With the recent announcement of
Motörhead hard rock legend Lemmy’s demise, came some additional news:
shortly before he died he’d appeared in an advert. Incidentally, this is the
man whose favourite drink, Jack Daniels and Coke, has just been officially
recognised by Food and Beverage Magazine as The Lemmy. So what, you ask, was
his advert for? Perhaps a powerful new brand of sipping whiskey? Maybe a high
voltage migrane pill? Possibly some kind of leather apparel? No, the advert is
for pure, white, wholesome milk.
Of course, celebrities make adverts all the time,
indeed it’s hard not to think of a well known star with the exception of David
Bowie and The Queen who hasn't been involved in some kind of promotional
activity. Oh hang on, just checked, Bowie's done Vittel and Louis Vuitton.
Still nothing for Her Majesty, mind.
But for all the Sylvester Stallone Warburtons
campaigns or Mr T getting aggressive over Snickers, it appears that the golden
goose for ad execs is bagging Wild Men of Rock. Lemmy is just the tip of a
powerchord iceberg.
Perhaps the sadly missed Motörhead hero
thought he had the all clear on dairy products from John Lydon. Nobody
listening to this will ever forget seeing our favourite ex-Sex Pistol prancing
around fields of grazing cattle listing reasons why he liked eating Country
Life butter. He later said he did it to raise the cash to record another album
but the figure he cuts in the adverts suggests he was actually a genuine fan of
the product.
Considerably slimmer, albeit slightly desiccated,
was Iggy Pop, the man who crooned such numbers as Search And Destroy and Your
Pretty Face Is Going To Hell. Pop, a performer famous for regularly cutting
himself open and bleeding all over the stage, was trying to convince us to take
out life insurance. I think you’re now beginning to see a pattern emerging. The
product has to be the opposite of what you’d expect these guys – and they
are all guys – to recommend: Counter-intuitive. These ad execs are
so clever!
The list goes on and the pattern continues: Alice
Cooper, whose wild man image didn’t suffer by tossing a chicken into an excited
moshpit is now a one man promo machine. He’s done the Back To School campaign
for stationary megastore Staples' (“No, I never said school was out forever,
just for summer...), he’s marketed Sky Plus with Ronnie Corbett (“What’ve you
got there little fella?’) he’s flogged Sony TVs (“the last one I threw out of a
window had a Betamax attached to it”) and… well you get the picture.
Making adverts must be in the hard rock contract.
Former Black Sabbath singer and the man who once snorted a line of ants, Ozzy
Osbourne, can sell anything. His slurred brummy buffoonery can be seen shifting
units for Samsung (“That’s black magic, man, I’ve seen that before!”) I Can’t
Believe it’s Not Butter (“Fairy cakes? I’m the Prince of Darkness I wanna make
rock cakes!”) and World of Warcraft (Even more references to being the Prince
of ruddy Darkness).
Never shy of making a few dollars, American
glamrockers Kiss are queuing up to sell us things too, best of which is their
series of Dr Pepper commercials with guitarist Gene Simmons aka Dr Love, in
full make-up, telling us to trust him because he’s a doctor.
Some of these adverts you may have missed but some
you will never see because, oh the insurrection! – they were banned! Step
forward Slash from Guns N Roses who was too dangerous to sell us Mastercard and
Marilyn Manson who was too demonic for Apple. Mind you, I bet if he put his
mind to it Manson could do dairy …
I shouldn’t be surprised at
all this – after all everyone’s got to put food on the table but doesn’t all
this selling detract from the core brand of these artists. Hard rockers should
remain aloof, mean and a bit scary. Shouldn’t they? At least Lemmy only made
the one advert before he went to rock heaven. Oh hang on, news just in, Jack
Daniels have produced a limited edition Motörhead Special Selected Single
Barrel Whiskey. Whatever next? Iron Maiden beer?
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