Despite writing the intensely personal lyrics to ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ and ‘Neeye Oli’, the songs that the magazine’s cover story deals with, Arivu’s input was relegated to only a small quote.
New Delhi:Filmmaker Pa. Ranjith on Sunday hit out at Rolling Stone India and online music platform ‘Maajja’ for their failure to credit singer-songwriter Arivu on the cover page of the former’s latest issue, the News Minutereported.
The magazine’s cover story for August features an interview with singers Dhee and Shah Vincent de Paul, highlighting their work on the songs, ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ and ‘Neeye Oli’. Arivu penned the lyrics for ‘Enjoy Enjaami’, apart from singing parts of it. He co-wrote and sang the track ‘Neeye Oli’. Despite his contributions, he was only afforded a small quote in the story and not featured on the magazine’s cover at all.
Voicing his displeasure on Twitter, Ranjith lambasted the magazine and the music platform for neglecting to credit Arivu. The filmmaker highlighting the irony of “invisibilising” Arivu, even as the lyrics of both these songs challenge “erasure of public acknowledgement.”
‘Enjoy Enjaami’, according to Arivu, was written to celebrate his roots and deals with the story of Tamil migration to erstwhile Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) during the colonial era. This story was told to the rapper and lyricist by his grandmother, Valliammal, who also features in the music video for the song.
Arivu had earlier been slighted when the remix for the song produced by French artist DJ Snake featured Dhee but dropped him from the mix.
Ranjith was not alone in his criticism of Rolling Stone India and ‘Maajja’, the music platform backed by A.R. Rahman. A number of Twitter users criticised Arivu’s neglect by the two entities. These users were quick to point out the irony of Arivu’s treatment since it is his personal caste struggles that the song deals with.
– @RollingStoneIN Arivu should have been a part of this cover more than anybody else. the song enjoy enjaami is about his anti-caste struggles. Rolling Stone covers issues of racial diversity extensively in the USA, but invisibilizes marginalised voices in India. fix it! pic.twitter.com/ApA4kDHCvk
Without Arivu there’s no EE.
He is the creator, lyricist and the performer of EE In that order. It is his story.
The song was featuring Dhee, not the other way around. #Arivu#EnjoyEnjaami#SaNapic.twitter.com/2aas6a5V85
The widespread Twitter backlash prompted Rolling Stone India to put out another Tweet in which they listed out the names of individuals involved in their cover story. Besides acknowledging Arivu, the magazine also mentioned A.R. Rahman as a backer of ‘Maajja’ as well as Canadian hip-hop artist Navz 47 and producer Santhosh Narayanan.
(1) @arrahman-backed label and platform @joinmaajja stands apart for its refreshing South Asian-focused approach.
Unbridled ambition and bruised egos created an irreparable fissure.
Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fuelling false reunion rumours that persisted well into the new decade.
In a press release, on April 10, 1970, for his first solo album, “McCartney,” he leaked his intention to leave. In doing so, he shocked his three bandmates.
The Beatles had symbolised the great communal spirit of the era. How could they possibly come apart?
Few at the time were aware of the underlying fissures. The power struggles in the group had been mounting at least since their manager, Brian Epstein, died in August of 1967.
‘Paul Quits the Beatles’
Was McCartney’s “announcement” official? His album appeared on April 17, and its press packet included a mock interview. In it, McCartney is asked, “Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?”
His response? “No.”
The Daily Mirror took McCartney at his word. Photo: Source
But he didn’t say whether the separation might prove permanent. The Daily Mirror nonetheless framed its headline conclusively: “Paul Quits the Beatles.”
The others worried this could hurt sales and sent Ringo as a peacemaker to McCartney’s London home to talk him down from releasing his solo album ahead of the band’s “Let It Be” album and film, which were slated to come out in May. Without any press present, McCartney shouted Ringo off his front stoop.
Lennon had kept quiet
Lennon, who had been active outside the band for months, felt particularly betrayed.
The previous September, soon after the band released “Abbey Road,” he had asked his bandmates for a “divorce.” But the others convinced him not to go public to prevent disrupting some delicate contract negotiations.
Still, Lennon’s departure seemed imminent: He had played the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival with his Plastic Ono Band in September 1969, and on Feb. 11, 1970, he performed a new solo track, “Instant Karma” on the popular British TV show “Top of the Pops.” Yoko Ono sat behind him, knitting while blindfolded by a sanitary napkin.
In fact, Lennon behaved more and more like a solo artist, until McCartney countered with his own eponymous album. He wanted Apple to release this solo debut alongside the group’s new album, “Let It Be,” to dramatise the split.
By beating Lennon to the announcement, McCartney controlled the story and its timing, and undercut the other three’s interest in keeping it under wraps as new product hit stores.
Ray Connolly, a reporter at The Daily Mail, knew Lennon well enough to ring him up for comment. When I interviewed Connolly in 2008, he told me about their conversation.
Lennon was dumbfounded and enraged by the news. He had let Connolly in on his secret about leaving the band at his Montreal Bed-In in December, 1969, but asked him to keep it quite. Now he lambasted Connolly for not leaking it sooner.
“Why didn’t you write it when I told you in Canada at Christmas!” he exclaimed to Connolly, who reminded him that the conversation had been off the record. “You’re the f–king journalist, Connolly, not me,” snorted Lennon.
“We were all hurt [McCartney] didn’t tell us what he was going to do,” Lennon later told Rolling Stone. “Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it! I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record…”
It all falls apart
This public fracas had been bubbling under the band’s cheery surface for years. Timing and sales concealed deeper arguments about creative control and the return to live touring.
In January 1969, the group had started a roots project tentatively titled “Get Back.” It was supposed to be a back-to-the-basics recording without the artifice of studio trickery. But the whole venture was shelved as a new recording, “Abbey Road,” took shape.
When “Get Back” was eventually revived, Lennon – behind McCartney’s back – brought in American producer Phil Spector, best known for girl group hits like “Be My Baby,” to salvage the project. But this album was supposed to be band only – not embroidered with added strings and voices – and McCartney fumed when Spector added a female choir to his song “The Long and Winding Road.”
“Get Back” – which was renamed “Let it Be” – nonetheless moved forward. Spector mixed the album, and a cut of the feature film was readied for summer.
McCartney’s announcement and release of his solo album effectively short-circuited the plan. By announcing the breakup, he launched his solo career in advance of “Let It Be,” and nobody knew how it might disrupt the official Beatles’ project.
Throughout remainder of 1970, fans watched in disbelief as the “Let It Be” movie portrayed the hallowed Beatles circling musical doldrums, bickering about arrangements and killing time running through oldies. The film finished with an ironic triumph – the famous live set on the roof of their Apple headquarters during which the band played “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” and a joyous “One After 909.”
The Beatles played their last live show in a January 1969 concert staged for the documentary ‘Let It Be.’
The album, released on May 8, performed well and spawned two hit singles – the title track and “The Long and Winding Road” – but the group never recorded together again.
Their fans hoped against hope that four solo Beatles might someday find their way back to the thrills that had enchanted audiences for seven years. These rumours seemed most promising when McCartney joined Lennon for a Los Angeles recording session in 1974 with Stevie Wonder. But while they all played on one another’s solo efforts, the four never played a session together again.
At the beginning of 1970, autumn’s “Come Together”/“Something” single from “Abbey Road” still floated in the Billboard top 20; the “Let It Be” album and film helped extend fervour beyond what the papers reported. For a long time, the myth of the band endured on radio playlists and across several Greatest Hits compilations, but when John Lennon sang “The Dream is over…” at the end of his own 1970 solo debut, “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,” few grasped the lyrics’ implacable truth.
Fans and critics chased every sliver of hope for the “next” Beatles, but few came close recreating the band’s magic. There were prospects – first bands like Three Dog Night, the Flaming Groovies, Big Star and the Raspberries; later, Cheap Trick, the Romantics and the Knack – but these groups only aimed at the same heights the Beatles had conquered, and none sported the range, songwriting ability or ineffable chemistry of the Liverpool quartet.
We’ve been living in the world without Beatles ever since.
A tribute to the seemingly ageless Rolling Stones frontman.
What makes the Rolling Stones still rock? The answer to that one is easy: Mick Jagger.
The singer, born Michael Philip Jagger, who celebrated his 76th birthday on July 26, has created a brand of his own, thanks to solo albums and side projects outside the Rolling Stones, which is what got him there in the first place.
Fathering his eighth child in 2016 (Jagger became a great grandfather in 2014) or performing with the same energy weeks after an emergency surgical procedure for a heart valve replacement in April this year, the star has not slowed down as the band that he fronts continues its umpteenth global tour.
The ‘No Filter’ tour commenced on September 9, 2017 in Hamburg and will close at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on August 31, the very venue where the US leg was to begin on April 20 this year, prior to Jagger’s heart ailment. Ahead of the US part, the tour has already grossed in excess of US$237 million. Clearly, neither ‘Rubber Lips’ Jagger has lost his verve nor his band its appeal, even while newer and younger acts keep cropping.
On the resumption of the ‘No Filter’ tour on June 21, Mick Jagger gave, in Chicago, a performance to remember, less than three months after his operation. You can hardly tell he had undergone a surgery, as the moves he unleashed during the first stop of the revised Rolling Stones‘ North American tour, reminded me of the band’s ’14 On Fire’ tour that I witnessed in Abu Dhabi on February 21, 2014. Writing at the time, in a review, I had described Jagger’s individual performance as having “remained outstanding and freakishly youthful with his swaggering walk intact”. This time around too, Jagger was sprinting, spinning and prancing as only he could, showing that age has not withered his dynamism on stage.
Jagger and the Rolling Stones also performed in Mumbai on April 7, 2003.
That Jagger was going to continue to be himself, surgery notwithstanding, was clear when he posted a video on Instagram in May, a month after his medical ailment was corrected, demonstrating an aerobics routine that men a third of his age would find tiring.
For starters, there is little denying that he is the most famous member of the Rolling Stones, at least partially due to the fact that he is their singer, but also because he is a celebrity who remains a regular feature in mainstream gossip columns. His “jet-set lifestyle” and presence in the global social world, including in the New York art scene and, in Hollywood, as an actor, (Freejack, Ned Kelly) make him unique among his peers. Mick Jagger will soon return to the big screen in a movie called The Burnt Orange Heresy that premieres on September 7, in which he appropriately plays a powerful art collector.
In all this, Jagger has also been the subject of several songs, such as Maroon 5‘s 2011 song, ‘Moves Like Jagger’. Jagger acknowledged his appreciation of the song in an interview, calling the recognition “very flattering”.
Controversy mostly never hurt anyone, least of all Jagger. His collaborator in the band, guitarist Keith Richards, and him were barely on speaking terms during the ‘80s. While Jagger wanted to move the band in the direction of pop and dance, Richards wanted the Rolling Stones to be firmly rooted in its blues origins, which is precisely what got both one-time school mates back together on that fateful day in 1960 in Chicago. That was when Richards spied Jagger carrying two vinyl albums in hand – ‘Rockin’ At The Hops’ by Chuck Berry, and ‘The Best Of Muddy Waters’ – on a train platform. That led to a conversation about their mutual respect for these Chess Records’ legends, the electric sound that they had begun innovating in Chicago and the rest, as they say, is now history.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Photo: Reuters
For those yet not aware, Rolling Stones is named after a Muddy Waters’ 1950 song, ‘Rollin’ Stone’, and the band’s instrumental, ‘2120 South Michigan Avenue’, was the address of the building housing Chess Records, and was recorded for the band’s second EP, ‘Five By Five’.
Cut to 2016 and, having course corrected after their move in the wrong musical direction in the ‘80s, the Rolling Stones rekindled their natural relationship with blues roots by recording ‘Blue & Lonesome’, an album featuring renditions of songs from the likes of Memphis Slim [the title track], Howlin’ Wolf [‘Commit A Crime’], Little Walter [‘I Gotta Go’/’Hate To See You Go’], and Jimmy Reed [‘Little Rain’], among others, with Eric Clapton playing guitar on two of the 12 tracks.
The Rolling Stones juggernaut continues to chug into their sixth decade of rocking and rolling. Their survival is directly connected with their global appeal, enthralling audiences across multi-generations including millennials. This has made them, arguably, the world’s greatest rock and roll band. At some stage of their early career, the band battled with The Beatles for musical virtuosity and star quality and, as a critic once wrote, “the dark side Yin to the Fab Four’s Yang”.
The Rolling Stones have always been ahead of competition in their foresight as the band launched their very own label in 1970 – after their recording contract with Decca Records expired – which was headed by Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess. Slowly, but surely, the band upped the ante on live performances by moving to venues covering arenas and stadiums. After all these decades, the Rolling Stones remain one of the world’s top draws, which is a great vindication of a band that was once considered “dangerous”, “reckless”, and “decadent”.
The magnetism of Jagger’s charisma remains unabated with the concept of a rock and roll frontman being entirely his creation. He of course took cues and inspiration from soul singers, blues musicians, and even Elvis. Jagger still appears hungry to innovate, even without the Rolling Stones. 2011’s ‘SuperHeavy’ was a collaboration that included our very own A.R. Rahman, on which Jagger sang ‘Satyameva Jayate’ in Sanskrit. Jagger does not want to break away fully from the Rolling Stones which, after all made him a superstar. He keeps returning to it every step that he takes outside, knowing fully well by his unprecedented business acumen that the b[r]and remains his bread and butter.
Essentially, Jagger’s songs remain his single most important tool in musicianship, ranging from down and out rockers to soulful ballads; having said that, blues arguably still is his first love.
While age is certainly no measure for superlative musicianship and for survival, again borrowing from my review on viewing the band live, “much like wine Rolling Stones, as performers, only seem to get better with time…”. Thanks in no small measure to an enigma known as Jagger who sang, even way back in 1964, that ‘Time Is On My Side’.
All the popular monsters you’ll see out trick-or-treating, from Frankenstein to Dracula, were born out of fear and anxiety about change and technology.
All the popular monsters you’ll see out trick-or-treating, from Frankenstein to Dracula, were born out of fear and anxiety about change and technology.
Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster. Credit: Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
Fear continues to saturate our lives: fear of nuclear destruction, fear of climate change, fear of the subversive, and fear of foreigners.
It continues – around the globe, household wealth, longevity and education are on the rise, while violent crime and extreme poverty are down. In the US, life expectancy is higher than ever, our air is the cleanest it’s been in a decade and, despite a slight uptick last year, violent crime has been trending down since 1991.
So why are we still so afraid?
Emerging technology and media could play a role. But in a sense, these have always played a role.
The title page of Cotton Mather’s ‘Wonders of the Invisible World,’ which describes the execution of witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
In the past, rumour and a rudimentary press coverage could fan the fires. Now, with the rise of social media, fears and fads and fancies race instantly through entire populations. Sometimes the specifics vanish almost as quickly as they arose, but the addiction to sensation, to fear and fantasy, persists, like a low-grade fever.
People often create symbols for that emotions are fleeting, abstract and hard to describe. (Look no further than the recent rise of the emoji.)
For over the last three centuries, Europeans and Americans, in particular, have shaped anxiety and paranoia into the mythic figure of the monster – the embodiment of fear, disorder and abnormality – a history that I detail in my new book, “Haunted.”
There are four main types of monsters. But a fifth – a nameless one – may best represent the anxieties of the 21st century.
Rejecting rationality
The 1700s and 1800s were an era of revolutionary uprisings that trumpeted a limitless future, when the philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment proclaimed that reason had the power to change the world. Emotion was pushed out of the intellectual sphere by scientific reasoning; awestruck spirituality had been repressed in favor of the Clockmaker God who set the universal laws into motion.
Of course, humans have always been afraid. But while the fears of the demonic and the diabolical characterised medieval times, the changes wrought by the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution created a whole new set of fears tied to advancements in science and technology, and an increasingly crowded and complex world.
During this age of political upheavals and aggressive modernisation, tales of Gothic horror, haunted castles, secret compartments and rotting corpses were the rage. The novels and stories of writers such as Horace Walpole, Matthew G. Lewis, Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelley soon became bestsellers. These writers – and many others – tapped into something pervasive, giving names and bodies to a universal emotion: fear.
The fictional monsters created during this period can be categorised into four types. Each corresponds to a deep-seated anxiety about progress, the future and the human ability to achieve anything like control over the world.
“The monster from nature” represents a power that humans only think they have harnessed, but haven’t. The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, King Kong and Godzilla are all examples of this type. An awesome abnormality that we can’t predict and scramble to understand, it strikes without warning – like the shark in “Jaws.” While the obvious inspiration are real ferocious animals, they could also be thought of as embodied versions of natural disasters – hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
“The created monster,” like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, is the monster we have built and believe we can control – until it turns against us. His descendants are the robots, androids and cyborgs of today, with their potential to become all too human – and threatening.
James Cameron’s Terminator is a descendent of Frankenstein. Credit: Stephen Bowler/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
“The monster from within” is the monster generated by our own repressed dark psychology, the other side of our otherwise bland and blameless human nature (think the Mr. Hyde to our Dr. Jekyll). When nondescript and seemingly harmless young men turn into mass-murdering killers or suicide bombers, the “monster from within” has shown his face.
“The monster from the past,” like Dracula, comes out of a pagan world and offers an alternative to ordinary Christianity with his promise of a blood feast that will confer immortality. Like a Nietzschean superman, he represents the fear that the ordinary consolations of religion are bankrupt and that the only answer to the chaos of modern life is the securing of power.
Zombies: A vague, nameless danger
Recently, our culture has become fixated on the zombie. The recent explosion of zombie films and stories illustrates how fear – while it may be a basic human trait – assumes the shape of particular eras and cultures.
The zombie emerged from the brutal Caribbean slave plantations of the 17th and 18th centuries. They were the soulless bodies of undead slaves who stalked plantations grounds – so the myth went. But director George Romero’s pioneering films, like “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), generalised the figure into an unthinking member of a mass consumer society.
The central distinction between the traditional monsters – such as the Frankenstein monster, Dracula or Mr Hyde – is that the zombie exists primarily as part of a group. Unlike earlier monsters, who all stand alone, even in a kind of grandeur, one zombie is barely distinguishable from another.
What might the horrific image of mindless hordes out to eat our brains represent in the 21st century? It could symbolise whatever we fear will overwhelm and engulf us: epidemic disease, globalisation, Islamic fundamentalists, illegal immigrants and refugees. Or it could be something less tangible and more existential: the loss of anonymity and individuality in a complex world, the threat of impersonal technology that makes each of us just another number in an electronic list.
In 1918, German sociologist Max Weber announced the triumph of reason: “There are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play,” he wrote in Science as a Vocation. “One can, in principle, master all things by calculation.”
“The world,” he continued, “is disenchanted.”
Weber may have been a bit optimistic. Yes, we are committed, in many ways, to reason and analytic thinking. But it seems that we need our monsters and our sense of enchantment as well.
Author Leo Braudy discusses his new book ‘Haunted.’
Leo Braudy, Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
