Popel Vooje wrote:
Reminds me of a conversation I was having in the pub last night about teetotal rock musicians and how there are so many of them in the US (Nugent, Simmons, Minor Threat and all other straight-edge bands, Frank Zappa, J Mascis, Wayne Coyne, Steve Albini, Calvin Johnson, Chuck D ... the list is virtually endless), but that the phenomenon barely seems to exist in the UK (unless you count Cliff Richard, which I don't).
There's a broad puritanical streak in American culture that doesn't exist to anything like the same level in Europe. It's worth remembering, after all, that historically speaking the puritans left Europe and settled in America precisely because they saw moral degradation everywhere they looked and wanted to find a place where they could set the tone themselves.This is obviously a generalisation, and there are still puritan communities here in Europe and a temperance movement. And conversely, there's a side of America that is personified by William S. Burroughs. But by and large, the US is more religious and more puritanical than Europe despite the contradictory elements in both places.
