il ragno
11-10-2008, 11:21 AM
http://www.jewsrock.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=words.view&wordid=110BFCB6-2382-430D-907D5165307D8C29
Dropping the Baum: The Real Names of Jewish Rockers
by Franklin Foer
The history of punk could be told (counterfactually) as a Zionist parable.
In the mid-70s, a band out of Forest Hills called the Hymans cut a stripped-down eponymous album, The Hymans. Crooning about Nazis, the Hymans' Jewish singer comes close to fulfilling the ideal of Muskeljudentum promoted by Theodore Herzl's circle: raw, virile, unbookish Jewish masculinity. While the Hymans may have turned the course of history, they were, in fact, part of a chain of Jewish musicians. Although the Hymans had many influences, none were greater than the proto-punkers Richard Blum and Ross Friedman. Simultaneous to the Hymans' rise, Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen flung themselves across stadium stages with golden chais splayed across their manicured gardens of chest hair.
You know this version is fantasy. But to tell this history as it really happened only requires changing a few names - or, rather, changing back a few names. Hyman went by the gentile moniker Joey Ramone. (To be sure, the Ramones were populated by more gentiles than Jews.) Blum and Friedman, stalwarts of The Dictators, remade themselves as Handsome Dick Manitoba and Ross the Boss. And, of course, Witz and Eisen made asses of themselves for Kiss under the noms de goy Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Fortunately for the reputation of the Jewish people, the visible eye detected no chai on their chests.
Why have so many Jewish rockers, from Peretz "Perry Farrell" Bernstein to Bob "Dylan" Zimmerman felt compelled to obscure their Jewishness by goy-ifying their names? It's hard not to feel a bit hurt by their abandonment of the Jewish people. By changing their names, they have unwittingly sent a message to their old comrades from chader: To be cool, to be a rebel, you have got to split from the tribe. As Dorothy Parker remarked of Fanny Brice after the comedienne's nose job: "She cut off her nose to spite her race."
To take the edge off the feelings of hurt, I have conducted an analysis of the Jewish rockers who have dropped the Baum, jettisoning their ancestral names. The list is heartening. For every Joey Ramone and Bob Dylan, there's a dozen Gene Simmonses. In other words, most of the name changers are, like Simmons, a shande for the goyim.
There's a long history of Jewish artists dropping the Baum that predates Dylan. On the old vaudeville circuit, performers felt obliged to purge most of their obviously Jewish markings. You could understand why. If audiences in Kansas and Ohio knew that Jack Benny was really Benjamin Kubelsky and George Burns was Nathan Birnbaum, they might not have flocked in such droves to their shows. And they largely succeeded at deceiving the gentiles. ("The Simpsons" once mocked this credulousness. At a dinner, Krusty the Clown recites a brucha. "He's talking funny talk," Homer responds. When Lisa notes Krusty's Judaism, Homer replies, "A Jewish entertainer? Get out of here.")
But there's a difference between Baum-dropping in Hollywood and rock. Hollywood makes little pretense about presenting an idealized, fabricated version of life. Rock, on the other hand, has made a fetish of its own authenticity. And it's not surprising, therefore, that it is Baum-droppers who have produced some of the most inauthentic dreck in the history of American pop.
A hefty number of Jews have reinvented themselves for success in the genre now known as Adult Contemporary: Barry "Manilow" Pincus, Kenny "G" Gorelick, and Michael "Bolton" Bolotin. Their careers seem to invariably follow the same dialectical path. After recording Christmas albums, albums only possible thanks to their new goyische names, these artists invariably have mid-life reversions to their childhood faith - a spiritual rebirth that allows for foundering careers to instantly generate large audiences at Jewish music festivals. Tellingly, these Baum-droppers produce music that is even cheesy by the low standards of the genre.
In the end, there's an undeniable commercial impulse driving Baum-dropping. And it isn't limited to Jews found on the smooth jazz stations. Even hippies - or perhaps especially hippies - found themselves unable to resist assimilationist pressures. Mama Cass Elliot came out of the womb as Ellen Cohen; Tiny Tim was Herbert Khaury.
Of course, examples abound of Baum-droppers who aren't such embarrassments. Indeed, their Baum-dropping is integral to their art. Name-changing, for instance, was a punk staple, even for rockers of gentile extraction (see Gary Glitter and Sid Vicious). Besides, the early punks were part of a long tradition of rebel Jewish artists, like their comic counterpart Lenny Bruce (aka Leonard Alfred Schneider), reenacting an old script that requires them to shame their mothers, reject tradition, and emerge with a new, more modern aesthetic. That theme dominates much of Yiddish literature, the novels of Philip Roth, and the memoirs of the City College crowd of New York intellectuals. That is, if they hadn't run away from their parents and their religion, they would have lacked sufficient anger and angst to produce punk.
Similarly, anyone involved in hip-hop, even laterally, gets a pass. No rappers, of course, perform under their own name. That excuses the Baum-dropping of the Beastie Boys, Princess Superstar, and Beck.
Or there's the rare case of Bob Dylan, who reinvented himself so often and convincingly that it's hard to imagine that a figure called Robert Zimmerman ever existed. Besides, he didn't just ditch his name, he temporarily ditched his religion and produced the evangelical album Slow Train Coming. And, as soon as he hopped on the Jesus train, it's just as well that he didn't have an obviously hamische name that could have exacerbated the Jews for Jesus propaganda potential.
Does it hurt to drop the Baum? It must be a painful psychic process, because it is a phenomenon so little acknowledged in either song or rock memoir. So far as I know, only one band has written about the obscuring of its Jewish roots as part of its persona. The Dictators have blared one of the truest lines in rock:
They loved us down in Dallas
We didn't pay our dues
They loved us down in Dallas
They didn't know we were Jews.
Stage Names of Jewish Rockers
by Izzy Grinspan
Perry Bernstein: Perry Farrell (Janeﾒs Addiction/Porno for Pyros)
Harold Belsky: Hal Blaine (session drummer for the Beach Boys)
David Blatt: Jay Black (Jay and the Americans)
Richard Blum: Handsome Dick Manitoba (Dictators)
Michael Bolotin: Michael Bolton
Leonard Borisoff: Len Barry
Marty Buchwald: Marty Balin (Jefferson Airplane/Starship)
Ellen Cohen: Mama Cass Elliot
Lee Drucker: Lee Rocker (Stray Cats)
Stanley Eisen: Paul Stanley (KISS)
Don Fagenson: Don Was (Was/Not Was)
Marc Feld: Marc Bolan (T-Rex)
John French-Segall: Jay Jay French (Twisted Sister)
Ross Friedman: Ross the Boss (Dictators)
Harvey Goldstein: Harvey Brooks (session musician, played on Bitches Brew)
Kenny Gorelick: Kenny G
Susan Gottleib: Susan Phranc
Peter Greenbaum: Peter Baum (Fleetwood Mac)
Chris Gross: Chris Barron (Spin Doctors)
Love Michelle Harrison: Courtney Love
Belo Horizonte: Igor Cavalera (Sepultra)
Jeffrey Hyman: Joey Ramone (Ramones)
Herbert Khaury: Tiny Tim
Concetta Kirshner: Princess Superstar
Carole Klein: Carole King
Annette Kleinbard: Carol Connors (the Teddy Bears)
Phoebe Laub: Phoebe Snow
Lee Oskar Levitin: Lee Oskar (War)
Steven Barry Lipkin: Steve Barri (songwriter)
Michael Lookofsky: Michael Brown (the Left Banke)
Manfred Lubowitz: Manfred Mann
Lester Meyers: Richard Hell (Richard Hell and the Voidoids)
Steve Mizrahi: Sylvain Sylvain
Alecia Moore: Pink
Michael Pasternak: Emperor Rosko
Barry Pincus: Barry Manilow
Lou Rabinowitz: Lou Reed
David ***** Rashbaum: David ***** (Bon Jovi)
Robert Rifkin: Bobby Z (Prince)
Scott Rosenfeld: Scott Ian (Anthrax)
Richard Salkowitz: Magic Dick (J. Geils Band)
Neil Seduka: Neil Sedaka
Buddy Blue Seigal: Buddy Blue Seigal (Beat Farmers)
Elliott Steinberg: Elliott Easton (the Cars)
Kevin Wasserman: Noodles (Offspring)
Gary Lee Weinrib: Geddy Lee (Rush)
Chaim Witz: Gene Simmons (KISS)
Randy Wolfe: Randy California (Spirit)
Leslie Wonderman: Taylor Dayne
Robert Zimmerman: Bob Dylan
Dropping the Baum: The Real Names of Jewish Rockers
by Franklin Foer
The history of punk could be told (counterfactually) as a Zionist parable.
In the mid-70s, a band out of Forest Hills called the Hymans cut a stripped-down eponymous album, The Hymans. Crooning about Nazis, the Hymans' Jewish singer comes close to fulfilling the ideal of Muskeljudentum promoted by Theodore Herzl's circle: raw, virile, unbookish Jewish masculinity. While the Hymans may have turned the course of history, they were, in fact, part of a chain of Jewish musicians. Although the Hymans had many influences, none were greater than the proto-punkers Richard Blum and Ross Friedman. Simultaneous to the Hymans' rise, Chaim Witz and Stanley Eisen flung themselves across stadium stages with golden chais splayed across their manicured gardens of chest hair.
You know this version is fantasy. But to tell this history as it really happened only requires changing a few names - or, rather, changing back a few names. Hyman went by the gentile moniker Joey Ramone. (To be sure, the Ramones were populated by more gentiles than Jews.) Blum and Friedman, stalwarts of The Dictators, remade themselves as Handsome Dick Manitoba and Ross the Boss. And, of course, Witz and Eisen made asses of themselves for Kiss under the noms de goy Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Fortunately for the reputation of the Jewish people, the visible eye detected no chai on their chests.
Why have so many Jewish rockers, from Peretz "Perry Farrell" Bernstein to Bob "Dylan" Zimmerman felt compelled to obscure their Jewishness by goy-ifying their names? It's hard not to feel a bit hurt by their abandonment of the Jewish people. By changing their names, they have unwittingly sent a message to their old comrades from chader: To be cool, to be a rebel, you have got to split from the tribe. As Dorothy Parker remarked of Fanny Brice after the comedienne's nose job: "She cut off her nose to spite her race."
To take the edge off the feelings of hurt, I have conducted an analysis of the Jewish rockers who have dropped the Baum, jettisoning their ancestral names. The list is heartening. For every Joey Ramone and Bob Dylan, there's a dozen Gene Simmonses. In other words, most of the name changers are, like Simmons, a shande for the goyim.
There's a long history of Jewish artists dropping the Baum that predates Dylan. On the old vaudeville circuit, performers felt obliged to purge most of their obviously Jewish markings. You could understand why. If audiences in Kansas and Ohio knew that Jack Benny was really Benjamin Kubelsky and George Burns was Nathan Birnbaum, they might not have flocked in such droves to their shows. And they largely succeeded at deceiving the gentiles. ("The Simpsons" once mocked this credulousness. At a dinner, Krusty the Clown recites a brucha. "He's talking funny talk," Homer responds. When Lisa notes Krusty's Judaism, Homer replies, "A Jewish entertainer? Get out of here.")
But there's a difference between Baum-dropping in Hollywood and rock. Hollywood makes little pretense about presenting an idealized, fabricated version of life. Rock, on the other hand, has made a fetish of its own authenticity. And it's not surprising, therefore, that it is Baum-droppers who have produced some of the most inauthentic dreck in the history of American pop.
A hefty number of Jews have reinvented themselves for success in the genre now known as Adult Contemporary: Barry "Manilow" Pincus, Kenny "G" Gorelick, and Michael "Bolton" Bolotin. Their careers seem to invariably follow the same dialectical path. After recording Christmas albums, albums only possible thanks to their new goyische names, these artists invariably have mid-life reversions to their childhood faith - a spiritual rebirth that allows for foundering careers to instantly generate large audiences at Jewish music festivals. Tellingly, these Baum-droppers produce music that is even cheesy by the low standards of the genre.
In the end, there's an undeniable commercial impulse driving Baum-dropping. And it isn't limited to Jews found on the smooth jazz stations. Even hippies - or perhaps especially hippies - found themselves unable to resist assimilationist pressures. Mama Cass Elliot came out of the womb as Ellen Cohen; Tiny Tim was Herbert Khaury.
Of course, examples abound of Baum-droppers who aren't such embarrassments. Indeed, their Baum-dropping is integral to their art. Name-changing, for instance, was a punk staple, even for rockers of gentile extraction (see Gary Glitter and Sid Vicious). Besides, the early punks were part of a long tradition of rebel Jewish artists, like their comic counterpart Lenny Bruce (aka Leonard Alfred Schneider), reenacting an old script that requires them to shame their mothers, reject tradition, and emerge with a new, more modern aesthetic. That theme dominates much of Yiddish literature, the novels of Philip Roth, and the memoirs of the City College crowd of New York intellectuals. That is, if they hadn't run away from their parents and their religion, they would have lacked sufficient anger and angst to produce punk.
Similarly, anyone involved in hip-hop, even laterally, gets a pass. No rappers, of course, perform under their own name. That excuses the Baum-dropping of the Beastie Boys, Princess Superstar, and Beck.
Or there's the rare case of Bob Dylan, who reinvented himself so often and convincingly that it's hard to imagine that a figure called Robert Zimmerman ever existed. Besides, he didn't just ditch his name, he temporarily ditched his religion and produced the evangelical album Slow Train Coming. And, as soon as he hopped on the Jesus train, it's just as well that he didn't have an obviously hamische name that could have exacerbated the Jews for Jesus propaganda potential.
Does it hurt to drop the Baum? It must be a painful psychic process, because it is a phenomenon so little acknowledged in either song or rock memoir. So far as I know, only one band has written about the obscuring of its Jewish roots as part of its persona. The Dictators have blared one of the truest lines in rock:
They loved us down in Dallas
We didn't pay our dues
They loved us down in Dallas
They didn't know we were Jews.
Stage Names of Jewish Rockers
by Izzy Grinspan
Perry Bernstein: Perry Farrell (Janeﾒs Addiction/Porno for Pyros)
Harold Belsky: Hal Blaine (session drummer for the Beach Boys)
David Blatt: Jay Black (Jay and the Americans)
Richard Blum: Handsome Dick Manitoba (Dictators)
Michael Bolotin: Michael Bolton
Leonard Borisoff: Len Barry
Marty Buchwald: Marty Balin (Jefferson Airplane/Starship)
Ellen Cohen: Mama Cass Elliot
Lee Drucker: Lee Rocker (Stray Cats)
Stanley Eisen: Paul Stanley (KISS)
Don Fagenson: Don Was (Was/Not Was)
Marc Feld: Marc Bolan (T-Rex)
John French-Segall: Jay Jay French (Twisted Sister)
Ross Friedman: Ross the Boss (Dictators)
Harvey Goldstein: Harvey Brooks (session musician, played on Bitches Brew)
Kenny Gorelick: Kenny G
Susan Gottleib: Susan Phranc
Peter Greenbaum: Peter Baum (Fleetwood Mac)
Chris Gross: Chris Barron (Spin Doctors)
Love Michelle Harrison: Courtney Love
Belo Horizonte: Igor Cavalera (Sepultra)
Jeffrey Hyman: Joey Ramone (Ramones)
Herbert Khaury: Tiny Tim
Concetta Kirshner: Princess Superstar
Carole Klein: Carole King
Annette Kleinbard: Carol Connors (the Teddy Bears)
Phoebe Laub: Phoebe Snow
Lee Oskar Levitin: Lee Oskar (War)
Steven Barry Lipkin: Steve Barri (songwriter)
Michael Lookofsky: Michael Brown (the Left Banke)
Manfred Lubowitz: Manfred Mann
Lester Meyers: Richard Hell (Richard Hell and the Voidoids)
Steve Mizrahi: Sylvain Sylvain
Alecia Moore: Pink
Michael Pasternak: Emperor Rosko
Barry Pincus: Barry Manilow
Lou Rabinowitz: Lou Reed
David ***** Rashbaum: David ***** (Bon Jovi)
Robert Rifkin: Bobby Z (Prince)
Scott Rosenfeld: Scott Ian (Anthrax)
Richard Salkowitz: Magic Dick (J. Geils Band)
Neil Seduka: Neil Sedaka
Buddy Blue Seigal: Buddy Blue Seigal (Beat Farmers)
Elliott Steinberg: Elliott Easton (the Cars)
Kevin Wasserman: Noodles (Offspring)
Gary Lee Weinrib: Geddy Lee (Rush)
Chaim Witz: Gene Simmons (KISS)
Randy Wolfe: Randy California (Spirit)
Leslie Wonderman: Taylor Dayne
Robert Zimmerman: Bob Dylan