Holding Out For A Hero: Lee Puddefoot’s Quest For Rebel Leaders

“Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the streetwise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed…?”

Bonnie Tyler
‘Holding Out For A Hero’

These poignant words were belted out in a flurry of pirouetting feet, unnecessary sweatbands and wind machines in 1984. They make up a statement which deserves to be lifted out of the saggy-arsed pop spectrum of the eighties and elevated to become our rallying cry for the forthcoming decade.

We’ve stepped out of the “I want it so give it to me” generation into the full on tantruming ‘post-noughties’; rallies, protests and strikes have been popping up across the country at an alarming rate over recent times, all of course with their own merits. Why? Because everyone seems to want to fight THE MAN.

Transport for London is our very own Stallion turned Court Jester; fighting the powers for the people who are fighting the protester for their pay. Students gather en-masse making their point in a flurry of creative fashions from colourful sloganeering to window-battering mayhem. Yet is The Man going to think twice? Will a crowd of people walking very slowly through the capital have him quivering in his boots?

What’s really needed here is a spokesman – and specifically a musical spokesperson. In short, I’m crying out for a hero…

“Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need…”

Every generation has had their heroes; from the hipcat Jazz pioneers of the ‘40s through to Rock n Roll, Psychedlia, Punk, Post-Punk, Hip Hop, Heavy Metal and Grunge all these eras managed to step up to the mantle and take a generation of frustrations onto their shoulders.

But it appears that as the cold years sweep by, music’s power to represent the counterculture has fallen down with tonsillitis, its manhood shrivelled in the windy landscape.

Glancing across the mainstream you struggle for any heroes, desperately attempting to seek out the extreme arrogance of a Guns 'N Roses, the intellectual and political declarations of a Manic Street Preachers, the grumbling yet very descriptive loathing of a Mark Lanagan or Nick Cave, or simple sheer strut of a generation defining Public Enemy.



These voices are disappearing and hippo sized thumbs are taking over, each one tapping out their most inane thoughts at the click of a button, erasing the mysteries of silence through the instant fix of Twitter. Would you have been interested to hear Jim Morrison Tweet about the size of his belly? No way sister. The fact is, the more you hear from people, the less interesting they become.

“Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There's someone reaching back for me
Racing on the thunder end rising with the heat
It's gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet”

You need to take shelter in the underground to find a home and a band to love; to hold, to squeeze, to nibble on its ear – a band that make you want to follow them, buy everything they have, hang on every word, put the poster up on your wall, buy the stickers and mock savagely at the ridiculous merchandise (but secretly buy it because you want to have everything).

Recently Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster split up, and while they may not have been the voice of a generation, they at least provided a fascinating diversion. They may have sounded like a Brontosaurus mounting Medusa but in all their derangement, they were ours. Gallows too have provided for us - but also left us wanting.



Art Brut look to be coming back with at least another witty observational album and Eddie Argos will forever charmingly balance the plain obvious and the surreal. But where is everyone else?

I want to be educated, shocked or entertained but I fear we are being taken over by the old, the nice and the buffoons…

“I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight”

The idiots are coming and I’m standing with Bonnie as the search continues…where are you going to be?