Pies

India on Film

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.

           

From Bohemian Rhapsody to the Buddy Holly Story

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. 
 

         

Dance to the Video

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.

One Directive? Equitable Remuneration and the Making Available Right

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.

Unfinished Symphony

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 17^th 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.

The Story of Sound Recording

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 Blockchain report), I find myself being introduced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason. The episode can be accessed via this link for the next 29 days.