From ‘Nazi’ Bowie to Nixon-lovin’ Brown: six absurd political gaffes from pop stars
As bad as the world is right now, at least we can console ourselves with the fact that Brandon Flowers is not an international diplomat. During a recent Killers concert in Georgia, Flowers invited a Russian on stage to play drums. When some of the crowd started booing (as they might, what with Russia having invaded in 2008 and now occupying a fifth of Georgia), Flowers doubled down in the most ham-fisted way possible. “You can’t recognise if someone’s your brother?” he asked the crowd. “He’s not your brother? … I don’t want it to turn ugly.” Much of the audience reportedly walked out, which forced the Killers to tweet a statement that began with the line: “Good people of Georgia, it was never our intention to offend anyone!”
But hey, this is nothing new. Since pop music began, pop stars have waded into complicated political issues in the mistaken belief that they can somehow solve everything with their broad platitudes and their nice hair. Here are some more acts with whom the Killers will now forever be associated.
1. Blood, Sweat & Tears, 1970
Blood, Sweat & Tears were one of the biggest groups on earth in the 1960s, playing Woodstock and winning a Grammy for record of the year in the same year that the Beatles released Abbey Road. But things went wrong very suddenly when they agreed to go on a tour of Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. The tour was sponsored by the US State Department. During the Vietnam war. At the time, they had a No 1 album in America. After the tour, their next few albums charted at 10, 32, 72 and 149 respectively.
2. James Brown, 1972
Of all the ways James Brown could have alienated his audience, travelling to the White House to endorse Richard Nixon’s second term as president is certainly up there. Brown already had a relationship with Nixon, having performed at his inauguration in 1969, but the second-term endorsement resulted in a boycott. A year later he attempted to claw back some dignity by releasing a song called You Can Have Watergate, Just Gimme Some Bucks and l’ll Be Straight.
3. David Bowie, 1976
Through the lens of today’s sensibility, it is berserk that David Bowie was allowed to keep his career after the shit he pulled in the mid-70s. There’s a photograph of him appearing to give a Nazi salute outside Victoria station. Although he denied it, his argument wasn’t helped by the cluster of interviews he gave around that same time. In one, he told a reporter he thought “Britain could benefit from a fascist leader”. In another he said: “I believe very strongly in fascism … Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.”
4. Morrissey, 1992
Beloved former Smiths frontman Morrissey caught an enormous backlash after performing with a union jack at the 1992 Madstock festival in London’s Finsbury Park. The move came as he performed a song entitled The National Front Disco, and seemed like a deliberate effort to stir up the uglier elements of the crowd, which as the Guardian reported at the time, “contained a significant fascist/ skinhead element”. In the midst of the controversy, the band Cornershop began burning pictures of Morrissey during their concerts. And it seems to have done the trick, because Morrissey has not said or done anything even remotely regrettable ever since.
5. Lee Ryan, 2001
For a while, the boyband Blue held the space very nicely in a post-Take That landscape. But then 9/11 happened, and Lee Ryan responded by saying the following thing to the Sun: “Who gives a fuck about New York when elephants are being killed? They are ignoring animals that are more important. Animals need saving and that’s more important. This New York thing is being blown out of all proportion.” To the rest of Blue’s credit, two of them told him to shut up while he was saying it. Lee would soon apologise by telling the world: “I’m not good with words and I get mixed up, but I know what I’m saying when I say I’m sorry.”
6. Bryan Adams, 2020
This could have been an entire list of singers who said stupid stuff about Covid (here’s looking at you, Ian Brown!) but for now let’s focus on Bryan Adams. The global pandemic affected him very badly, because it stopped him from being able to play at the Albert Hall. Posting on Instagram, Adams wrote “Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the @royalalberthall, but thanks to some f***ing bat-eating, wet market animalselling, virus-making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold, not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus.” It all kicked off, Adams deleted the post, and then issued the following apology: “No excuse, I just wanted to have a rant about the horrible animal cruelty in these wet markets … and promote veganism.”