On performing artists who become stars

Extract from: 
Simon Napier-Bell talks to Lesley-Ann Jones in the Sunday Express, February 7th, 2010

... "That’s why I say that being an artist is a cry for help. All artists are terribly insecure people. They are desperate to get noticed. They are constantly seeking an audience. They are forced to be commercial, which I think makes their ‘art’ all the better."

"Plus", he adds, "all artists have the same story. When I first saw Eric Clapton, I thought 'he isn’t an artist, he’s just a musician'. In John Mayall’s band he played with his back to the audience, he was so shy. But as he evolved, I saw that he was an artist. And when you look into his background, he had the missing father, a sister who was really his mother and a grandmother he thought was his mum."

"Artists always have an abusive childhood, at least in terms of emotional deprivation. So they have this desperation to succeed, to get love and attention. All the others just drop out eventually. Because I’m telling you, it’s absolutely horrible to be a star."

"It’s nice to get a good table in a restaurant, of course, but then you have to put up with people coming up to you every 30 seconds throughout the meal – we’re not even stars, and it’s happening every five minutes to us - so that you can hardly get it eaten. It’s a nightmare. Yet stars are perfectly happy to put up with that kind of thing. It comes with the territory. Stars are usually utterly charming with new people but there’s a dark side. When they’ve taken everything they possibly can from someone, they have no further use for them, and they spit them out."

"I’ve been spat out", he admits, "but I couldn’t give a toss, to be honest. I understand these people, I know what makes them tick. It’s no use getting upset or angry about being treated unkindly or cruelly by some star. They are what they are. There is a certain psychological damage that runs through every one of them, and I guarantee that if you look through their childhoods, you will find it."

"What else makes you so desperate to win applause and adulation? So desperate that you’ll lead a lousy life that you can never really call your own? No normal person would ever want to be a star, not for any money. No one knows this better than I do. I’ll tell you who has the best job in the world: I do. I have money in the bank and the gift of the gab, which has earned me the right to get up to no good and hang out with superstars, without ever having any desire to be one of them. What could be better than that?"