We’re all researchers. At this time of year there is competitive
desire to locate the season’s best mince pies. We read up on the best brands
and we go into the field to test the results. As a family, we have done well. We’ve
been enjoying Iceland’s ‘luxury’brand.
They came in at number two in a poll of pies conducted by Which? but are only three-quarters the price of the winner from
M&S. And they are delicious.
It has
struck me that supermarket mince pies are always
better than those that are homemade. This is one of those instances where
the factory system does know best. The formula of balancing pie with filling is
deceptively complex. It takes precision tooling and multiple repetition to get
it right.
Quite naturally this revelation has
led me to think, in turn, about Jimi Hendrix. In Charles Shaar’s Murray’s Crosstown Traffic there is an explanation
of why the left-handed guitarist preferred right-handed guitars:
he seldom bothered with special
left-hand models, both because right-handed guitars were more plentiful and
easier to obtain, and because – with a touchingly American faith in
mass-production – he believed that they were likely to be manufactured to a
higher standard.
Hendrix knew a thing or two about guitars, so who is to say
that he was wrong in this belief? If only he were with us now to help us choose our mince
pies.
I have a confession to make. I wrote about the Elton John
film Rocket Man before having seen
it. Back in August I was stating, ‘if you want to see a movie that conveys
the musical impact of Elton John, you would be better off watching the bus
scene in Almost Famous than digesting
Rocket Man’.
I’ve now
seen Rocket Man. For me it is a game
of two halves. I like the coverage of the pre-fame years, particularly the
scenes of Elton John as a boy in suburban Pinner. When he becomes famous,
though, the film becomes dull. It’s not that stardom or drug addiction are inherently
boring, it’s more that this film doesn’t really capture their highs, lows and weirdnesses.
Interviewed by Graham Norton this week, Elton John had far more engaging things
to say about the megalomania and depravity of rock stars, as well as about the oddities
of fame. In particular, I enjoyed the story about introducing his partner, David
Furnish, to his mother for the first time, only to have Michael Jackson turn up
and come along to the dinner date as well.
And what of
the music? I think my hunch was right. Almost
Famous is the more effective film when it comes to illustrating Elton John’s
brilliance. There is one scene in Rocket
Man that cuts through musically, however. It depicts the composition of ‘Your
Song’. What I liked about this scene is its relationship with ‘truth’. It could
be considered false in relation to music making, but true in terms of illustrating
what it feels like to write a break-through hit. You capture lightning in a
bottle.
It takes
place at Elton John’s childhood home, where he has returned to live with his mother
and stepfather, bringing his lyricist partner, Bernie Taupin, along with him.
Taupin hands John the lyrics to ‘Your Song’. John goes to the piano and writes
the tune in real time. This brought to my mind Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors, in which the band similarly
create their breakthrough hit, ‘Light My Fire’, in a spontaneous jam session.
Looking at the scene in The
Doors again, the guitarist Robbie Krieger has scribbled down the chords and
lyrics to ‘Light My Fire’ beforehand, and there is some tinkering around by the
keyboard player, Ray Manzarek, before he stumbles across the Bach-inspired introduction
to the song. The fully realized version that follows takes place in a different
context: it soundtracks a montage sequence in which we witness the band’s
escalating fame. In contrast, in the film Rocket
Man, Elton John finds the tune to ‘Your Song’ immediately.
Why then does the naturalistic setting in The Doors feel corny, while the
theatrical scene in Rocket Man rings
true? Part of it comes down to this staging: naturalism can sabotage itself if
the detail is not perfect. Melodrama, on the other hand, can capture a truth to
feeling without having to concern itself with historical accuracy.
Another
reason is that The Doors scenesurely is false. ‘Light My Fire’ may
well have emerged from the scribbled notes, been worked up in rehearsal,
and had a quickly realised intro because, in Manzarek’s words, ‘It just came out of,
you know, fifteen or twenty years of music practice’. Yet there is still the
feeling that the whole process would have taken longer than this.
Elton John,
on the other hand, really does take the words of Taupin and create
fully-realized songs off the bat. ‘I put my hands on the keyboard and away we
go’, as John stated to Norton this week. As one example, he composed the music
for the double album, Goodbye Yellow Brick
Road, in three days. Lest we forget, this is an album that includes ‘Candle
in the Wind’, ‘Bennie and the Jets’, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ as
well as the title track. ‘Your Song’ was written just as quickly. John talked with
Norton about its staging in Rocket Man.
For him, the filmgives ‘a pretty
accurate description of how it was done’.
Even though
it is ‘true’, this remains a remarkable means of creating successful music.
Other composers, in contrast, can toil for months. I’m not sure how widely
known it is that John writes in this way. Yet my guess is, even amongst viewers
who do not know about this process, the ‘Your Song’ sequence would still appear
honest. Could it be that there something in the music that is letting us know?
In December 2018 I was interviewed for a television series about Indian documentary film of the pre-independence era. The reason
why a popular music scholar was posing as a film historian was because my first academic job was as a researcher
on the AHRC-funded project Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire, which involved me viewing, cataloguing and analysing film collections held by the BFI and the Imperial War
Museum.
The
resultant two-part television series, India
on Film, was recently broadcast by Channel News Asia, who have made the
programmes available via this link. They do an excellent job of bringing the
early documentaries to life, and I am rightfully outshone by scholars who have
spent their working lives studying India and/or film.
I was recently interviewed
for an article about the factual accuracy of musical biopics, written by Tom
Fordy for the Telegraph. Following on
from last year’s Queen film, Bohemian
Rhapsody, which was criticised for manufacturing and being loose with the
truth (notably in relation to Freddie Mercury’s diagnosis and disclosure that
he had AIDs), there was a rash of articles that explored the printing of musical
legends. With the recent release of the Rocket
Man about Elton John, similar thought pieces have made a return.
Fordy asked me to talk about the ‘truth’
of the Sex Pistols-related film Sid and
Nancy and the Joy Division films Control
and 24 Hour Party People. One
thing that I wanted to get across, which is in the piece, is that music films
rarely do a good job of dealing accurately with bands. They are oriented
towards star turns by individuals, including the ability of an actor to assume
the persona of a lead singer or musician. What they do not manage to capture is
intra-band politics. Hence, Gary Oldham delivers an astonishing performance in Sid and Nancy, where he embodies the
spirit of Sid Vicious. Andrew Schofield’s limp turn as Johnny Rotten could
hardly be called nuanced, however. Similarly, the various Joy Division films
have worked hard at capturing the tics of lead singer Ian Curtis, but have
spent far less time on the other members of the band (this seems particularly
unjust, as Joy Division are one of the rare bands in which each member’s
contribution is equally vital). Bohemian
Rhapsody offers a partial exception to this rule, with its attention to
detail spreading beyond the lead singer. The fact that Queen members Brian May
and Roger Taylor acted as consultants to the film presumably helped here, as
did the fact that the group had already developed ways of portraying themselves
on screen, notably in the video for ‘The Miracle’, in which four young children
do a great job of being Queen.
Another thing that I talked about
with Fordy, but which did not make it into the article, is that this analysis
of historical accuracy should be extended to documentaries. It is presumed that
they get closer to the reality of singers and musicians than acted portrayals,
but I’m not sure this is always the case. On the one hand, musical biopics such
as 24 Hour Party People or the Todd
Haynes’ Bob Dylan film I’m Not There have
done a better job of capturing musicians and scenes than most parades of
talking heads could ever do. On the other hand, a documentary can be just as
partial as a biopic. They will be oriented towards one version of the truth or
one member of a band. Take, for example, the three attempts that director Julien
Temple has made to tell the Sex Pistols’ story. He has spoken of the
Rotten-oriented The Filth and the Fury (2000)
as being a ‘corrective’ to his earlier film, the Malcolm McLaren-instigated Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980).
This did not stop him from having another crack at the Pistols, however,
providing a more London-based setting in The
Knowledge (2008). Each film has its moments, but they are also indicative
of the fact that the Sex Pistols’ story is too rich and diverse to be
contained. A further point about documentaries is that their tendency to place
social context around music can be just as falsifying and mythologizing as the
manufacture of narrative events in biopics. About ten years ago I heard a great
talk by Richard Witts, in which he took apart the documentary Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to
Happy Mondays, indicating that its scene-setting footage of Salford, which
was supposed to visualise the milieu in which the members of Joy Division
emerged, was in fact taken from an era prior to their births. It had originally
been employed to illustrate ‘before’ and ‘after’ images of slum clearance, but
the film implied that those slums were still there.
And
there’s a final thing that I didn’t mention to Fordy at all. When analysing the
‘reality’ of music films, the focus tends to be on truth to history, truth to
personality or truth to sociology. There is less discussion about truth to
music. But which films best manage to capture the spirit of a song? Musical
biopics are not the place to look. With their orientation towards narrative and
character they lose the ability to deliver a good tune. Documentaries can edge
closer to the marvels of music. As I have written elsewhere, there is something
exciting about hearing music talked about. It sets up a thrill of anticipation
for the moment that the song in question finally arrives. Ultimately, however,
the films that best communicate what music feels like for us – the fans - are
not the ones that concentrate on its makers. It is the reception of music that
comes across most effectively. Therefore, if you want to see a movie that
conveys the musical impact of Elton John, you would be better off watching the
bus scene in Almost Famous than
digesting Rocket Man.
And which moment
of film best captures the essence of Queen? It’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in Wayne’s World of course.
Earlier in the month I attended Orchestral Joy Division at the Royal Albert Hall, an event that was
organized by the band’s old bass player, Peter Hook, in conjunction with Tim
Crooks, conductor with the Manchester Camerata. There were three guest vocalists,
one of whom, Bastien Marshal, became an Ian Curtis impersonator for the night.
He had Curtis’s look and idiosyncratic dancing moves spot on. Is struck me,
though, that Marshal is young and has grown up in a world in which he been able
to access footage of Joy Division at the same time as he been able to access
their sound recordings. This was not the case for me growing up. I first heard Unknown Pleasures not long after it came
out. I heard Closer when it was released.
Throughout this time I had not seen the band perform, though. I was too young
to see them live and I had missed their three appearances on television. Two of
these took place on the Granada network, so (I think) they were restricted to
the north of England only (I was in the midlands). The third was on BBC2’s Something Else. This was a programme
that I did see occasionally, but I missed this particular episode. In fact, I
can’t remember when I did first see the Joy Division clips. It probably wasn’t
until the end of the 1980s, when the first documentaries on the band began to appear.
Three things follow on from this. The first is that what has become an ‘iconic’
dancing style, simply wasn’t so at the time. Most of the people buying and
listening to Joy Division records didn’t get to see Curtis’s moves. The second
is that the ‘iconic’ sleeves of the records took on even more weight. The
sleeve to Unknown Pleasures in many
ways was Joy Division. There were
also key photographic images, but in contrast to Curtis’s manic dancing, these
were stills. Conversely, the third
thing is that is that if you did manage to see television clips in the pre-MTV and YouTube age, they did tend to
stay with you. You had to register them whole. Johnny Marr suggests in his
autobiography Set the Boy Free that Curtis
cribbed his dance moves from David Bowie, via a one-off television appearance on
the Dinah Shore Show in 1975. The
evidence does appear to be telling. The question, though, is how did Curtis get
to see this American programme?
Another thing that struck me about Orchestral Joy Division, and which also struck me when I saw Peter
Hook and the Light at the Round House in 2017, is what a towering song
‘Ceremony’ is. If anything, it is even more powerful musically (but not
culturally) than ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. It’s an unusual late twentieth
century song, however, as it doesn’t have a definitive recording. The surviving
members of Joy Division issued it as New Order’s debut single. This almost felt
like a cover of Ian Curtis’s intended version. Then, when the studio recording
by Joy Division was released on the Heart
and Soul box set in 1997, this didn’t seem like it was the ultimate version
either. Maybe, it is this situation makes the song so redolent live. It can
only be completed by Joy Division fans.
On Monday 1 July I spoke at The Future of Music Law conference at the University of Central
Lancashire in Preston. It was a good event, with a mixture of industry
professionals (Ann Harrison, Judge Jules) and academics. Peter Hook was due to
speak, but sadly had to pull out due to preparations for his Joy Division Orchestrated
gig at the Royal Albert Hall.
My paper
concerned the European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single
Market and the fact that, despite promising to investigate the making available
right, it failed to discuss what the European Commission had referred to as a ‘contentious
grey area’ of copyright law. I contrasted this with the Commission’s measures for
safe harbours and value gaps, which were not a part of their original
proposals, but became the most prominent part of the Directive. You can access
the paper here.
Three years ago to the day I was writing about the Verve’s 1997 song ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, searching for the author who had been most
deprived. Famously, the composition has been attributed to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
as a result of the inclusion of a looped sample of their song ‘The Last Time’, as recorded by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra in 1965.
There have
been developments. Richard Ashcroft, the singer of the Verve who wrote the main body of ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ (i.e the 'unsampled' parts of the song) has become increasingly outraged at his
lack of royalties. In November last year he declared, ‘I’m coming for that money. Someone stole god knows how many
million dollars off me in 1997, and they’ve still got it’. He was pointing towards
Jody Klein, the son of Allen Klein and inheritor of his publishing company,
ABKCO. It is ABKCO who control the Rolling Stones' early repertoire and who had
demanded 100% of the publishing royalties for ‘Bittersweet Symphony’.
There are reasons for Ashcroft’s intensified fury. Firstly,
he was promoting his new album, Natural
Rebel and this publicity was good publicity. Secondly, as I pointed out in my original blog entry, in the days of
physical products he would not, ultimately, have been deprived. He may not have had
the publishing for the Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, but he did write the
majority of the songs on its parent album, Urban Hymns,
and would have received nearly 70% of the songwriting royalties each time a
copy was sold. Urban Hymns is a platinum selling record in America and it is
the 17th best-selling album of all time in the UK. Unfortunately
for Ashcroft, streaming has taken us to a world where it is singles rather than
albums that rule. ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ is his most successful song and he
receives nothing for it when it stands on its own. He suggests that it is worth
$50 million and that this money has been stolen from him.
Jagger and Richards appear to have
listened. Last week Ashcroft received the Outstanding Contribution to British
Music prize at the Ivor Novello Awards. He used the occasion to announce:
As of last month Mick Jagger and Keith Richards agreed to give
me their share of the song ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. This remarkable and life
affirming turn of events was made possible by a kind and magnanimous gesture
from Mick and Keith, who have also agreed that they are happy for the writing
credit to exclude their names and all their royalties derived from the song
they will now pass to me.
I’m not
sure if this is a happy ending. In the first instance, the copyright details
for ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ have not yet been changed. The money, at present, is
still going ABKCO. In addition, if the song is to be credited to Ashcroft, this
might ruffle feathers elsewhere. Ashcroft believes he should have the sole credit for the song and has justified this as
follows:
I was saying to myself, ‘look, rock n roll is a spirit, and
if I want to sample something and make it into a hip hop/rock n roll anthem,
it’s still rock n roll. And it’s even more rock n roll because it’s another
white English kid, influenced by hip hop, sampling some fucking white English
guys, influenced by black blues guys, and it goes on and on and on. But
sonically what I’m saying at the end with “Money Money” is that you lot are
just a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of Xerox of a Xerox’.
What he’s
attempting to state here is that, while the Rolling Stones took much of the
inspiration for their song from the Staple Singers’ ‘This May Be the Last Time’,
the Staple Singers in turn had drawn upon traditional music of no fixed
authorship. It is only Ashcroft who is an originating author.
This is dubious enough in itself,
but what Ashcroft fails to mention is that the riff in the Andrew Oldham
Orchestra sample does have an author and that it is not Jagger or Richards. The motif in the sample is only loosely based on
Keith Richards' guitar playing. The main credit for it should instead reside
with David Whitaker, who composed and arranged the orchestral score.
One
of things about rethinks is that they prompt further rethinks. Popular music
has always had multiple authors – writers, arrangers, musicians, singers, producers,
engineers, mixers – and it has always been unfair with its attributions of credits
and royalties. Traditionally, many songwriting disputes have been settled out
of court. This has suited publishers, as they do not want legal precedents to
be set. It has also suited the victorious authors, as they have not want it
known who is receiving shares of income and who is being deprived. Ashcroft
might wish he had been quieter. If he has been successful in his pursuit of
stolen dollars, then it might prompt the Staple Singers and the estate of David
Whitaker to think about the money that is being taken from them.
On Saturday the BBC World Service broadcast ‘The Story of
Sound Recording’, the first part of a series exploring A History of Music and Technology. I’m a featured interviewee,
alongside noted experts Mark Katz, Andre Millard, Greg Milner, Nick Morgan,
Sophie Maisonneuve and Sean Williams. It’s a great series and for the second
time in my life (following on from the Music on the Blockchainreport), I find myself being introduced by Pink Floyd’s
Nick Mason. The episode can be accessed via this link for the next 29 days.
Name that Tune was a quiz that had a long life on radio and
television. It first began as a show on NBC radio in America in 1952. In
Britain, it was first known as Spot that
Tune, which ranbetween 1956 and 1962
on Granada Television. It was next seen between 1976 and 1983 as ‘Name that
Tune’, a segment of the Thames Television show London Night Out, hosted by Tom O’Connor. After that, it became a
standalone quiz, hosted by Lionel Blair from 1983 to 1988. It was then revived on Channel 5 for a show
hosted by Jools Holland in 1997 and 1998. The most recent version was witnessed
in 2007, as part of ITV’s Gameshow
Marathon, helmed by Vernon Kay.
The premise was simple. Contestants would
compete to name popular tunes in as few notes as possible (‘I’ll name that tune
in seven’, ‘I’ll name that tune in five’ etc.). Rather than playing a record,
the tune would be played live by musicians in the broadcasting studio. If singers
were featured, they would replace the words to the song with ‘la la las’. The
show was dependent on a shared knowledge of popular hit songs. It would not
work effectively unless the contestants’ musical expertise found an echo in
that of the viewers and listeners at home. The quick familiarity of melodies
could be startling.
Melody is not our speediest musical recall,
however. We’re much faster with timbre, particularly the timbre of recordings. If
I switch on the radio and a record I know is playing, I can name that sound
within microseconds. The same is true if I’m in a club or a bar, and the DJ has
cued up a familiar record. I will know it and I can name it immediately. I’m not alone in this ability. Most of us are
startlingly fast.
One of the few times that this ability
has been captured on screen is in T2:
Trainspotting. Early in the movie, the main character, Renton, returns to
his childhood home and puts a record on the turntable. From the label we can
guess that it is Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’. He plays a tiny burst of the
record before snatching it from the turntable as he is haunted by the memories it conjures.
What is brilliant about this scene is that the filmmakers have the
confidence, not only that the cinemagoers will recognize ‘Lust for Life’ from this
brief excerpt, but also that it will take them back to the more extended use of
the same record in the original Trainspotting
movie, where it soundtracks a scene in which Renton is chased through the
streets of Edinburgh. (There is also a neat joke. In the first film the use of ‘Lust
for Life’ is non-diegetic, meaning that Renton will not have heard it himself. Somehow,
though, the record and its associations have seeped into his consciousness by
the time of the second film.)
We need more of these moments on
screen. How about a very brief quiz show called Name that Timbre? And how about pitting it against Name that Tune? The timbral contestants
would surely be quicker than the tuneful ones.
As well as being entertaining, this could help us think again about
musical hierarchies. Melody is prioritised in the law and in value
judgements generally. One of the reasons why classical music maintains its
elevated status is because it is melodically and harmonically rich in
comparison with much popular music. But popular music wins on timbre. What
then, if it is revealed that timbre is the fastest, most resonant and deeply
penetrating musical quality of all?
