Cursed musical excursions are always fun. A famous example is the Rolling Stones’ album Their Satanic Majesties Request from 1967. The band had listened to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and decided to try a similar experiment. Out went three-chord rock in favor of psychedelia, transverse flutes and songs that NEVER ended.
The result was rightly reviled, and for the next record (Beggars Banquet) the Stones decided to go back to their roots. The blues and rock chords made a comeback, the star producer Jimmy Miller was recruited and the record was a smash hit. The single Sympathy for the Devil is today considered one of Rolling Stone’s absolute classics.
As popular as Stone’s flute solos
Why this excursion into rock history? Because it is quite obvious that this is the journey the Green Party intended. The party has for several years been plagued by low opinion figures, and leading representatives have worked hard to broaden the core issues into something other than just a general craze for the environment.
The former spokesperson Gustav Fridolin tried to establish the MP as a school party, preferably based on his own experiences as a folk high school teacher. And Märta Stenevi has tried to profile social justice. The only problem is that this has been about as popular as the Rolling Stones’ flute solo.
Voters have not responded to the party’s attempts to provide a wider range of policies. Now an MP phalanx wants to return to the roots, with a firm focus on three-chord environmental issues.
Cyclists love the ponytail politician
The turnaround is hoped to be led by the demon producer, sorry, the former traffic councilor Daniel Helldén, who has been nominated as a new spokesperson by the party’s election committee.
But the question is whether Helldén is the hitmaker the party thinks? He is admittedly one of the most nationally known candidates, and popular internally among environmentalists. But in Stockholm, which has been Helldén’s main political arena, opinions have been more divided.
With a rough generalization, you can say that cyclists loved the pony-tailed politician who had a stated ambition to make the capital “a cycling and walking city”. While motorists spat and hissed as soon as Helldén’s name came up.
Helldén’s relationship with the other mouthpiece, Märta Stenevi, also seems to be strained. They have different ideas about the way forward, and after today’s performance at the press conference, it seems a little… rigid.
Sources talk about a couple who can’t pull it together to save their lives. In the world of rock, disaster records are also usually surrounded by internal collaboration problems and a desire to try something new.
Who are MP’s Brian Jones and Mick Jagger?
When the Rolling Stones recorded “Their Satanic Majesties…” the band had huge drug problems and who actually showed up on the recording days was a bit dependent on the day form. Founder Brian Jones was fired shortly afterwards.
Who are the Green Party’s Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, I leave it unsaid. But worryingly for party members, they can’t even agree on whether the MP has just recorded a disaster record, or whether the party still has it ahead of it.