‘I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel, in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel, watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.’
The drug-addled, leather-faced rock star from Detroit, Iggy Pop — né James Newell Osterberg — whose contribution to the canon of modern popular verse includes ‘Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, once wrote and performed a song called ‘I’m a Conservative’. Most of the lyrics to this number are incoherent psychotic drivel, but there was a certain force to the title refrain, repeated over and over again in a characteristically vehement and snarling manner. The music press thoroughly enjoyed this chunk of satire from one of rock’s most nihilistic and extreme performers, until Iggy — a mite confused — put them right. No, it’s not satire at all, he said. I really am a conservative. A true conservative. Just recently Mr Pop has been doing voiceovers for Donald Rumsfeld and starring in big corporate tv ads: maybe now they’ll believe him. Truth is I don’t think the Right wanted James Newell Osterberg any more than the counter-culture Left wanted to give him up.
The perplexing and somewhat uncomfortable quote at the beginning of this article is not from Iggy, but from the writer J.G. Ballard, who died this week at the age of 78. There was a period between about 1978 and 1989 when the most unexpected cultural luminaries on both sides of the Atlantic swung sharply to the right, captured, one supposes, by the Reagan-Thatcher revolution.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in