Rebels or Relics – The Culture of Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll

Is the life of a rockstar over, and should we celebrate? As the fall festival lineup— the last death rattle of the live music season—has arrived, so has the return of a rockstar desperate to get back into the public eye’s good graces. Dave Grohl, along with the rest of the Foo Fighters, has made recent headlines after firing their drummer and officially ending their hiatus with the announcement of new shows. Over the last year, the former Nirvana drummer has been trying to keep a low profile after word got out that he was expecting his fourth daughter… with an extramarital affair. By the general public’s standards, an affair is deplorable. By a rockstar’s standards, well… should we be surprised?

Sex, Drugs & Rock N’ Roll

“Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”: the slogan that has dominated the rock scene since the emergence of the genre. It embraces a life of rebellion, debauchery, and fun. Though rockstars have taken many different appearances over the years, from Paul McCartney to Nikki Sixx, the story behind these legends remains the same. A rockstar is a rebel without a cause, a party animal, a womanizer, a rule breaker. We expect rockstars to live up to this lifestyle. Until now, it never really surprised anyone when news broke out about a crazy party or an extra child. That was just the rockstar lifestyle.

“You’d be surprised how expensive it is to look this cheap,” proclaimed Steven Tyler of Aerosmith  (a man with more than a few scandals from his days as a rockstar) during a Grammy speech. It is a phrase passed around and changed by many recording artists over the years, but the sentiments remain the same. From the Beatles wearing those cute little suits to the modern day, there is a certain aesthetic expected of a rockstar by fans to truly help them fulfill their own rockstar fantasies. We expect them to dress like they slept in a gutter (but make it designer), we expect them to carry a bottle of Jack and a cigarette, and we expect them to slur their words. The true vision of a rockstar is just the personification of danger. 

Nitty Gritty History

No one embodies the vision of danger more than one of rock history’s craziest bands, Motley Crue, though that may just be because they spent more time than any other band selling out their story. What we can take from these sell-outs is that not only is scandal expected from a rockstar, but it has also never historically been criticized. In 2019, Motley Crue made their comeback with a Netflix movie titled “The Dirt.” Based on their book with the same title, the movie had but one purpose—to profile the life of a rockstar on the road when they ruled the Sunset Strip. The movie was essentially two hours of drugs, partying, illegal activities, and sex. This movie and book not only received little to no criticism, but it allowed Motley Crue to muster up the publicity for sold-out stadium tours, new music, and a thousand different Wattpad fanfictions from teenage girls celebrating them for being rockstars. The various crimes of the Crue would have been more surprising had they not owned up to them at the time. However, even in their glory days, they were shouting out their lifestyle and terrible choices across MTV and every magazine cover they could get. Motley Crue exemplifies the fact that it is a relatively new idea that rockstars need to be good people at all. If you were to look under the rug of any rockstar from the 20th century, you would find more than most could stomach. While Grohl made headlines not long ago over his extramarital affair, compared to any ’80s band, Grohl is practically a saint, or at the very least a very boring rockstar.

It’s not only the music videos, memoirs, and interviews that uphold the ideals of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, but the music itself. The same actions that Grohl is criticized for exist in just about every rock song. They even exist within the musician’s own discography and music videos. The idea of rebellion and doing whatever you want whenever you want, no matter how poetically it’s sung, is the heart of the genre. You can’t be dancing with Mrs. D or Mr. Brownstone and expect anything less.

Reaching Nirvana

The only reason people could have to lay into Grohl is that he was in Nirvana, a band that famously proclaimed to be above the rockstar lifestyle and called out bands like Guns N’ Roses for their crazy ways. However, Grohl is not Kurt Cobain. He was just a kid who gave a great audition and joined the band in its later years. This is not to discredit his time there or his work, just to say that it was not his band. He should be much better known for his time as a 

Foo Fighters – a band with a much less clean slate. The comparison to Cobain or even Kris Novoselic is completely unfair and ridiculous. 

No one should have been surprised when Dave Grohl announced his affair and welcomed his new child. It should only have confirmed what you already should have believed: Grohl is a rockstar.  The spirit of rock n roll has always been rebellion, so Grohl is simply keeping that spirit alive. In a new social climate where we value morality from our public figures, can the nitty-gritty lifestyle of rockstars survive, or is it time to hang up the leather and spikes for a cleaner, more palatable aesthetic?