LaSalle’s past as a pop music reviewer.
Ask Mick LaSalle:
Dear Mick: Yesterday, I picked up a used Joan Jett LP while shopping at a record store. It contained a clipping of your review from Aug. 24, 1987, of a Joan Jett show at the Stone. Well done. Do you still write about music?
Brian Ware, San Francisco Dear Brian: Wow. I thought that happened 20 years ago. I didn’t realize it was 30. I probably ended up reviewing that because I really liked Joan Jett, and the rock critic, Joel Selvin, said it was OK. What’s curious, though, is that Selvin was there, too, and I remember this because afterward he took me backstage to meet her. It’s funny about meeting famous people. The impact has everything to do with previous history — not their history, but your history with them. I’ve interviewed big stars and have definitely been aware of the bizarre electricity of being in the room with them, but even so, I’ve often felt little impact.
But if it’s somebody that I’ve admired for years, who has taken up space in my head, then there’s a certain “ahomina homina homina” Ralph Kramden thing going on. In the case of Joan Jett, she’s only a year older than I am, but I’d been buying her records since I was 17, so I could barely get a word out. That was a fun night. Anyway, in those days, I used to sometimes sub for Selvin, when he didn’t want to do something, because I was a young guy and knew what was going on in music. I couldn’t do that now. I think the last pop music concert I went to was Eminem in 2005. Good Morning Mick: What are your thoughts on the plastic surgery so many actresses have had? I imagine lots of actors are also doing it; it’s just not quite as obvious to me, or I haven’t seen enough of them.
Rich Sigberman, Corte Madera Good Morning Rich: This will probably be longer than you want, but I see it this way: Newborns look alike. They look so much alike they have to wear little bracelets that say who they are. And 100year-olds tend to look alike — same hair color, same skin tone. But somewhere in the middle, we human beings throw off just enough youth to look fully like ourselves and fully at our best before we start getting dragged into the ditch of aging. Now for different people, the peak comes at different times. But most people end up looking their best when they’re somewhere between, say, 30 and 47.
And having been at your best, it really feels lousy to start losing your looks to some process that feels entirely impersonal, that feels as though it has nothing to do with your true inner self, because it doesn’t. I feel this myself. And if I feel this — if I mind not looking as gorgeous in my vacation photos as I did 10 years ago — I can only imagine how this must feel to people whose livelihood and identity depend on their appearance, particularly actresses, who get it worse than anybody. So I understand this emotionally, and I understand the economic imperative, and I don’t have much judgment about it.
But I don’t like it. And I particularly don’t like the way it’s done in Hollywood. Women are beautiful in their 40s, but American actresses are getting pressured into face-lifts or at least injections in their late 30s, which is beyond insane. Men don’t have it as bad, and sometimes when they do get work done — usually in their 50s — they actually look better. So I’m not a purist on this. If I could take a pill and look like I’m 40 for the rest of my life, I’d do it. But I do believe it’s completely lunatic and aesthetically twisted and even culturally damaging for people in public life to feel that they should even consider this before they’re 50. I called a book I wrote “The Beauty of the Real,” because I do think reality is beautiful. And it is — until it’s not.