Question: Does Everyone Secretly Yearn to be a Rock Star?

It's not just me, is it? I mean, doesn't everyone want to?

Because I think they do. I know I do. And there’s nothing like a great song coming on your Ipod or the radio or Yahoo! music or whatever (do people still have stereos?) to send you off intro fantasy land. As a child of the MTV generation, in which videos were actually and exclusively played, every song had a visual, a story. So what’s happened to gen exers like me is every song we hear has a soundtrack. Is it just me? Because when I hear old Duran Duran tunes I can SEE John Taylor cavorting with an elephant and Simon LeBon in his fetching fedora and sexy super models in bikinis with garish 80s face paint. And I can see John Mellancamp (then Cougar) with his white-gloved hand claps in “Jack and Diane.”

So if you’ve seen a video to a song, the images come to you when you hear the song. But if you’ve heard a song and not seen an accompanying video, it is incumbent on YOU, the listener, to come up with a visual. And frankly that’s what I do all the time. I’m the rock star in my own personal video life. It's like I'm always on TV.

But it’s definitely not reality TV. Reality TV is goosed and gussied to be real and fake at the same time. Rock star video life is all fantasy. And that’s what makes it so palatable. We all need to escape from the barrage of ads, invitations on damn internet “friend” interfaces, IMs, phone calls, etc. and when I turn on my ipod and run, or just sit by myself, I don’t think about the laundry, or Sara Palin and her hockey mom remark, or how tired I am, or that I’m no longer the younger, thinner, hipper version of myself. I’m not. But in my fantasies, I am.

This is why people drink.

This is why people do drugs.

This is why people eat too much, screw too much, gamble too much, etc.

We’re all dying to be alive.

And music makes us feel alive.

Which is why when I have the rare opportunity to listen to music, I take it. And running to music makes me run much farther, and much faster. Because I pretend I’m running in a video. I’m Anthony Kiedis running under the bridge in L.A., I’m that freaky guy from Live with the bald head and long braid rat tail absolutely freaking out in front of the camera, I’m even, sometimes, Madonna, rolling around in florescent off the shoulder outfits in Venice, pretending I’m feeling virginal. (ha)

Having two small children has reminded me how much we all at one point loved to play pretend, and I guess I still do. I think most humans want to play, most grown ups want to play, but they’ve either forgotten how (other than Jello shots, which is not always as fun as it sounds) or they think they’re not supposed to because they have grown out or up or over such behaviors as playing air guitar or lip-synching in the mirror when nobody is looking.


There’s something elemental, primal about music that cuts past all of our stupid learned behaviors and pretensions and delusions. And what puts you in that zone of ecstasy is very personal. And you never have to tell anyone, because your mind is your very own private screening room.


But consider this: although I think we all want to be the lead singer/rapper/rocker/diva in our lives, because so often the reality we live in is so mundane, it’s all a myth, really.

Even the rock stars living the dream don’t really get to do that much of what we consider the dream. They ride buses, fly in planes, eat crap food, sign autographs, answer stupid and sometimes intelligent questions from hundreds of people, pose for pictures, stop and start shooting a video in the middle of the night when they’d probably rather be home with their girlfriend or their kids, which is where YOU are, pretending that you’re where they are, which they really aren’t, because that’s an illusion, too.

It’s an illusion that rock stars live a rock star life, except for one thing. The actual performance. As someone who has performed in front of crowds before, I can honestly say there’s nothing like it. I’m not a rock star. I did comedy improv in front of drunk people in night clubs and performed in front of symphony orchestra audiences and children and theatre audiences. And it rocked. There is nothing, nothing, like having a rapt audience enjoying something you’re doing. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be someone like Mick Jagger, having thousands of fans going utterly apeshit in front of you JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE THERE. This is the part of my internal video fantasies that I play over and over and over.

But honestly? It would get exhausting to live that way. Why do you think so many rock stars go deep into drugs and excessive random sex and all those behaviors that can actually be fun in moderation? Because it’s too hard to live up to the hype. There’s no way to live up to the fantasy that’s created in a video, or live from New York or whatever.

So the image we have of famous musicians is what we glom onto, and we carry that in our fearful and hopeful little hearts and desperately cling so that we can have that feeling, just once in awhile. That feeling of being on top of the world, and intense and perfect and gorgeous and connected to the entire universe in the best way. So we listen to music and pretend we’re them. But we don’t really need to be them, except for their brief moments onstage. We all want an adoring audience, and maybe even an online fan club.

But we’ll just have to settle for our own vivid imaginations, if we can resurrect them from being buried and inundated by images on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and four hundred crap TV stations. I think I’ll go put on the Chili Peppers and see what’s playing in my head.