America - fuck yeh?

The Pakistani guy at my local gas station never really says much. He's always working and polite enough. And today I walked in and he said: “Fucking Fourth of July, eh?” I just said, “yeh”. I mean, I'm not doing anything this year. I don’t feel much like it. In years previous I've done things. I've gone to cookouts, I've been to the beach, one year a man I'd just met put me on the handlebars of his bicycle and bombed along Santa Monica pier, and I thought my ass was never going to recover. Anyway, today I was in the gas station, and the Pakistani guy continued, “One minute it's communism here, then it's fascism, pick one already, but there's not much America left to celebrate.” Bold, I thought. But I also understood what he was trying to say. America is an extreme place these days. “Those are Ray-Bans?” he said, pointing at the Wayfarers on my face. “Yes,” I replied, “One of the last remaining great things about America.” And we laughed, and the ring of the door went as I closed it behind me.

I love America. In 2004, I lived in a university dorm in Manchester, England, and there was a Muslim kid called Danyal, and Danyal didn't worship anything other than Jimi Hendrix and very bad marijuana. Danyal used to play the introductory riff of “Voodoo Chile” on a guitar – an acoustic guitar – every single night. He was that guy. Danyal loved riffs. And I remember there was one night when he wanted to teach me about the greatest guitar song in all of history. Lo and behold it wasn't Hendrix. It was by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it was called 'Free Bird'. And I wasn't that taken by the first four minutes of it. I thought it was pretty pedestrian, honestly. I didn't know how it was any different from a NASCAR version of The Beatles. In fact, I thought that if Lennon sang it, it might be a bit more interesting. But then the second half took off, and never seemed to stop. I'd never heard anything like it.

This Southern guy was singing about being as free as a bird, and these guitars were circling around each other like fucking hawks in the sky, while the drums thickened and fastened, and as I write now and listen to 'Free Bird', I know that the guitar solo isn't going to stop for at least another three and a half minutes, and will somehow continue to climax about three, four, five times more than anyone could possibly conceive. I remember listening to it and thinking, Fuck! People from the South must really know how to hold their liquor cos these guys sound like they've been knocking it back for days. It told a story to me about people who needed to feel as liberated and mad as this five minutes of unfiltered, unnecessary, but absolutely thrilling rock'n'roll. It told me that there were places in America where people lived very hard just so they could get that wild. And I didn't find it funny. I found it beautiful and exciting. That's part of why I love music.

My love of music is what led me to America. I love the rebelliousness of how it sounds here. Which is why there was a time when I would venture to West Hollywood along Sunset Strip and always asked my Uber driver to play 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' by Def Leppard, who are British, but as hairy as Guns N Roses, and arguably even more pantomime. Def Leppard sound way better on Sunset Boulevard than they do on the North Circular in London. Anyway, if you've never asked your Uber driver to do this loudly with the windows down just because you're alive and you can, I would suggest it. It's a lot of fun. My only reason for going to Sunset Strip would be to go to the Roxy music venue to interview bands in the green room, or to go to the Rainbow bar if I ever was writing stories about certain periods of Angeleno history. The day Lemmy from Motorhead died, for instance, I was the only music journalist who decided the best story would be at the Rainbow. I went to Lemmy's favorite pub, and I spoke to a ton of rock veterans who shouldn't have still been breathing, and it unlocked something no official commemoration of Lemmy could have procured. I think the story ran in Billboard, but the success of it landed me a permanent gig at the LA Weekly. And the people who were there that night were freaks. They're the people who have seen shit, and survived it. One of them was a poet who looked like he should have stopped breathing in 1990. I think his name was Jock. One of my Rainbow bar informants was one of the original members of historic LA punk band Circle Jerks. His name was Lucky. He'd text me if something was happening, ie, if there was some unconfirmed sighting of Axl Rose, or suchlike. I used to go to Lucky's house in the Hills a lot, until it got too weird, and I just stopped answering his texts.

I couldn't tell you why but American pop culture has always made my pulse race. I love Coca-Cola bottles. I love red Corvettes. I love dollar bills, and I love throwing them around at bikini bars. I love the way women wear 501s in this country with a denim shirt, and it looks like they mean business. I love the old man with his stack of pancakes for one at Du-Pars in Studio City at 2am. I love when you're exhausted and don't know how to think or feel or what to say, and suddenly ‘I'm On Fire’ by Bruce Springsteen comes on in your Uber home at night when you're careening over the 101. I love going to a state fair once and never having to go to another one. Actually, that's true of a lot of my American experiences. I joined a band of five 20-something guys in their splitter van in Tampa once for three days while they went on tour, and I never need to go to Florida again. I never need to experience Mardi Gras in New Orleans for GQ while sober ever again. The night I moved to LA, a Haim sister celebrated my arrival by making me my first s'more and I've never had another s'more because s’mores are all sugar, and nothing beats the bitter chocolate of a McVitie's dark digestive.

There's so much about America that I have adored, and continue to love. There's nothing I love more than to get lost here in the strange one-horse towns, and the impossibly huge expanses. There's been an incredible amount of promise and hope, and optimism for me personally. I always said that the reason I moved to the USA in 2014 is because in London I'd tell people my ideas and they'd say “here's the problem with your idea”, and in America they'd say “wow, how can I help?” But the shine has worn off recently. Freedom doesn't feel free for all here to me much at all right now, and certainly events of the last few months have made me question whether America is going forward or backwards.

Beyond anything else, today in Chicago's Highland Park, a gunman shot and killed at least six people and injured dozens more during a mass shooting in a predominantly Jewish area while a July 4th celebration was underway. And the parties have continued across the country despite this. I don't presume to tell Americans how to act, but I will say that there's something up when some communities have to be targeted and lose their lives during a festival of independence, while others continue to celebrate regardless. It’s uncomfortable.

Noah Arbit @NoahArbit

A heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago experiences a mass shooting. Jews across the country are texting each other, waiting with baited breath to find out whether the shooter was targeting us. What it’s like to be Jewish in America in 2022.

Eve Barlow @Eve_Barlow

if you're able to celebrate America today it's probably because you're not someone who needs protecting

You can love America and American culture, and you can appreciate America for all it has to offer, as I do, and still feel sick about what's happening here. Isn't that love? Shouldn't we hope for things to be better in a place we admire? Or is it more important to ignore the signs that this free America might also be stuck, like a broken record?

'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
And the bird you cannot change
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord knows, I can't change