came away with their preferred result. For every sad Billy Lunn, watching a former flame move on in such close quarters, there's a Win Butler and Régine Chassagne forming the happy heart of band's like Arcade Fire; their love a constant inspiration to their bandmates and themselves. And Billy's probably written some great songs about that break up.
Ultimately, there's nothing more addictive or fascinating than unpicking and overanalysing someone else's relationship. It's why we have celebrity news and gossip columns. To this day, no one's quite sure if Meg and Jack White were a once-married couple, brother and sister or (God forbid) some combination of the two. But their ill-defined connection made for an enthralling sense of mystery around the band. Love will drive you crazy, but it is a mad world, after all.
For better or worse, relationships in bands lead to some fascinating music. Not to mention personal interest stories.
It's not usually great for the musicians themselves; left sobbing over a very public breakup and facing uncomfortable questions from prying interviewers for years to come.
But the fans always get something out of it. And that's what matters.
