Moammar Gadhafi: Rock Star, by Paul Shirley

The definition of evil incarnate has changed. In recent weeks, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has been granted the informal title of Despot du Jour.

While justified*, Gadhafi’s new classification also serves a purpose in the news cycle. As Gadhafi is made into a cartoonish bad guy, our brains – exhausted by the moral see-saw of debate over Medicare reform and public unions – are given a respite. We allow ourselves to assume that Gadhafi is simply “evil,” in the way that Biblical and mythical characters are evil. We don’t have to think about how Gadhafi became Gadhafi.

In the process, we forget something we know, but don’t want to face: none of us is incorruptible and, given absolute power over an entire country, many of us would behave in a way that, if not the same as Gadhafi, would be strikingly similar.

We do not want to hear this. We want to think that the only explanation for Moammar Gadhafi’s behavior is insanity, or possession by demons, or really, really bad parenting. We want to think that the person is the problem, not the situation. We want to think that if we were given power, we would do it differently.

But history begs to differ. History gives us few examples of dictators/monarchs/autocrats of the benevolent variety.

Despite the historical evidence, even now, you’re thinking Yeah, but come on, I’d never be that bad.

Are you sure?

–

A few weeks ago, I drove to Lawrence, Kan. to see a vaguely talented rock band from Austin called the Strange Boys play at the Jackpot Saloon. Before The Strange Boys could take the stage, three other acts plied us with their musical talents. The first was a local group with a fantastic guitar section. The band’s lead singer was not as fantastic. He put forth what basketball coaches would call a “solid effort,” but he could no more carry a tune than I can carry a bulldozer.

As I watched him flail, foam plugs firmly squished toward my eardrums, I thought about how this could have happened.

I imagined something like this…

Week one:

Band member 1: “Jeremy, dude, you like to sing, right?”

Jeremy: “Kind of. I’m just so bad at it though.”

Band member 2, frowning: “That’s bullshit. You’re fine.”

Jeremy, laughing: “I’m really not, but thanks for saying that.”

Band member 1: “Whatever, man. Just give it a shot. We don’t have anyone else.”

Jeremy, still laughing: “I appreciate it, fellas, but I’ll be good on guitar.”

Band member 3, coughing: “Thing is, bro, we’ve got four guitar players and no singer. And it’s your equipment anyway. I think you deserve it.”

Band member 2, nudging Jeremy: “Chicks dig lead singers, dude.”

Jeremy, smiling: “That’s true.”

Three weeks later, the Lancaster Four plays it first show. Jeremy remains skeptical about being the lead singer thanks to tepid crowd support and a serious dearth of gigs.

After six weeks, Jeremy begins to come around. He’s gotten his first backstage blowjob and he’s starting to notice how girls’ eyes perk up when he tells him he’s “you know, the lead singer, for now.”

By ten weeks, he’s dropped the “for now.”

At sixteen weeks, Jeremy’s changed his Twitter name from @JLancaster2524 to @Lancrooner.

At twenty-one weeks, Jeremy is introduced by his bandmates to Stephen, who’s finally disentangled himself from a lengthy breakup with his second band, local legends The Crabapple Affair, and who is being touted as “exactly what we’ve been waiting for” by Three of the Lancaster Four. Jeremy shakes Stephen’s hand coolly.

Twenty-two weeks after the meeting that led to his singing career, Jeremy is rifling through the bathroom vanity during a house party inside Stephen’s apartment.

Twenty-three weeks in, Jeremy shakes his head as the rest of his band, now crestfallen, explains how Stephen had his larynx broken after he drunkenly accused his roommate of stealing his girlfriend’s birth control pills. Later, at home, Jeremy celebrates with a bottle of Dewar’s and the girl he’s been having sex with that week.

Facing band mutiny at twenty-six weeks, Jeremy threatens to “take his shit and go, then” if the other members of the band don’t “quit their bitching.”

Twenty-nine weeks after the initial meeting, the Lancaster Four books its first gig that won’t be paid in beer, opening for the opener for Two Door Cinema Club. The Lawrence Journal-World praises the Lancaster Four’s “DIY sound.”

After thirty weeks, Jeremy has had more sex than he had had in his previous 22 years of existence.

At a thirty-six week band meeting, Jeremy pre-empts the revolt he knows is coming with an introduction of his own. Each member of the Lancaster Four tries heroin. Each member of the Lancaster Four loves heroin.

Weeks thirty-seven and thirty-eight are lost chasing the dragon, but by week thirty-nine, the creative juices are flowing and, thanks to a drug cocktail that would make Slash wince, the Lancaster Four fall into a studio and cut their first album. Jeremy still can’t sing, but his voice somehow works with the trippy melodies his “friends” are building.

In week forty-six, Jagjaguwar Records calls and offers the Lancaster Four a record deal and tour support for a twelve-date West Coast swing.

In week fifty-one, the Lancaster Four chart a single. Jeremy sleeps with his bassist’s girlfriend.

At week fifty-four, the band is outgrowing its roots. Jeremy suggests a move to Los Angeles. His bandmates agree and the group rents a Culver City-adjacent bungalow for $2200 a month.

During a show at the Troubadour in week fifty-nine, Jeremy introduces the band to Tommy Lee.

No one remembers weeks sixty through sixty-two.

Despite Jeremy’s still-shoddy voice, the tour (weeks sixty-four through sixty-six) is a success. Jagjaguwar funds an East Coast swing and sets a recording date. Everyone in the band not named Jeremy can’t stand its lead singer. But in private, each young man will say that he’s “not sure they would have gotten this far without him.”

The Lancaster Four finally break up some six years later. Their first album, Slamcaster, called “brave” by Pitchfork and “ballsy” by NME, sold 12,000 copies, mostly in San Diego. A second album proved harder to come by, thanks to rehab for the guitarist and Jeremy’s erratic behavior.

When the end finally comes, the rest of the Four have to lock Jeremy out of their rehearsal space. As he is walking away, cries of, “You’ll never do anything without me,” can be heard.

–

Moammar Gadhafi was probably once scared of the dark, just like all of us. He probably forgot his homework one day. He probably got nervous the first time he kissed a girl. And he probably thought he was doing a good thing when, in 1969 and at the age of 27, he led a coup against the Libyan monarchy.

Even more probable is this: if you or I or your postman or your mother or your father or your priest or your pimp were given access to the same level of power as Moammar Gadhafi, we’d likely behave in some equally bizarre way. We might not behave exactly like Moammar Gadhafi, or Benito Mussolini, or Fidel Castro, or Silvio Berlusconi, or Vladimir Putin, or Slobodan Milosevic, or Robert Mugabe, but we’d probably do something the rest of the world considered evil. This isn’t just my opinion: this is what happens every time. Every dictator says, “Elections within the year. We just have to iron out a few things first.” The elections never come. And the ironing-out usually involves silencing dissent, cleansing an ethnic group, or ferreting tax money out of the country and into Switzerland.

That doesn’t mean that ruthless dictators like Moammar Gadhafi shouldn’t be vilified. Or that anyone is required to feel sympathy for Gadhafi.

What it does mean is that we should be careful how far we go with the mental shortcuts we take. Moammar Gadhafi is a bad man. He might be a crazy man. He could be the worst man in the history of the world. But whether we like it or not, if you or I were in total control of a country for 42 years, we would probably be pretty evil, too.

As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely, whether in rock bands or totalitarian regimes.

There’s a lot of Jeremy in all of us. There’s a lot of Moammar, too.

*Mostly. It shouldn’t be forgotten that, as recently as 2009, David Blair wrote in the Daily Telegraph that, “In his four decades as Libya’s ‘Brother Leader’, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi has gone from being the epitome of revolutionary chic to an eccentric statesman with entirely benign relations with the West.” Or that, as recently as the April (2011) issue, Conde Nast Traveler named Libya as one of its Top 15 Places To See Right Now.

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