When Helen Bach emailed me that Dennis Hopper died, my somewhat laconic question was “did he ever play in a rock band”. Well, he didn’t but he seemed to find rock roles that, if they were somewhat in the back ground, still were pretty fucking earth shatterring for whatever we consider the image of rock.
1) Rebel Without A Cause (1955) – Defined the rock and roll teenager before the rock and roll existed with James Deans (and Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo -wow, talk about cursed productions) ina leather jacket weeping over his pussy whipped papa. The sorta movie that reflected glory on all around including Hopper as a gang member. Brando showed vulnerability under a fist of rage, Dean under a sulky sadness. Add em up and you’ve got Elvis Presley’s early image.
2) Easy Rider (1969) – You know how you can look at the movies of your youth, say Godard’s 1967 “Weekend” and understand exactly why it changed the way you saw things just about literally. Wel, you can’t do that with “Easy Rider”> God, did it age badly. Still, Hopper and Peter Fonda who went searching for America but instead found Jack Nicholson (easily the best thing about the movie) still, along with Woodstock, is still the visual representation of all things hippie and another rock and roll icon.
3) Apocalyse Now (1979) – Shutterbug Hopper with his “if is in the middle of life” is the end of an era, end of the sixties and in the midst of the charged up, drugged out, fucked up contact players of the sixties paying the price for the curdled dystopia of Vietnam. Ergo, what was left of every rock icon still standing while punk washed it all away.
4) Blue Velvet (1986) – “Fuck you you fucking fuck”. In the middle of aids, ennui, and the “me generation”, Hopper’s villanous Frank Booth was the furthest reaches of the blow addled, synth bombed, rock dead eighties. The eighties are ONLY ABOUT severed ears on the lawns of suburbia.
So I guess it doesn’t matter that Hopper never formed a band, for three deacdes he wasn’t a certain type of rock and roll persona.