Is it OK to separate the art from the artist?

From left: Van Morrison, Morrissey and Noel Gallagher: Not the first rock stars to reveal themselves to have dodgy politics.

It can be dangerous having heroes. Sometimes they turn out to be arseholes.

Ask any Smiths fan these days. Who knew that Morrissey, who once wanted Margaret Thatcher’s head lopped off with a guillotine, would turn into an embittered, xenophobic bigot?

Meat may have been murder, but so is racism. Not that it seems to bother this charmless man who seems quite comfortable to be the Enoch Powell of indie pop.

The question is – is it OK to separate the art from the artist? Can you still love your copy of “The Queen is Dead”, without feeling like you’re drinking from the same poisoned chalice of malice Morrissey sups from?

It’s a tough one.

And it’s a question that plenty of other music fans are asking themselves about other artists they love in light of the COVD 19 pandemic, which has revealed a new legion of conspiracy theorists, narcissists and nut jobs who have hitched their wagons to the wacko road train that passes for opinion these days.

Ian Brown, lately of The Stone Roses, once sang that “Love Spreads”. According to the self-proclaimed “monkey man”, apparently coronavirus doesn’t.

Brown has gone full tin foil hat, claiming that the pandemic is a conspiracy brought to you by your old pals the Freemasons, wicked scientists and the 5G tech companies all in league with one another to enslave the masses and turn us all into consumer drones.

His latest single, the truly awful “Little Seed, Big Tree”, warns of “masonic lockdown in your town” and an insidious plan to “chip us all/have complete control/the land/the sky/your soul”.

Good grief, Charlie Brown, we’ve come a long way from wanting to be adored to needing to be ignored!

Former Oasis geezer, Noel Gallagher, has always taken an obnoxious pride in being a witty but caustic curmudgeon.

Sure, when he was cranking out terrace anthems and raking up the hits, we were prepared to give him plenty of leg rope. Keep the classics coming Noel, all is forgiven.

Sadly for Noel, though, the hits have dried up and so has his wit. These days, old mate is reduced to barking out anti-mask rhetoric to earn a headline. Gallagher has whinged about germophobes cramping his style with their masks and saying he can’t go for that, no can do.

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“I choose not to wear one. If I get the virus, that’s on me, it’s not on anyone else,” Gallagher said. Not a word about the possibility that if infected, he may spread it to others. No, it’s all about our Noel, innit? Live Forever? Spare me.

Then there is Covidiot per excellence, Van Morrison.

The bitter old boomer is a double threat in these troubled times. Not only is he openly taking the piss about the dangers of coronavirus and encouraging others to ignore public health guidelines, he’s also making new music about it.

As if 2020 hasn’t been tough enough without having to endure another pointless, cabaret soul pastiche from Van Morrison, who hasn’t made a decent record in decades.

“Don’t need the government cramping my style/Give them an inch they take a mile” he croaks out on his latest offering “Born To Be Free.”

Yeah, it’s a tough ask that Noel and Van Morrison are facing. Wearing that piece of cloth across your gob is an heroic act in service of the greater good for those other than yourself.

But these are not the first rock stars to reveal themselves to have dodgy politics. Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that because pop music has aligned itself with progressive ideas ever since Woodstock, on through Live Aid and beyond, that it was without its share of ratbags and reactionaries.

In 1976, Eric Clapton delivered a racist rant at a gig in Birmingham which culminated in him screaming: “Throw the wogs out, Keep Britain white!”

In the same year, David Bowie, then deep in his “Thin White Duke” phase and fresh from an interview with Playboy magazine where he compared Hitler to rock stars, was captured in a photo arriving at London’s Victoria Station seemingly throwing a Nazi salute.

Much closer to home, one time bad boy for love with Rose Tattoo, Angry Anderson, joined the white Australia chorus espousing views on Muslim immigration and engaging in racial stereotyping of the worst kind as he played footsie with the idea of being a far-right politician.

Are you suddenly going to rush to your record collection, pull out your copies of “461 Ocean Boulevard”, “Astral Weeks” or “Heroes” and bin them?

No, and nor should you have to.

Despite these moments, the art lives independently of the artist, in the same way you don’t go to the Louvre with a knife to shiv Picasso’s “Seated Woman” or any of his other masterpieces because of his misogyny.

If anything, reclaiming the art from artists whose values don’t align with yours but whose work somehow does is the best response of all.

Once given, their art becomes ours. It is up to us how to make it matter in a way that their other words and behaviour do not.