Remember You're a Sex Pistol

Album, the 1986 record by Public Image Ltd has recently been re-released. Reviewers have referred to its making as ‘one of the most bizarre episodes in [John] Lydon’s extraordinary story’, noting that the singer employed ‘a raft of top-flight session players’, including Ginger Baker, Tony Williams, Steve Vai, Bernard Fowler and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Lydon enjoyed confounding people. He has stated that he ‘needed the support from people like the Ginger Bakers, and to be reminded that people really fucking respected what I was doing’. Their encouragement made him see that he was not ‘an enormous, talentless boring lump’. He also enjoyed the fact that Sting thought that the record ‘was the best album I’ve ever made’. Nevertheless, the public were ‘confused’ by Album and his record company was ‘nonplussed’. Apparently, punk and session musicians are opposites.

            But is this really the case? The Ramones provided the template for American punk. Their strongest influences were the girl group records of the early 1960s (which were performed by American session musicians) and the bubblegum pop of the Bay City Rollers (which was recorded by British session musicians). The influence of these predecessors is transparent. The Ramones recorded an album with the girl group producer Phil Spector (who employed session musicians for some of the guitar parts as well as for the strings). Their song ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ is modelled on the Rollers' ‘Saturday Night’.

The Bay City Rollers also served as Malcolm McLaren’s template for the Sex Pistols. This was true from the launch of the band (prior to hiring Lydon, McLaren drove to Scotland in search of a Rollers-type singer) to the time of their demise (in 1980 he looked back upon the Sex Pistols, saying ‘I was always concerned to make them as much like The Bay City Rollers as possible’).

            And we should not forget the Chris Spedding rumours. It has been suggested that this session musician played guitar on early Sex Pistols’ tracks. Spedding also played guitar on the Wombles’ hits. What matters most about this story is not that it is true, but that it is plausible. The Sex Pistols were not averse to session musician practices. After his sacking, Glen Matlock was rehired as a session bass player. Steve Jones also had a session musician’s mentality as he laid down layer after layer of guitar for Never Mind the Bollocks and also played the bass.

            It is not hard to see why the connections between punk and session musicians have been overlooked. They fly in the face of punk’s DIY ethos. They should not be ignored, however, and we should consider whether doing it for yourself and getting someone else to do it for you really are so different. These networks should also encourage us to rethink the Wombles. Are they the missing link between glam rock and punk?

Live Dead

Live music is called live music for a reason. It wishes to imply that its opponent – recorded music – is dead. The use of the term ‘live’ to describe a performance that is ‘heard or watched at the time of its occurrence’ only arose in the 1930s. Musicians’ unions promoted this usage vigourously, as they campaigned hard to ‘keep music live’. They targetted recorded music, describing it as a ‘grave threat’, a ‘serious danger’ and an ‘ever-present menace’. Their great fear was that records would take the place of performing musicians: ‘The musician may well become extinct and music may cease to be written’.

            To a certain extent their terminology was appropriate. The term ‘record’ has preservative connotations. To record is to embalm sounds that would otherwise pass. Death haunted the earliest phonographic reveries. The first article about sound recording declared, ‘certainly nothing can be conceived more likely to create the profoundest of sensations, to arouse the liveliest of human emotions, than once more to hear the familiar voices of the dead’. Thomas Edison, the inventor of sound recording, promised an epitaph that would last through the ages: ‘This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words: and, centuries after you have crumbled into dust, may repeat every idle thought, every fond fancy, every vain word’.

            And yet the promotion of the term ‘live music’ has been more duplicitous than first appears. By the 1930s records were very much seen as living things. This is because Edison was a liar. His original tinfoil recordings lasted days rather than centuries; they were destroyed when they were removed from the phonograph. Shellac and vinyl offered improvements upon this format, but they too proved susceptible to ageing processes. Consequently, the preservative function of records was downplayed. In its place came a recording industry that focused on a fast turnover of products. It didn’t want you to keep your records forever. It wanted you to buy new ones.

            This had phenomenological ramifications. Records felt alive precisely because you could play them to death. Analogue records aged in step with their owners, acquiring the same scuffs, knocks and dust as they passed through time. Elvis Costello made this point clear in ‘45’, his paean to the 7” single: ‘Every scratch, every click, every heartbeat, every breath that I bless’. This ethos casts the musicians’ unions’ campaigns in a different light. They weren’t attacking records because they thought they were lifeless; they feared them because they are very much alive.

            And were they trying to cover up the fact that it is live performance that is morbid? One reason to see an artist in the flesh is to witness them before that flesh withers. This much has become apparent following the rash of popular music deaths this year. How did people respond to the passing of David Bowie and Prince? By boasting that they had seen them when they were alive. Social media was awash with pictures of ticket stubs, as people sought to prove that they were once in the same room as the recently deceased.

The death cult of live performance increases as artists and audiences grow older. There is a sense of chalking musicians off your list before they pass away. It is not only confined to OAP artists, however. One of the reasons why people pay to see unpredictable and doomed performers such as Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty is in the hope that the artist will die young. The viewer will then be able to speak from the privileged position of having seen them while they fretted their hour on the stage.

Gig-goers are a cruel bunch.

War's No Fairytale, Guns and Bombs aren't Fucking Toys!

Like so many people, I have plenty of arguments about punk. Recently, I’ve managed to get two of them off my chest. The first is that, in the UK at least, the commercial zenith of punk happened in 1979, rather than in the fetishised years of 1976-78. I made this point in my Popular Music and Society article about being a school kid in that peak year. The second is that, when it comes to the punk diaspora, the greatest legacy has not come from the leading British bands of the late 1970s, or from the CBGB’s punk of seventies New York. The continuing punk lifestyle and ethos instead owes more to anarcho punk bands, such as Crass and Flux of Pink Indians, who rose to prominence in the UK in the early 1980s, and hardcore American punk bands, such as Black Flag and Minor Threat, who first recorded slightly later. I arrive at this point in my review of the Subcultures Network’ book Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance, which is in the latest edition of Popular Music. The title of this book also gave me an opportunity to reference the great Stoke-on-Trent punk band, Discharge. Altogether now: ‘We’ve been shit on far too long. Fight the system, fight back!’

Icarus or Lazarus

Last night I saw The Man Who Fell to Earth for the first time in years. It is a bonkers, brilliant and flawed film and is well worth seeing again. Fans of David Bowie can marvel at the fact that he looks amazing. Fans of Iron Maiden can hail the typeface that was used for the film’s poster: it is where they got the font for their own logo.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but the entire film is something of a pun. Bowie, as Jerome Newton, is the ‘man’ who fell to earth: he is an alien who has decided to descend to our planet. He is also the man who fell to earth in that he is brought down with a bump. Bowie becomes more human and he gets humdrum. His ideals and inventions come to nothing. He instead succumbs to alcohol and inadequacy.

            This is the underlying message of the film. Don’t fly too high – your wings will get burnt. It is underlined by a scene in which the character Dr Nathan Bryce looks at an art book, which contains the W.H. Auden poem ‘Musee des Beaux Art’, as well as the brilliant Breughel painting that it references:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place


While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting


For the miraculous birth, there always must be


Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating


On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot


That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course


Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot


Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse


Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away


Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may


Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone


As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen


Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

What an odd message this is, though, for a film about an alien. Jerome Newton shouldn’t be cast as an Icarus; he’s not hubristic. Perhaps this is why Bowie decided to revisit the same character, but in the guise of Lazarus. This time he will rise like a bluebird; this time he will be free.

Creative Accounting

On Saturday, I spoke about songwriting splits at the bi-annual IASPM conference. I’ve written about the subject in this blog, but this was the first time that I’ve discussed it publicly. A copy of my paper can be accessed here.

Come Play With Me

On Wednesday, Music Business Worldwide reported that Spotify is gaining extra income by making its own recordings and inserting them into its playlists. These playlists are a modern form of Muzak: wishy-washy instrumentals, curated according to genre. By these means Spotify brings you ‘jazz, chill and peaceful piano playing’. These playlists are also extremely popular. The article reports that five of these Spotify-owned tracks have each racked up more 500,000 streams, while one has been played over a million times.

            Spotify is playing an old game here. When physical formats were dominant, businesses and artists would play tricks with formats in order to rake in extra copyright income. When a customer bought a 7-inch single, for example, the b-side would earn as much in songwriting royalties as the a-side. As a result, some business moguls would deliberately force artists to include works that they controlled as b-side material. Artists too would take advantage of b-side credits. The Rolling Stones balanced their early a-sides, which were cover versions, with group-composed b-sides. And similar games were played with albums. When a physical album was sold, the copyright income would be spread equally, regardless of the popularity of each track. As such, some groups deliberately chose to divide the publishing spoils (witness the Who’s album, A Quick One, which includes compositions by Roger Daltry and Keith Moon, in addition to Pete Townshend’s and John Entwistle’s more popular songs), while others had members who usurped the credits (Roger Waters of Pink Floyd went from the egalitarian splits of Dark Side of the Moon, which includes a false compositional credit for Nick Mason for ‘Speak to Me’, to the complete control of The Final Cut).

Ironically, it had been thought that streaming was bringing such games to an end. Streaming income, such that it is, is based on plays rather than sales. As such, the copyright worth of b-sides and album tracks has been reduced, while the bias towards hit singles has been increased. Spotify does have a successful longer format, however: it is the playlist rather than the LP. And as we have learned, they have now found a way to monetize it to their advantage: by creating their own works and inserting them in a sequence alongside better-known recordings.

There is one difference from previous practice, however. The tricks with b-sides and album tracks were centred on songwriting income. Spotify is making its money through sound recording copyright. Music Business Worldwide reports that the company isn’t necessarily interested in the publishing money, it is the ‘master rights’ in the recordings that they are most keen to own. This is reflective of the income split that has been somewhat forced upon them by the record companies and which has had the publishers up in arms. The record companies generally see 55-60% of the revenue from streaming services, the service providers retain 30%, which leaves the publishers with just 10-15%. Is this evidence that the money is no longer in the publishing?

Tomorrow Creeps in this Petty Pace

Last night I listened to the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. It was one of those times when I marvelled at the freshness of a sound recording. It’s 50 years old for Chrissakes! And yet it is still astonishing. Listening to it you can find yourself declaring that this track is more sonically exciting and challenging than the majority of music made today.

            Some people find this longevity problematic. There is a belief that popular music should be constantly progressing. We should not be harking back to older records. There is something seriously wrong with pop when the sounds of the past are more innovative than the sounds of the present. This is part of Simon Reynolds’ case against the ‘retromania’ of our times.

It struck me that if people do have an issue with musical nostalgia, it is not centred upon songs. It is the steadfastness of old sound recordings that troubles them. There have always been long-lasting tunes. It doesn’t bother us that ‘Stardust’ is nearly a century old and is still being sung. If anything we enjoy the longevity of compositions such as ‘Greensleeves’, ‘House of the Rising Sun’ or ‘Scarborough Fair’. Conversely, there can be something irksome about the fact that Revolver still tops best albums lists, or that the Stone Roses’ debut album is still being praised.

            There are folk reasons for this. Songs are iterated. They are remade by the generations and they shine anew. Sound recordings, in contrast, are static. If they last, they last in their initial form. They can be remixed and they can be sampled but you cannot escape the original. They are monolithic.

            There is also an issue of auteurship. Although all music has multiple points of influence, we are used to the idea that songs are individually authored or are co-authored. The idea of the songwriting author is enshrined in copyright law. The duration of copyright in musical composition is tied to the lives of the individuals concerned. In Britain, it lasts until 70 years after the last of the co-authors to die.

            In contrast, the auteurship of sound recordings is not as well established. There is an issue of just who it should belong to: the songwriters, the musicians, the producers, the engineers? British copyright law awards it on the basis of financial risk. It goes to the party who has made the arrangements for the recording to take place. This legislation does not recognise artistry; it instead rewards record companies. Copyright is not tied to the life of an individual. It lasts for 70 years from the date that the record is issued to the public.

There is nevertheless an increasing sense that sound recordings are artworks in their own right. Some of the pangs of retromania are no more than growing pains: sound recording is becoming canonised. We have no problem with the idea that the greatest works of literature, fine art and musical composition achieve classic status. We will eventually have no problem with the idea that the greatest sound recordings are worthy of the same accord. Music retail, music broadcasting and music journalism have already moved in this direction. They kowtow to the records of the past; they appreciate their artistry; they help to establish the auteurs. Copyright law is lagging behind.

And yet there is one final twist. There is a reason why recordings such as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ are timeless: their makers had one eye on the future. Until recently the imperative in popular music was either to be forward looking or to ‘be here now’. The celebration of old records makes this harder: musicians are now saturated with and intimidated by the music of then. If any records of today are going to be canonised, it will most likely be the ones that are not overly indebted to the past masters. It is a question of balance. The greatness of sound recording should be acknowledged; the greatest sound recordings should also be transcended.