#The Irish Times | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

8iunie · 2 years ago

Text

Måneskin: ‘People are going to talk s**t about you. It’s part of the game’

From X Factor to Eurovision to interstellar fame, the Italian rockers have turned not being cool into a superpower (posted on 21.01.2023)

Down a video link from Rome, Gen Z’s favourite rock band, Måneskin, are making enthusiastic thumbs-up gestures. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says guitarist Thomas Raggi, in his rich and rococo Italian accent. “We’re gonna vote for Ireland,” agrees frontman Damiano David. “Go for it.”

The Irish Times has just canvassed Måneskin’s opinion about Public Image Limited singer John Lydon’s ambition to represent Ireland at Eurovision 2023. The former Johnny Rotten wants to boldly go where no punk iconoclast has previously ventured by following in the footsteps of Dana, Johnny Logan and Dustin the Turkey.

Johnny Rotten singing for Ireland is, in theory, an absurd proposition. But so is the idea of an Italian rock band in sex-dungeon dungarees conquering Eurovision with lyrics such as “you better hold on to your balls”. Which is exactly what Måneskin achieved in Rotterdam in 2021 with the zinging Zitti e Buoni (“Shut Up and Behave”).

Indeed it is arguable Lydon might not have even considered Eurovision were it not for Måneskin. Squeezed into unforgiving leather trousers, tattoos on proud display, they gatecrashed Rotterdam with red eyes and flared nostrils. In doing so, they refashioned Europe’s pre-eminent cheesefest in their own image. Eurovision has been a lot of things in the past 20 years. It took Måneskin to make it cool.

Since then they haven’t looked back. Måneskin have won Best Rock Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards, supported The Rolling Stones in Las Vegas and covered Elvis’s I Can Dream for Baz Luhrmann’s hit Presley biopic.

Now, they are about to open the most exciting chapter of their career to date with the release on January 19th of their fantastic third album, Rush! It captures the group at their most riotous – so much so that it comes as a shock to learn it was produced by Taylor Swift/Britney Spears collaborator Max Martin. At moments they sound like Queen trapped in a Fellini movie. Elsewhere, they’re straight-ahead punk. At one point they appear to be channelling Rage Against The Machine – hardly a surprise since RATM guitarist Tom Morello guests on new single Gossip.

“We’re trying to play with our own rules. And not the rules that in the past five to 10 years have dominated the music industry,” says David (24), earrings glinting in the harsh studio light.

Måneskin don’t claim to be reinventing the wheel. Still, they are well aware of how much they stand out in a musical landscape dominated by pop.

“We go on TV shows and play rock music. Which is uncommon. We do analogue music, which is uncommon. We are a four-piece band,” says David, radiating lounge-lizard charisma. “There are a lot of things in how we create or project and how we show ourselves… I wouldn’t say it’s unique. It isn’t anything that hasn’t been done before. But it’s unique in today’s environment.”

Måneskin have come along at the perfect moment. Mainstream rock, comatose for a least a decade, is crying out for a recharge. Now the status quo has been upended by a group who make headbanging riffs and cock-a-hoop bass solos seem as fresh and daring as Harry Styles in a dress.

“A lot of people love us because we are showing them something that feels new,” says David. “For a lot of kids, rock music is new.”

It isn’t just the kids. Iggy Pop cameos on Måneskin’s 2021 single, I Wanna Be Your Slave. At Coachella last year, Jared Leto sought them out for a selfie. Chris Martin insisted David have lunch with him on that same trip. People don’t simply like Måneskin – they adore them.

“We get messages where people say, ‘my five-year-old is now obsessed with Rage Against The Machine because he listened to your song,’” says David. “Basically if you want to make it simple: we sound new for many different reasons – even though we are not new.”

Not all new fans are as welcome. After the Eurovision, French president Emmanuel Macron suggested Måneskin be disqualified because of the “fake cocaine” controversy [see below]. One of those rallying to their defence was right-wing politician Giorgia Meloni. She was subsequently appointed prime minister of Italy. The musicians weren’t aware of her intervention on their behalf before The Irish Times brings it up, and would rather Meloni keep her opinions to herself.

“I don’t want support from them,” says Raggi.

Måneskin’s music isn’t explicitly political. But they know where they stand. And it isn’t with Meloni’s populist Brothers of Italy party. Following her election, David took to Instagram to lament Italy’s drift to the right. “Today is a sad day for my country,” he wrote, linking to a story in newspaper La Repubblica.

“I would do it again. One hundred per cent,” he says, shrugging. “I don’t even know what to say. It’s hard not to say something offending [about Meloni and her supporters]. It’s clear that we’re making the same mistakes that we made in the past. Maybe we didn’t study the story well enough. Our generation is not going to make the same mistakes, hopefully. Italy has a very good taste for old-fashioned things. It doesn’t surprise me,” he continues, referring to Italy’s history of supporting right-wing politicians.

The band formed in Rome in 2016. David, Raggi and bassist Victoria De Angelis [who is under the weather and sitting out the interview] knew each other from high school. They met Ethan Torchio, from the suburb of Frosinone, after advertising for a drummer on Facebook.

De Angelis came up with their name. “Måneskin” is Danish for moonlight. The bassist suggested it, in part as tribute to her Danish mother who died when her daughter was 15. From there they had a rapid ascent. A stint busking in central Rome was followed by a tilt at X Factor Italy, where they blitzed their way to the final with molten versions of Somebody Told Me by The Killers and Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand. Then came Eurovision and the global stage.

Måneskin are great fun. But the energy rippling through their music is interwoven with a fascination with the dark side of human nature. Gossip, for instance, interrogates the American dream and finds it wanting. “Welcome to the city of lies/ Where everything’s got a price,” they sing. They also take on Christianity. The Eurovision winner Zitti e Buoni contains the marvellously baroque lyric, “I wrote above a tombstone: ‘In my house there is no God.’”

“None of us is very Catholic. We don’t have that much influence. We have the opposite influence,” says David. “We feel the weight of the church on society, on our country. We see how late we are on many, many things because of the influence of the church. We have this hateful relationship.”

He pauses, at pains not to be misinterpreted. “I would like to make it clear that [Måneskin’s problems] are with the institution of the church. Nothing against religion. It’s a beautiful thing. The institution of the church and the money-laundering and all that… I’ll shut up.”

Eurovision was a baptism for Måneskin. However, their coming-out party threatened to turn sour amid an ersatz scandal over David supposedly taking cocaine. A photograph of the singer leaning over the table in the green room was seized on as evidence of illicit drug use.

The image was beamed around the world. There were calls – from Macron and others – for the group to be stripped of their title. Which is what prompted Meloni’s unwelcome intervention. David passed a drugs test and was cleared of any inappropriate behaviour. By then, though, Måneskin were all over the front pages and the talk of the internet. Did they fear they had blown it?

“We were laughing,” says David. “But we were pissed off. We were not worried about anything. The thing that disturbed me was that we had done something meaningful and great. We were a four-piece rock band from 20 to 22 years old who were breaking the hugest TV show in Europe. This was being overshadowed by some assholes who were not good at accepting the loss. I was pissed off that they had the power to do it. And that people were letting them do it.”

They made peace with the controversy by accepting that it was merely a downside of success. Once you achieve a certain level of celebrity, people will come after you.

“We know that being famous and winning and having a good career leads to criticism,” says David. “People are going to wait for you to make some mistake and talk s**t about you. It’s part of the game. You have to be stronger than it. If you are able to make irony about it and laugh about it… It’s kind of a superpower.”

There have been other controversies. Their performance of Supermodel from the 2022 MTV VMA Awards was heavily edited to conceal De Angelis’s exposed breast (though the cameras still caught David’s bare-bummed chap trousers).

“They have weird censorship rules,” says David of MTV and American broadcasting in general. “You can show guns and people dancing on huge dicks on stage. You cannot show a female nipple. I think it was worse for them than for us. We did our performance. They showed how it doesn’t make sense – their politics.”

Rush! copperfastens Måneskin’s status as the most exciting force in mainstream rock. It confirms, too, that they are magpies, with David drawing on everyone from Freddie Mercury to Kurt Cobain. And from Bono. U2 are adored in Italy and David says that their influence has seeped into his band.

“U2 have been so big it’s impossible not to be influenced. Indirectly, you’re influenced. The idea of the big frontman and blah blah blah. I think that indirectly it has been very strong. Also, putting the political into the music… they really changed that. Made it more common.”

The comparison goes beyond music. U2 were never much bothered about being cool. They never went out of fashion because they weren’t particularly fashionable to begin with. The same is true of Måneskin. From X Factor to Eurovision to interstellar fame, they have turned not being cool into a superpower, as David acknowledges.

“It’s a bit insecure to have this mindset [of wanting to be credible]. The idea that if you go to a pop environment, you’re not rock any more. It’s insecurity. Fortunately we were confident enough of our music and our identity to not think a stage or a TV show could change us. In fact, it didn’t happen. We brought ourselves everywhere we went. It was always the right thing to do. It is the only advice we could give to anybody. Bring yourself to the table. Don’t try to conform.”

Writer: Ed Power for The Irish Times

#måneskin #maneskin #article #interview #january 2023 #my posts 💫#the irish times

43 notes · View notes

back-and-totheleft · 6 months ago

Text

From war hero to war crimes

In a hotel room in Soho, the American historian Peter Kuznick starts telling me about the origins of his and Oliver Stone's television series, The Untold History of the United States . Stone himself, tired after a day of interviews, is pottering around the room, asking the PR questions about the previous journalists, ducking out to the bathroom. Later, he wanders over to his PA to request some chocolate.

“I was teaching a class called Oliver Stone’s America,” says Kuznick, which seems to be Stone’s cue to sit down.

“That’s me,” he booms. Over the course of the interview he controls the flow of conversation but regularly passes questions to his collaborator when he feels Kuznick has a better handle on the subject – “Peter, tell Patrick about . . . ” he’ll say.

"I've been using Oliver's films to structure a history class since 1996," continues Kuznick. "We've been talking about politics ever since. In 2007, we were sitting down for dinner and he said 'Peter let's do it. Let's do an hour-long documentary about the origins of the cold war and [left-leaning US vice-president] Henry Wallace and the bomb.' When I saw him two week later, it was a 10-hour series."

Using Stone's films to structure a history course makes sense, particularly if you come from the left. No matter what the subject, a more shadowy, manipulative US emerges from his work: war (Platoon ); foreign policy (Salvador); media (Natural Born Killers); economics (Wall Street ; politics (JFK, Nixon, W); or the war on drugs (Savages). Oliver Stone's America is startlingly at odds with the nation's heroic self-image.

"I would admit that that's true," says Stone and laughs. The Untold History of the United States argues, through narration by Stone, that the USSR rather than the US beat the Nazis – "Britain and America fought 10 German divisions combined in that war; the USSR fought 200 German divisions," says Kuznick – that it was unnecessary to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, and that since the war, America has been a trouble-making busy-body.

Controversial as some of this might be to Americans, Stone agrees that these aren't exactly "untold" views and they're certainly not surprising for Europeans. "I grew up a little bit in Europe in the 1950s because my mother is French," he says. "They always criticised America as a rich country. Then Vietnam was a huge issue in Europe, and during the Iraq war there was huge protest in Europe. In America, France and Germany were dismissed as old Europe. French fries had to be changed to 'freedom fries'.

“The attitude was that old Europe was always cranky and always critical of the US and that we would have to act alone. That’s what gave Bush the sense of empowerment, that entitlement that we don’t need anybody, that we can do it by ourselves. Your prime minister unfortunately was Bush’s puppy dog,” he adds.

I point out that Tony Blair wasn’t my prime minister, but Stone doesn’t hear me.

“If Blair had held out and gone the other way with Bush it might have made more of a dent,” he says and shakes his head sadly. “And what’s going on now in Europe? Have you become deadened to the American use of force around the world? Have you in some way given up, tired of fighting this beast for years, just content they won’t start World War III? There’s this resignation that comes over the older person who says ‘well, the US, if it weren’t them it would be somebody worse’.”

Stone’s own politics have not been made gentle by age, but he didn’t start out as a radical. “I was born conservative, a Republican,” he says. “My father was a colonel in the war. I served in Vietnam and my French grandfather was in the French army. I believed in fighting communism. I wasn’t radicalised by the war. I came home numbed. It took another 10 years of evolution to get to a place where I went to Central America and saw that what was going on was wrong. American troops were there. It was Vietnam redux.

"That's when I made Salvador [set during the Salvadorian civil war]. There's a speech by Jimmy Woods to the military attaché saying, 'Why are you going around the world making these Frankenstein monsters? You give us these dictators, these death squads, these mad men who in the name of capitalism and free markets destroy their fellow citizens.' "

So the scales fell off your eyes? "It started after Vietnam," he says, "the scales coming off the eyes. Watergate was certainly powerful. As were the Church Committee hearings revealing the CIA black ops all over the world, those interventions we didn't know about but always suspected. By Salvador , I was committed to making a more progressive kind of film."

He talks about Richard Boyle, the photojournalist, cowriter and subject of Salvador , "a fiery Irish man who took the scales off my eyes about Central America. He'd been to Cambodia and Vietnam. He was as crazy as they come, always looking for trouble spots. Jimmy Woods caught only about three quarters of how crazy he was – the kind of madness that drives the world, willing to sacrifice his life again and again. He had a crazy Irish attitude."

Stone looks at me apologetically (he now realises I’m Irish). “Maybe I’m being clichéd, but I saw him take on men three times his size in a knuckle fight. He’d make big men cry.”

Stone likes heroic outliers. The hero in early episodes of the Untold History is Henry Wallace, the left leaning vice-president who wanted the 20th century to be "the century of the common man".

Wallace would have succeeded Roosevelt had he not been ousted in favour of Truman as vice-president towards the end of the war. Stone and Kuznick maintain that this is a key moment. Wallace’s America, they suggest, would have been more egalitarian and less militarised. It would not have dropped the bomb on Japan, and would have adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards the USSR.

“I’d like to have lived in Wallace’s America,” says Stone. “Most people wanted Wallace back as vice-president. The coup happened among the Democratic party bosses. It’s an instance where mass movements didn’t work. The atomic bomb is another instance. People did not vote on the atomic bomb. On the other hand, the New Deal is something people voted on.”

Kuznick and Stone are fans of popular, democratic, ground-up movements and hope that in some small way their series might inspire some new ones. "I want to make history come alive for our young people," says Stone. "History is fascinating but they get bored with it. And the reason I think they get bored with it, in America anyway, is they hear the same narrative over and over and don't believe it. It's a Disney world kind of bullshit. If you let more of a horror story come out, it's juicier and I think the kids go 'Yeah, I believe we did that'. I think we have to admit to the horror and terror we bring to the rest of the world, to the peasants of Central America or to the peasants of Indonesia. "

“When people do admit it, it’s as an isolated incident, an aberration,” says Kuznick, tapping the table gently. “Not a recurrent pattern.”

“The atomic bomb is a crucial founding myth in the US,” says Stone. “Once you have that muscle, you never give it up. Unfortunately, it gave us a great sense of self-love. Might became right so everything we did was judged as right and good. We enacted a morality code for ourselves that made us exempt from criminal behaviour. The Iraq war was universally trashed as an illegal, useless war, but even US liberals just see it as a mistake. ‘Bush lied to us.’ Well I think we really did something evil there. We took a whole society and rendered it. Americans don’t know the effects of what they do. [Former secretary of defence] Robert McNamara was stunned in the 1990s to hear that 3.8 million had died in Vietnam; he always thought it was a lesser figure. Peter asks his classes how many Vietnamese died in Vietnam.”

“Some of them guess as low as 10,0000,” says Kuznick.

"People don't know," says Stone. "There's a walking away from things that only the atomic bomb allows you to do. Because you have the might, you don't have to feel bad or pay for your sins."

In this regard, Untold History is an important corrective. Sometimes, however, it seems to suggest that nefarious US foreign policy might be equivalent to Soviet repression and mass murder (they stress extenuating circumstances for some Soviet atrocities). They respond to this allegation wearily.

"We portray Stalin as a tyrant," says Kuznick. "We don't pull our punches that Stalin was a tyrant. But he's the tyrant who saved Britain. We'd be speaking German here today if not for the Soviet Union. "

“Stalin was the bogeyman that allowed the US to arm itself and militarise the globe,” says Stone, before turning to his PA. “We’re getting locked into the Soviet issue because the journalists have only been sent the first two chapters.” (For the record, I’d watched the first six chapters.) “Earlier someone called it 1950s propaganda.”

Stone is a little annoyed, perhaps understandably. He has spent five years making this series but further years thinking about it. "For me this is a lifetime's work," says Stone. "It's the culmination of all the films. Go back and watch them and you'll see."

-Patrick Freyne, "From war hero to war crimes," The Irish Times, Apr 17 2013

#Oliver Stone #untold history of the United States #Peter kuznick #the Irish times #history

0 notes