L.A. Guns frontman Phil Lewis calls people of black race “one-dimensional”
L.A. Guns frontman Phil Lewis calls people of black race “one-dimensional”
On the first date of L.A. Guns‘ latest US tour at the Fish Head Cantina in Halethorpe, Maryland on April 22, 2016, the sleaze rockers’ frontman Phil Lewis stated some seemingly rather narrow minded comments that could well be perceived as racist towards the black race.
While introducing L.A. Guns‘ arguably biggest hit single “The Ballad Of Jayne”, Lewis paid tribute to the deceased Prince before making comments that marginalize people of black race.
Lewis stated the following (see video below): “I don’t wanna bum you out. You know who just died, and I don’t wanna make a big… I don’t wanna bring it down or anything. I remember when we were working on Cocked And Loaded, we were on tour, and they said there was a venue that we could play in Minnesota. It was called First Avenue. And I didn’t know too much about it at the time. But after I saw the movie, and I got it. I was with the program. We were all into that Prince, right? Purple Rain. It was so cool, because, you know, you had all your heavy shit, and then you had the pop shit, and there was Prince doing his own fucking thing. The problem is, right now and I’m not gonna be a racist about it but black people are all one-dimensional. We need more Princes, man. We need less fucking rappers and more people like Prince. There, I said it.”
After what seemed like some awkward silence from the crowd, Lewis continued, “Anyway, when we first played First Avenue, nobody knew who the fuck we were. We were opening for someone. I don’t know. And it wasn’t going very well. I’ll be honest. You never know with these things. And then we played this song and it changed everything.”
Wikipedia provides Lewis‘ background as follows: “Phil Lewis, is an English vocalist for the American hard rock band L.A. Guns. He was born on January 9, 1957, in London, England. He has lived and worked in the U.S. since the 1980s but was privately educated at Royal Russell School in Surrey, England.”
The irony is that the US elected its first African-American president in November 2008 when Barack Obama took over the reigns from George W. Bush. Lewis also seemingly forgot of many great rock and roll artists and/or bands fronted by or having people of black descent including Lenny Kravitz, Living Colour, the up and coming Mach22 (who landed the #1 album on Sleaze Roxx’s Top Ten Albums of 2015) or even Guns N’ Roses‘ guitarist Slash whose mother was an African-American.
LA guns ballad of Jayne Fish head cantina 4/22/16
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