Do recording artists lose their edge as soon as they have kids/settle down?

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i'm inclined to think yes....you can probably get away with getting married and STILL retaining an edge to your character and your art (hi Jack n Meg) but having kids seems to fuck that up completely (hi The Beatles, Richard Ashcroft, possibly Bobby G and er, everyone really)...welll you cant take someone seriously as a debauched rock n roll merchant (or arguably a seriously driven innovator in their field) if they're popping down to IKEA at the weekend in the Previa with the rugrats can you? i guess its because once you settle down and raise a family you actually care about you lose that angst-ridden energy that excited so many people when you first bust onto the scene

pretty obvious i guess but are there exceptions? name me some musicians who DIDNT just start treating it as a job to secure their kids' future when life finally worked out for them...who was still pushing things forward musically as well as pushing the prams and pushchairs?

― blueski, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Treating it as a job = not pushing things forward musically?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 23 August 2002 19:06 (twenty-three years ago)

Jeff Tweedy started work on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot after his second child was born.

― hstencil, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:06 (twenty-three years ago)

i guess its because once you settle down and raise a family you actually care about you lose that angst-ridden energy that excited so many people when you first bust onto the scene

I'm guessing some would argue that Thom Yorke provides an exception (though clearly not all).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 August 2002 19:06 (twenty-three years ago)

yeh i thought about Yorke but i suspect his next work wont be half as angsty or abstract - they did say there were missing guitars after all

i've really not heard enough Wilco to comment about them but i'd be surprised if they were actually doing anything that 'exciting' or 'different' as opposed to just nice and competent...but i guess i shouldnt judge em without hearing more

― blueski, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Now I'm in the precarious situation of defending Wilco, a band I don't even like, but here goes: Tweedy could've easily just re-made A.M. and Being There for his entire career (or Anodyne for that matter), but has gone further out (relatively speaking) with the onset of age, marriage and two kids.

― hstencil, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:22 (twenty-three years ago)

check out "Suite for Susan Moore and Damion: We Are One, One, All in One" by Tim Hardin and then rethink your post

― steve k, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually, wait a minute -- David Bowie's first son was born in 1970 or something, and the decade after that was one genius godlike album after another. So there. ;-) Of course, he was on coke half the time...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 August 2002 19:24 (twenty-three years ago)

if you're not quite sure you HAVE a kid then maybe the rule doesn't apply

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 23 August 2002 19:26 (twenty-three years ago)

another idea is that people like Bjork, Tricky and GOldie all have kids but they're not in settled relationships with the people they had those kids with and they continued to make stuff that pushed the envelope (well at least Bjork DEFINITELY did) after parenthood...so maybe its just all down the happy family situation giving you a sense of completion and contentment so you're less motivated to keep pushing things

the jury is out on people like Courtney Love as well. she still knows how to rock but of course she went all Hollywood and got happier once the grief had subsided - looking out for Frances Bean's future perhaps...this is Marshall Mathers' main motivation as well i think - and again, neither's kid came out of a happy fulfilling relationship...

― blueski, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Eminem before fatherhood: "Infinite".
Eminem after fatherhood: well yeah.

― Nate Patrin, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:27 (twenty-three years ago)

she went all Hollywood

I think she did that in 1985.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 23 August 2002 19:29 (twenty-three years ago)

i think i'd just be wary of any recording artist out there with a really stable marriage and kids as a general rule heh heh heh...but then again loads of more anonymous electronica acts i listen to live relatively uneventful, peaceful lives like that but then they're not presenting themselves as being the 'spirit of rock n' roll' unlike Liam Gallagher or someone

― blueski, Friday, 23 August 2002 19:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Should we open up the whole Sonic Youth can of worms once more?

― Keith Harris, Friday, 23 August 2002 20:39 (twenty-three years ago)

― Nate Patrin, Friday, 23 August 2002 20:40 (twenty-three years ago)

edge = not throwing cokecan ringpull into receptacle supplied and thinking that makes you mayakovsky

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 23 August 2002 20:52 (twenty-three years ago)

sometimes i dont even coax the ringpull off at all - i'm bringing the system down from within

― blueski, Friday, 23 August 2002 21:06 (twenty-three years ago)

someone told me julian henry can't write sad hit parade songs any more because he is happy, married and with children. tragic.

― keith, Saturday, 24 August 2002 00:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Lennon was married with a kid pretty early on in his career, though since he was apparently unhappy about it and spent more time on the road/in the studio than at home, 'settled down' probably isn't the right phrase.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 24 August 2002 07:25 (twenty-three years ago)

exactly, tho you could say he still had that youthful spirit in his lyrics with his socio-political songs. i've always wondered if things like 'Instant Karma' were regarded as trite at the time or whether people found them really exciting and reverential...

― blueski, Saturday, 24 August 2002 07:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom Waits got wierder and more extreme the more kids he got.

― Baxter Wingnut, Sunday, 25 August 2002 07:01 (twenty-three years ago)

if they were all illegitimate spawn then i see how that might happen

― blueski, Sunday, 25 August 2002 10:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Yoko got much better after she settled down.

― B:Rad (Brad), Sunday, 25 August 2002 10:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Macy Gray.

― felicity (felicity), Sunday, 25 August 2002 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

She had an edge?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 25 August 2002 18:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Lou Reed not having kids = best decision he ever made. What about performers who go on tour immediately after having spawned their first-born: I caught Neil Hannon and Keigo Oyamada on what Hannon termed as the "guilt trip". Serge Gainsbourgh made a classic with his daughter "Lemon Incest" and Nico was gold with child--so maybe the criteria should be, as long as they aren't too concerned with their children's well-being, sure. I

― Mary (Mary), Sunday, 25 August 2002 23:55 (twenty-three years ago)

No less of one -- she's had a kid the whole time.

― felicity (felicity), Monday, 26 August 2002 00:49 (twenty-three years ago)

How many kids did Screamin' Jay Hawkins have? Something like 51?

― hstencil, Monday, 26 August 2002 17:06 (twenty-three years ago)

Lou Reed not having kids = best decision he ever made.

... if only for their sake. Although if he had been too busy taking care of them, perhaps we would have been spared the VU reunion / Set The Twilight Reeling / Ecstasy?

― Dave M. (rotten03), Monday, 26 August 2002 17:10 (twenty-three years ago)

as i believe we establoshed. you can have kids and still be cred, you can be married and still be cred - but if you have both and you're happy then you're pretty much over

― blueski, Monday, 26 August 2002 18:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Established notions ov "cred" IE tedious old I R R3B3L mystique as push0r3d by NME since 1974 at least = RUBBISH. I believe that "we" have established NOTHING. When the fuck R Ashkr0ft 0r |30|3|3'/ G ever had an "edge" Xcept in thee most cliched & hackneyed way = a mystery to me. I mean fucking TOYAH has more "edge" than rixchard ass-croft, right?

― |\|0|2|\/|/-\|\| |*|-|/-\'/, Monday, 26 August 2002 18:50 (twenty-three years ago)

Lou Reed not having kids = best decision he ever made.

... if only for their sake.

That's what I meant. Though I do respect him for realizing that he is perhaps not father material.

Although if he had been too busy taking care of them, perhaps we would have been spared the VU reunion / Set The Twilight Reeling / Ecstasy?

Surely, perhaps he would have been to self-conscious to write "Sex with your Parents"

I wish I could have been spared from POEtry.

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 26 August 2002 22:30 (twenty-three years ago)

How about musicians who are overgrown children?

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo (cindigo), Monday, 26 August 2002 22:52 (twenty-three years ago)

however you felt about Ashcroft's early work, there's a noticeable decline of late, what edge and gravity there was seemed to fade - probably a combination of finally gaining recognition and success, getting married and having kids with his 'luvverly' wife Kate and generally just getting older and understanding life more, acquriing wisdom thru experience and losing a lot rage and energy in the process - happens to most people and why not i suppose? but who wants to listen to music like that unless you're in the same boat? career rock sucks, maybe i'll enjoy it in 15 years tho...

― blueski, Tuesday, 27 August 2002 09:29 (twenty-three years ago)

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