[Guest post from Martha, Friend of Masculinity and its Discontents (FO-MAID)]
I know the Mantheon isn’t meant to celebrate the everyman. That’s the whole point: these are better than average men, exemplary men. Not regular Joes, variously misogynist, romantic, heartbroken, defeated, wondering why they haven’t gotten theirs, or all of the above. But there’s something to be said for a man who can speak in so many registers of masculine reaction. A man who’s neither paragon nor asshole, or if he is, he’s both, some of the time. Who is this man?
Nick Lowe, old-school British rocker whose records i-tunes now classifies as folk, who can sound like rock or country or swing from song to song or in the same song. He’s Elvis Costello’s long-time producer, the man who wrote “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?” and “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll.” A man who, depending on which songs you cite, could be the house lyricist of the guys over at Glenn Sacks’ site or the model Sensitive New Age Guy (AKA SNAG? what happened to SNAGs? Were they replaced by metrosexuals? I never pictured SNAGs dressing that well, though, or using so many hair care products).
His first album, recently released, had not one but two of the best titles ever: In Britain it was "Jesus of Cool," but in America, changed so as not to offend, it was "Pure Pop for Now People," which is also great. For a time, Johnny Cash was his father-in-law. He’s 59 now, skinny and gray-haired and handsome if you like that kind of thing (I do), and though a recent NY Times review said he looks like Dick van Dyke, he actually looks more like that guy who used to be on Soap and then Golden Girls. Richard Mulligan. Gray-haired, sweet-faced, more likable than handsome, and on to his own shtick. Nick mugs less, though.
All well and good, but Mantheon material? Yea, verily. Consider the evidence (all lyrics, Nick Lowe):
Where is the beautiful family home
That I was promised on the news at ten
Like my personal place in the sun
It never happened along
And as for the greatest love of all
That’s been sworn in a billion lines
And is mine by birthright
I’ll bet I’ll see noneTell me, where, where
Where is my everything
Tell me where is my everything
This song is called “Where is my Everything?” and it also features a lament for the children he was supposed to have but somehow missed out on.
Then there’s the recent “I Trained Her to Love Me,” which tells the touching story of a man who makes women fall in love with him so he can break their hearts. As he points out, it might sound awful, but it’s not unwarranted: “I’m only paying back womankind for all the grief I got.” Maybe those kids he doesn’t have were taken away by his bitch of an ex and the courts that favor women.
But then again, there’s his vast catalog of heartbreak songs, where he’s not angry so much as sad. Despairing, even. Consider the opening lines of “I Live on a Battlefield:”
I live on a battlefield
Surrounded by the ruins of the love we built
And then destroyed between us
The smoke has cleared
As I stumble through the rubble
I’m dazed, seeing double
And I’m truly mystified
It’s not pretty but the damage wasn’t done by her (bad woman!) or by him, but the two of them acting in concert. Or, also to the point, not in concert.
And here’s the beginning to “Without Love:”
Without love, I am half human
Without love, l’m a machine
Without love, there’s nothing doin’
l will die without loveWithout love I am an island
All by myself in a heartbreak sea
Without love there’s no denying
I am dying without love
He’s heartbroken, dazed and confused, wounded, probably fatally, but he’s not angry or assigning blame. And really, I know plenty of women who’d be hesitant to mount as heartfelt a defense of love and its necessity. What’ll kill you? Loneliness. What stinks? It’s not love, pace J. Geils band. It’s loss. Without love/connection/intimacy, you turn into the guy described in the “Man That I’ve Become.”
There’s a kind of man
that you sometimes meet
Worlds passing him by
on wing-ed feet
he walks around
with his senses numb
If you know him
that’s the kind of man that I’ve becomehis heart’s a prune
when it once was a plum
If you know him
that’s the kind of man that I’ve become
According to Lowe, he sometimes gets booed when he sings “I Trained Her to Love Me” (he thanked us, his groovy New York audience, for not doing that), but then again there was the guy behind me making woo-hooing noises to convey his guyish enthusiasm. That’s the way, man! My friend and I were embarrassed on his behalf. It’s a persona, see, we wanted to tell him; Nick doesn’t really think that. Or maybe he does, some of the time, but he won’t leave out the other things, equally powerful, that he also thinks. I can’t be sure about this; we’ve never met, Nick and I. But the lyrics have me pretty convinced. He’s the asshole and the believer in true love, the angry white man and the sensitive guy who’s scared he’ll be hurt again, and even more scared that from now on, it’ll just be him and his pruney little heart. He can see into his divided self without feeling like he has to lop part of it off, give each part voice without necessarily having to do what the voices suggest. That’s something to celebrate.
Nick Lowe: My candidate for the Mantheon.
