Bob Dylan has been a world-renowned star for some 60 years. Chappell Roan has been one for about six months.
New to the game or an old vet, every celebrity struggles in a way you and I can’t imagine. “Fame,” wrote clinical psychologist and journalist Donna Rockwell, “is a dangerous drug.”
Way back in the 1980s when Madonna burst onto the global scene, she was quoted as saying she dreamed of becoming a star as a small child, and had dedicated her life to that end ever since. She didn’t mention dreaming of being a singer or a dancer or an actor or a songwriter or any of the things she eventually became famous for. No. She dreamed only of being famous. That other stuff was detail.
We hear similar things all too often when some loon opens fire in an elementary school or takes a shot at a political candidate or explodes a bomb outside a public building. Investigators, sifting through the suspects’ diaries and social media posts, find that he’d done his awful deed because he wanted the world to know who he was.
The world. Eight billion-plus people.
I might add to Rockwell’s characterization of renown that it is also powerful. Perhaps it’s as potent as heroin or fentanyl. Maybe even more so.
So alluring is fame that people happily devote their lives to getting and keeping it. I doubt anybody out there taking her or his first hit of fetty thinks, “Golly gee, I hope I get addicted to this shit real soon!”
Addiction is the unintended consequence of using for a lot of mind- and mood-altering substances. When it comes to that other dope, fame, addiction all too often is the goal.
I’ve often wondered why anybody would want to be President of the United States. You can’t take a walk, on a whim, down to the corner for an ice cream cone. You can’t spent an aimless Saturday afternoon browsing at a flea market. You’re constantly surrounded by Secret Service agents, aides, advisors, and hangers-on. For pity’s sake, you can’t even move your bowels in utter private. A whole gang of people is bound to hear your ministrations. Yet, should you be elected POTUS, you’re guaranteed to be one of the two or three most famous people on the planet.
Seems like a crappy trade-off.
I bring this up because I read this morning that Chappell Roan, the newbie to this fame stuff, just cancelled a big appearance this weekend at a two-city festival called All Things Go. She would have been one of the star attractions, if not the headliner.
When promoters put together a huge shebang like this, they’re banking (literally) on all the scheduled acts showing up. Chappell Roan dropping out is one of the entertainment business’s mortal sins. The show, the saying goes, must go on.
But it won’t with Chappell Roan today and tomorrow.
She announced her withdrawal yesterday, the last minute as it were, on Instagram. She wrote:
I apologize to people who have been waiting to see me in NYC & DC this weekend at All Things Go, but I am unable to perform. Things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I am really feeling it. I feel pressures to prioritize a lot of things right now and I need a few days to prioritize my health. I want to be present when I perform and give the best shows possible. Thank you for understanding. Be back soon xox.
Scads of CR fans’ll be devastated by the news. The promoters likely are chewing their fingernails. When I read about this development I thought, “Good for her!”
The sudden fame that has descended upon the legally-named Kayleigh Amstutz and all the responsibilities and worries that accompany it just might have killed her had she not come to the conclusion that she has to take a break. Seemingly every celebrity memoir includes chapters on the authors’ pill-popping, booze-gulping, needle-plunging self-medication to keep up with the demands of touring and recording, the endless string of personal appearances, and the burden of keeping the shows on schedules because so many people’s livelihoods depend on them.
Celebs from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson to Prince to Lady Gaga gobbled substances to pump up their energy for each show and then to wind down and get to sleep afterward. Lady Gaga, for instance has been quoted as saying:
I was smoking up to 15, 20 marijuana cigarettes a day with no tobacco. I was living on a totally other psychedelic plane, numbing myself completely.
Fifteen to 20 spliffs a day! Jeez, I love my little herbal pastime but 15-20 such nails would last me months! Then again, I don’t have to grapple with the rigors of fame.
Celebrity and its accoutrements indeed are dangerous. I’d say just ask Judy Garland, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Belushi, Matthew Perry, Tom Petty, Chyna, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Chris Farley, River Phoenix, Keith Moon, Brian Jones, and Marilyn Monroe, only they’re dead. And not of old age or cancer or any of the things that kill non-celebrities.
They’re all dead, to be sure, for reasons particular to each of them. But each of them appeared to be coping with that most powerful and dangerous drug, fame. One drug led to another. And another. And…, well, you get the idea.
If Chappell Roan is slamming the brakes on her speeding fame freight train in order to get her life under control, then she is admirable. I don’t know if she’s been doing drugs, legal or not, to handle the pressure but — guaranteed — the allure has to be there.
Perhaps she has concluded that fame really sucks.
