What place for artist biographies in these days of Internet/infonet where investigation sees no stone remains unturned snd no rumour unreported for too long. Each morsel, each tiny bite of info is grabbed by the fan and posted for consumption by an imagined community of other online obsessives. Where once the myths surrounding music would emerge from the pages of the music press, today its fansite discussion boards and blogs that create the rumours, state the presumed facts. Today, like never before stories and lies masquerading behind a mask of truth are published without consideration for reality.
In this collapse between truths and realities, lies and stories any sense of unquestioned history becomes forgotten. What happened less interesting than what might have happened, what was reported as having happened and what is disseminated as the version of how people might have hoped it had happened. Numerous histories emerge, histories on a verge of collapse through loss of critical voice.
Once these biographies attempted to be the conduits of truth. Once they would be the only places to glean the new knowledge and to explore the previously uncovered myth. Today however biographies have a different use. Today biographers are tour guides. We pick our way through the detritus of popular culture, explore the irrelevant, celebrate the facts, but above all attempt to find a path through the multiple versions of history; the histories that exist.
To this versioning of history we add a critical perspective – sure it’s our opinion, but then enjoyment of music was always about opinion. And, with the exception of the toothless music journalism purveyed by some music magazines today, music journos were always the first to express those opinions. This is how it should be.
The biographer can never be outside of the story. We are implicated in every word, every story line followed and every fact written. Our opinions, backgrounds and ambitions colour these texts. We are critics. And this is our work.
The stories, rumours and lies can take care of themselves on the Internet. Biographers should attempt to grasp the burning embers from the fires of historical confusion and culturally locate them in the here and now.
