Whatever happened to the heroes?
Posted on Friday 12 December, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized
‘No more heroes anymore’ was one of the central punk slogans of 1977; I think I can even remember stencilling it on a T-shirt. Yet all of us inevitably have them, and over the Christmas and New Year period, I’m going to be running over my top ten. I will also offer a brief motivation of why each deserves their placing. By way of a warm up, I’m starting with a list of 50 or so individuals that came into consideration, but didn’t quite make the final cut.
The object of the exercise has not been carefully and objectively to pick out the greatest people who have ever lived; the choices were made in half an hour flat, after a couple of drinks. I see it more as a way of acknowledging those that have inspired me by the political stands they took, the books they wrote, the music they made, the football they played, the pictures they painted, or simply on account of their sheer bravery.
Interestingly, only a handful of those named can rightly be described as saintly individuals; a striking proportion are known to have been dependent on alcohol or drugs, inordinately fond of getting their leg over, and thoroughly abusive in their personal relationships.
Many achieved bad things as well as good, and some are at least as notable for the sheer volume of artistic dross for which they are responsible as for their works of undoubted genius. One was even a dictator, and some of them may not have proved exemplary democrats had they ever been able to achieve power.
Note to passing libel lawyers: nothing in the two previous paragraphs applies to any living person in the Dave Osler Heroes Ranking 2008, all of whom are obviously paragons of both sobriety and familial devotion.
The first draft of the top ten was actually a top eleven. I am extremely aggrieved to have to leave out that great blues harp revolutionary Marion Walter Jacobs, better known as Little Walter. But all of the top ten somehow did seem to have greater claim.
Born in rural Louisiana in 1930, Little Walter was playing the street corners of New Orleans for spare change before he reached his teens. He went to Chicago in 1946, and ended up doing for the humble harmonica what Coltrane did for tenor sax or Hendrix did for the electric guitar, extending the range of the instrument as far as it could possibly go.
He can truly claim to be the greatest ever exponent of what he did, making the harp an integral component of the new urban blues sound of the 1950s. I never tire of listening to his classic recordings.
Sadly, the man was a complete nogoodnik, drinking to excess and picking fights in nightclubs with equal abandon. After one such bar-room brawl, he died of coronary thrombosis in 1968, aged just 37. A true bluesman’s death, if ever there was one.
OK, here – in alphabetical order – are the rest of the close calls: Johann Sebastian Bach, Iain Banks, Jeff Beck, Marc Bolan, Tony Benn, Eric Clapton, Tony Cliff, Ornette Coleman, James Connolly, Robert Cray, Miles Davis, Friedrich Engels, Al Franken, Günter Grass, Jimi Hendrix, Christopher Hitchens, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Wassily Kandinsky, Albert King, Abram Leon, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Richard Littlejohn, John Pilger, PJ O’Rourke, Tom Paine, Greg Palast, Joe Pass, Pablo Picasso, Iggy Pop, Nicos Poulantzas, Maximilien Robespierre, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Scargill, Erik Satie, Spartacus, Joe Strummer, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Gunter Wallraff.
Terribly enough, yes, they are all blokes. That must say something. Comments welcome. Either have a go at some of my choices, guess who’s going to make the top ten, or nominate some of the names you think I missed.
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60 Responses to “Whatever happened to the heroes?”
Henk Sneevliet!
So how are you going to fit Orwell, EP Thompson, Emma Goldman, Marx, Mozart, Tom Waits, Hobsbawm, Gramsci, Aretha Franklin, Mandela, Gandhi, Pele,Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Darwin,Einstein,Mary Wollstonecraft and so on into into your top ten places?
In no particular order:
Nye Bevan, Christopher Hitchens, Charles Darwin, Viv Richards, Charlie Brooker, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Keir Hardie, Johan Cruijff.
A woman hero who deserves more recognition is Tilly Shilling.
Surely there is a self evident case for Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only one of the most dashing and sucessful soldiers of the revolutionary Grand Armee, but his coup consolidated the economic and social gains of the revolution for the peasantry; at a time when the revolution was foundering and rivalries were tearing it apart.
And then, not content with resting on his laurels, Bonaparte continued to spread the revolution across Europ – abolishing feudal legal and social formalities, and breathing the fresh air of revolution into Germany and Italy, and ill-fatedly, Russia.
Napolean remained a hero of britsh republicans throughout the nineteenth century, and when he was briefly brough to Portsmouth on route to st helena (never setting foot ashore) he was greated by thousands of supporters in small boats celebrating him.
Spot on Andy Newman.
Hero of the hour, Muntazer al-Zaidi.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LhrKbgbRQuQ
My hero is George Julian Harney, somehow suspect he’s not in the top ten
Andrew Berry – I name that Chartist in one!
Interesting character Harney, stood against the then Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston in Tiverton in a general election. Despite being very popular with Tiverton workers he got no votes in the election (due to the property qualification). I think he edited a chartist paper also, can’t remember which though.
Lobby,
You wuz right and I wuz wrong.
I am still, nevertheless, the only Pabloite in the village.
Having just watched it my heroine of the moment is Marjane – in the animated film Persepolis – the kind of gal who stands up to Islamicist reaction. Mind you that must make her hated by the Islamophiles who think they are leftist.
Jim L It was the Northen Star