“The problem,” says Clark, “is that you’re a fucking idealist, and I’m a whore.”
I’m too tired to get all up in arms again and make it artful because Dick Clark wasn’t about art – Google Brad Laidman and Dick Clark for the things I’ve written about him in the past.
Here is what I posted on facebook – it’s not grammatically correct or well thought out. Dick Clark doesn’t deserve that.
I knew it would happen but it’s killing me today that Dick Clark is somehow being praised as a great liberator of black music when in fact he was largely responsible for providing the dead years of rock and roll with Frankie Avalon Fabian and Bobby Rydell – when the Payola hearings happened Dick Clark was 100 times more guilty than Alan Freed but Dick Clark promised to stop being so naughty and profited on the white backlash while Freed who truly loved the music died penniless – Do some research today Dick Clark was a parasite to real artists – he insisted on lip syncing, he tried to kill Soul Train by ripping it off with his own sterile version until it was protested off the air – he created the American Music Awards so that popular became more important than artful – all he ever cared about was making money he didn’t have an artistic bone in his body and anyone who had said good things about him in the past only did so because he was so powerful that they had to do so to protect their careers – i don’t wish death on anyone, but i’ve always been amazed that supposedly the truth has to take a vacation on the day you die
Jeez, man. Dick was bad but there were worse. A lot worse.
Like all those white (mostly Jewish) managers who ripped off black artists back from the 1940s on. They didn’t give them shit as far as royalties go and if somebody complained, they’d just call on their mob connections to go and take care of it.
Yeah Dick was a dick alright. But he knew how to make money. No question about it.