The Nothing/Nothing Paradox: The Hollies: "The Air That I Breathe"

It is a delicate thing, what this song talks about; it talks about a certain moment, a moment of fulfillment and privacy; something ordinarily not something to discuss or even sing about, but this did not stop Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood from baring their souls, so to speak.  This song was originally done by Hammond on his album from '72, and then by Phil Everly on his the next year, and since the Hollies were Everly Brothers fans they came across it and decided to record it themselves.  This is as much as I can figure; the Hollies needed a hit, and Allan Clarke was back in the band and able to handle the soaring chorus. 

But as usual, I have to wonder, what is this song about?  I mean, it's obviously about post-coital bliss, but what that is borders on non-existence.  "No light, no sound, nothing to eat, no books to read*" - if he could make a wish, it would to be in this state of non-wanting, to get away from the physical world altogether.  His body is weak; his mind is at rest.  He wants for nothing but to breathe, to be separate but together (he, rather bossily, tells his Other to sleep, but what if she feels the same way - pleasantly weak and wanting nothing more)?

To bring something so common but, well, intimate to a song is tricky, as it requires a noble forthrightness and honesty, which can seem a bit cloying or cheesy, and I can't say that the Hollies avoid that altogether - it has always struck me as ironic that songs that are about being happy and quiet and contented can be so, well, loud - and this does also have the hapless early 70s stigma of the whole Love Is... cartoon thing about it, as well.  Open, honest, sensitive - I can't help but applaud Albert and Mike for this, for mentioning this moment and its glory - a glory that the production makes into a kind of king-for-a-day moment, an escape from the turmoil-of-1974. 

The 70s were a time when people shared thoughts and feelings with each other, maybe overshared - though there is the inverse of the tough man who says nothing but nevertheless has feelings, dammit, and this song speaks to him, there in his privacy, reaffirming that what he feels is worth a song, a one of dips and gliding arches, rising and falling like a bird in flight.  It's not a sexy song, per se, but of peace, of stillness, of a soul at rest.  Which is nice, but...and I know I can't be the only one of my Gen X crowd who felt a little uneasy hearing this as a kid...what is this song really about?  Nothing, in essence - a falling away - a lack of self, which in Boomer logic means it must be given a big production.       

The legacy of this song is a little strange - it's kind of a mall-psychedelic-mellow-out-man song muscially; all about the ultimate moment of forgetfulness and detachment, save from the Other.  And yet there it is, reworked a bit as "Creep" by Radiohead (how many heard this song and were influenced by it?  Come on down, Richard "HEEEEEEyyyyyyyAAAAAAAAHHHHHEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYY" Ashcroft) which is the ultimate song about someone who most certainly isn't at peace, doesn't fit in, has a want and wants to be special, noticed, loved - but nope, no luck, he doesn't belong "here" - where he does belong, he's not sure, but it's not with the Others he encounters, hates and yet longs to be.  (I wonder if these Others are the posh kids going to Oxford, cool scenesters, or what.)  Radiohead were sued and gave credit where it was due for taking this song and making it their own, an angry, implacable jab at a world full of mindless bliss, oblivious to anything and anyone else.  And "Creep" has more resonance now than this song - as everyone wants to feel special, more than they want some near-death lack of want.  Or at least that's how it looks to me, these days. 

Next up:  a man who's lost without his love.

*I can't imagine another song like this that mentions books, if there are any other songs about this specific situation.

Onwards, Through The Fog

I thought I should pause for a moment to reflect on what has been happening recently with regards to the intersection of music, power and abuse of power. 

It has become increasingly difficult for me to write wholeheartedly about music in general because of Operation Yewtree – which, if you don’t know about it, is looking at the extensive abuses of the late DJ Jimmy Savile; the revelations of these abuses have caused others to come forward and for other prominent musicians/broadcasters to be called in for questioning.  It is a terrible thing to think of the ugliness and sleaze of the music industry extending to the BBC, but it has.  Paul Gambaccini*, for instance, has been off the air since October, awaiting legal proceedings; retired DJ Dave Lee Travis has been under a cloud of allegations.  Sports broadcaster Stuart Hall has been convicted and put in jail and will likely be there for life.  Musicians are part of this as well:   Rolf Harris has been brought in for questioning; Roy Harper has been too.   Ian Watkins of Lostprophets has pleaded guilty to things more hideous than what most of these men have been alleged to have done, but at the very, very least he has admitted guilt and is now in jail.  The Fog that I have been writing about has its heart here; and that is why writing has now become difficult.  I wish I could just write about the music, but in understanding the charts I have to understand the BBC.  I have reached the point where Gambaccini is working at the BBC, Travis & Savile are fixtures there and only his co-workers really know what Stuart Hall is up to, there in his room…

And it is really like a David Peace novel, save I am not a crime reporter but a mere music blogger, taking my magnifying glass to songs and sensing something toxic about them.  I think of how while it may be noble to write about these times, I am reopening things that should stay shut, not just for the good of you readers but for my own good.   When I think of the mid-70s I remember abuse, plainly, and when I look at the corresponding #2 song I wince – if I have the year right, and the time, and I think I do.  For me there is no going back to accuse my abuser or even naming him – I don’t remember his face, or much of his voice.  Just the notion that I was a thing to be “educated” and the non-cheering thought that if another girl had been outside that cloudy summer afternoon it would have been her, not me.  And as you’d expect, the gulf of experience between now and then means I only am in “now” or “then.”  As the 70s pull ever-closer into focus for me the further many of the #2s of the mid-70s become distant objects, ultimately irrelevant to my experiences as they were lived.  The mere action of looking back at this time does not do what it once did; far more vivid things come to the fore, demanding attention, and crucially almost none of this is helping me adjust to life in the UK.  

Nor does it help that the BBC’s most popular station, Radio 2, is meanly fixated (in part) on this very time.  I have difficulty listening to it now as what I want to hear – the new – is all but drowned out by the old, the creepy and outright awful.  This is, as far as I can tell, is to provide some odd layer of comfort to the listeners, a kind of cozy nostalgia.  Certainly none of it is played in an ironic or facetious manner.  It is – this terrible music – played straight, accepted straight, with no comment or fuss.   I sometimes think I am the only one who notices this, just as I notice that so many of the “love songs” played on R2 aren’t, in fact, love songs at all. 

 

Now, I could (and have) changed the station, but how absolutely wonderful would it be to actually change the station.  But I know that this would be difficult, as the ratings for these shows are so high, proving that the public is willing to listen to crap music and why would the embattled BBC want to lose even one listener?  I think (as Marcello so often says) they are actually terrified of that, but then what to make of the listeners themselves, the UK public at large?  Is this a station that actually exists (a leap here, but not a huge one I don’t think) for the broadcasters rather than the music?  Is what gets played ultimately meaningless?  And are the charts (therefore) also meaningless? In a place as small and dense as the UK, what a DJ plays matters, the charts matter, but what if those associated with charts and shows are…suspect?**

 

As you can see, dear reader, the whole music system closes in on itself here, the actual fans of music themselves – the girls – unable to see what is happening, due to fandom and naivete, until for far too many it was too late.  They may find some therapeutic purpose in writing about the mid-70s; for me it is a step into the past that makes things more complicated than even I had expected.  I like to think as a trained journalist that I can use some of my own personal experience to illuminate the wider scene, but the scene here is ugly, relentless, smug, self-denying…and that scene seeps into the charts, until they become one.  Any steely determination I might have is nearly crushed by that accumulative repulsion.  The rebroadcasting of TOTP on BBC4 shows just how elemental the BBC were to keeping fun and joy off the charts as best they could, the shows being labelled with the tags  “#nostalgiafail” and “#wrongness overload” and variants on twitter for two years now. Even the punk scene ends up as just part of the general scheme of things, alas; the BBC did not alter itself but stays staunchly middle-of-the-road, right in the thick of things where the status quo (no pun intended) remains what I would call “passive aggressive/neutral” – which is also where most abusers would classify themselves, I think.      

So how can I continue to write here?  The only way I can get through The Fog safely is to avoid writing about large chunks of it.  Not all of these songs are here because of The Fog – some I or Marcello have written about already – but I think by listing the ’74 ones you can see where I’m coming from.

“Angel Face” The Glitter Band (I have never heard this on UK radio, and while they are innocent it’s a case of guilt by association, alas.)

“Remember You’re A Womble” The Wombles (I had Woodsy The Owl and I don’t pollute – did The Wombles have the same effect at the time? Again, a question better answered by someone else.)

“Homely Girl” The Chi-Lites (Ugh, and this got in while Curtis Mayfield was sold in the wrong shops.)

“Don’t Stay Away Too Long” – Peters & Lee (who have been pretty much already written about on Then Play Long)

“Shang-a-lang” – Bay City Rollers (I strongly recommend Bye Bye Baby by Caroline Sullivan in all matters to do with the band and their Tartan Army; I was far too young to be part of it.)

“Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll” Showaddywaddy (I will be avoiding this band altogether.)

“Kissin’ In The Back Row Of The Movies” – The Drifters (Perhaps the center of The Fog musically at least, and I must emphasize how their 70s hits weren’t hits in the US.)

“Band On The Run” – Wings (already discussed on Then Play Long)

“Born With A Smile On My Face” – Stephanie De Sykes (I don’t think writing about this or any other soap-based hit will help me understand the UK any better.)

“Far Far Away” – Slade (They remain more than a little alien to me for some reason, so, no.)

“All Of Me Loves All Of You” – Bay City Rollers (see above)

“Killer Queen” – Queen (already discussed on Then Play Long)

“Wombling Merry Christmas” – The Wombles (Isn’t it odd how the ’73 Christmas hits have become standards while the ’74 ones have no lasting impact whatsoever; or maybe not.)

Take away those songs and there are still a few to write about from ’74, ones I can write about with enthusiasm and a strong belief that despite everything, good music does will (like truth) out.  The Fog is something to contend with, but in the next few years I will try to find all the signs of life and light. 

*I cannot comment on Gambaccini's situation directly as it has yet to be resolved one way or another; for someone who was such a fixture at the BBC (R2 had a whole week dedicated to his 40 years there) it may be that no matter what happens he may choose not to return to the station.

**Top of the Pops reruns now have to skip all episodes hosted by Savile and Travis; a whole tranche of shared culture has been denied the UK public, all because the BBC will not just edit their links out – a case of the BBC going too far to correct themselves when in the past they should have done so, but didn’t. 

Grrl Power: Suzi Quatro: "48 Crash"

It is something of a truism that a lot of the things people talked about in the 60s didn't actually happen - for better or for worse - until the 70s.  In truth though, if the promise of rock 'n' roll - that it is democratic and therefore everyone can, if willing, participate - was delivered in the 60s, then there would have been a lot more Suzi Quatros around at this time.  But there was just the one, due to circumstances it is all too easy, forty years later, to understand.  The general idea then as now was, you girls can be pop singers or folk singer-songwriters or general light entertainment always-available-for-variety show singers, or even country singers, if you like.  But leave rock 'n' roll to the boys.

Suzi looked at this and said, fuck that.

I cannot emphasize how bad things were back in the early 70s, what with Janis Joplin gone and so on, but Suzi Quatro up in Detroit had a band with her sisters and they gigged and recorded singles and were known on the scene; Suzi taught herself bass and was known to not take crap off of anybody, not Alice Cooper, not Iggy Pop*.  Mickie Most was in Detroit, saw her all-sisters band (The Pleasure Seekers) and figured he had a star-in-the-making on his hands, and convinced Suzi to move to London to become famous, just like Hendrix.  And like restless American girls before and after, she moved, got her band together, wrote songs and found herself in the midst of the Glam Slam, and added its influence to her Detroit sound.  She wore a leather suit (her idea, not Most's) for convenience first, and had a low-slung bass as she is tiny and basses are rather heavy, as anyone who's played one knows.  Most got Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman to write songs for her, and this is song is one of them.  That it's about male menopause is something the boys of '73 (and girls, for that matter) may not have understood, but it got to #2 on the Luxembourg chart anyway, and it is inadvertently therefore one of the most feminist songs of this blog so far.  That so many of the Glam Slam affected femininity they could hardly complain when an actual woman - an outsider, to boot! - came along and rocked just as hard as they did.  Suzi has always seen herself as a musician first, an entertainer second, and if she was a sex symbol for the times, well that was nice, but not her first intention.

Nowadays some might think that this thunderous music/high-pitched singing might be a bit dated, and I have noticed that this song doesn't tend to get played on UK radio (hmmm, I wonder why).  But then the music industry, which includes rock radio, has always been a bit ambivalent to that general category of women who play rock 'n' roll; whole books have been written about the subject, and it is still observable (especially in the UK) how rock in general is a male preserve, with an invisible "No Girls Allowed" sign hanging outside the treehouse**.  Suzi Quatro helped to start a wave of young women who also played and sang and sweated in small clubs and were looked down on, in more ways than one, but who succeeded as they believed in themselves and in the music they were making;  and this has continued since, from the Runaways to Deap Valley, with stops everywhere from Girlschool to L7, The Go-Go's to Haim.  Certainly Joan Jett credits Suzi for inspiration, but as the wave has moved forward I wonder if anyone else in the US remembers her at all.  Perhaps the riot grrls did, in the early 90s; but for girls my age, Suzi was Leather Tuscadero in Happy Days and had that "Stumblin' In" hit song and that was about it.  I grew up not knowing about this fierce song of male ascension and swift decline, and so my teenage version of If You Knew Suzi was Jett's Bad Reputation.  I have left one woman out of this as I have written about her already, but suffice it to say when Chrissie Hynde got to London two years after Quatro she had to look to her just as Jett did as an example of what could be done, even if Hynde didn't want to exactly do it the same way***.  Also, I am loathe to call Suzi a pioneer - Wanda Jackson, anyone? - but for the UK scene, she was one.  That she played songs written by others (though she did write songs for albums and b-sides) was perhaps the only hitch in this story; but in this case, with "48 Crash" what Chinn and Chapman wrote would have been silly as sung by Mud or Sweet.  Suzi attacks this song and sings it like...well, like a woman who knows that one day there will be a lot more women on the stage, just like her, and "the Industry" would just have to deal.  On the whole, I think things aren't quite so bad as they can sometimes seem; not when Kate Nash is running bandcamps for teenage girls and Pussy Riot are getting support from all over the world (their version of this song would no doubt be "Putin Crash").  Quatro still performs, and is proud that she was the first, though she knows that it was inevitable.  At some point, a young woman was bound to lead a band, sing and play an instrument.  All she had to do was have the skill, determination and energy to do it, and it was Suzi who happened to be the first.   

Next up:  the endless loop of Baby Boomers, explained.    

*Some guy in the audience stuck his tongue out in a rude way to her and she promptly took her bass and hit him on the head with it.  That's just how things were in Detroit.  
 
** I am trying and failing to remember if a female musician has made any recent covers of Q, Uncut or Mojo. 

***Hynde interviewed Quatro for the NME and was generally impressed by her, on and offstage. 

Behold The Colins: The Faces: "Cindy Incidentally"

Lately I have been pondering the term "bloke":  and while there are many varieties of bloke out there, I tend to think of some of them as Colins.  Colins are traditionalists, no matter what tradition it is they are following, and they tend to look with suspicion at any music that isn't traditional (I think they would use the word "authentic".)  If the Housewives of Valium Court long to be swept away in some sort of masculine cry of emotion, the Colins* regard music as something of a large mirror, reflecting and refracting their lives, lives too big for mere singles.  No, the Colins like albums** - they like the odd single here and there enough, but for their tastes and habits the album is the thing; a collection of songs that let him see himself, that are his soundtrack, the melodies and lyrics to his daily life. 

There is nothing wrong with this, of course; a lot of what makes music enthusiasts makes the Colins what they are, save that the Colins tend to stick to very particular areas, sounds, artists.  And they don't really evolve or change, once they are in their mid-20s.  Not all blokes are Colins, but all Colins are blokes and thus we come, dear readers, to this song. 

This is an anthem to change, to moving on, to leaving your dull town for somewhere else; and I can imagine it resonating with a lot of people, way beyond the Colins (who would have waited for the album Ooh La La to come out, being album people and whatnot).  It is hard not to hear it now as a song Rod Stewart is singing to himself, that he has to leave The Faces and indeed the UK; and this was to be the last album he did with them; on his own he was a star and the roughness of The Faces was something he wanted to leave behind***.  (Greil Marcus calls Stewart's albums with the band "let's go get drunk" music, and is willing to accept that far more than Stewart at the time did.)  Long before he did his Great American Songbook stuff, Stewart wanted to immerse himself in that smooth American soul sound, to make music in that tradition.  As much as the Colins love The Faces, they respect Stewart's need to do this - to adhere to tradition - and I suppose this makes Stewart a Colin himself. 

This song, where he tells the girl in question to pack up and move out with him, could be heard (I guess) as his wishing he could take The Faces along for the ride.  But what if it's otherwise?  How mean would it be to write a song about how dull your band is, and have them play on it?  As mean as calling the resulting album a "stinking rotten" one, and then saying that it could have been done better.  There is so much goodwill and bonhomie in the early 70s, but by now it is starting to disintegrate; and Stewart, who no doubt regards himself by now as a "professional" is eagerly anticipating the day when he leaves town, leaves his old once-friends behind and starts his life anew.

That life, according to Marcus, is one in which "he exchanged passion for sentiment, the romance of sex for a tease, a reach for mysteries with tawdry posturing" and thus betrays his talent.  Stewart isn't the only rock star who leaves the UK for the US but his decision to do so seems to me to be one he would have made even he actually liked what he and the The Faces were doing; that he didn't think they could do what he wanted them to just made it easier for him.

But what of the non-Colins who bought this?  Were they just as eager to leave their own dingy corners and head off to places elsewhere?  Anyone would have heard this at the time and felt some sympathy with the urge to go somewhere more exciting; a few though, would stay right at home and try to make excitement for themselves.  Rod Stewart is his own weathervane here, and his fans long for that freedom to move, which some may take up, others, not...the Colins will understand, even if their escape is mostly pub talk and their main dream is owning a shed or two.

Next up:  the Glam Slam continueth.           



*Named after one man who was niggling a point on a nationwide radio show, most likely Radio 2, which is in part a Colin-friendly station.

**The recent BBC tv and radio shows heralding the album were either wrong-headed (re-recording Please Please Me) or mind-boggling (one BBC broadcaster said that disco was the anti-r&b).

***It is interesting to note that the whole pub rock movement kind of takes off once Stewart leaves and The Faces break up; and that whole idea of dismissing a band because it can't play will rebound in a few years as well...

The Sincerest Form: Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs: "Seaside Shuffle"

The world of music is dominated by spirals; which is to say that nature's greatest design (in graphics terms, in my opinion anyway) is musical, or vice versa.  The Spiral Jetty notwithstanding, music is the art that gets the spiral motion, right down to the movement of 78s, vinyl albums/singles, cassettes, etc. 

In that same way, a song can beget other songs and so forth until the velocity of the thing has run its course...and here we have a song from the rather wet summer of '72 that is about the simple joys of heading down to the sea...so why does it sound so familiar? 

Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs was a made up name (by UK Records' Imp of the Perverse, Jonathan King) to bring a little bubblegum magic to a no-nonsense rockin' blues band called, in real life, Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts.  They had been the house band at the Studio 51 Club in London for some time, and had this song in their repertoire; on a few occasions a band called Mungo Jerry had supported them, and had no doubt heard the song.  The Thunderbolts released it as a single but it got nowhere, and what do you know, a few months later (I may be exaggerating, but these things never take that long) Mungo Jerry had a huge hit with their own shuffle, "In The Summertime."  Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts were chagrined, of course, but what could they do?  They kept playing their rockin' blues and righteously waited, getting a bit miffed again at the success of "The Pushbike Song" which was now twice removed from their own song.  And so in the summer of '72 they re-released this Jona Lewie-written song and finally had a hit, the spiral properly leading towards them for once, towards the interior where it all began.  They had another single, "On A Saturday Night" but this was their one and only real hit; one that begat others. 

In writing about this song, I've realized that Mungo Jerry's success has pushed this song into The Void; I've never heard it on the radio.  Jona Lewie has a right to be upset about that, but on the other hand, he did write "Stop The Cavalry" which is sure to be heard many times this Christmas as it was when it came out in 1980; I heard it yesterday doing the grocery shopping.  At bottom that song too is an easy shuffle with a point, this time political, but between all the "dum-a-dum-a-dum-dum"s and brassy good cheer, it can be easy to miss.  (I wonder now if people even know it's an anti-nuclear song tucked inside a Christmas song.)  Between that and his other, moodier song about being stuck in kitchens at parties (where perhaps he met Paul Young making some toast) Jona Lewie has all the time in the world to compose and record when he wants; the chagrin of 1970 has long worn off.

Next up:  how did we get to hip hop so soon?

A Tasty Geezer: The Piglets: "Johnny Reggae"

When I was sixteen or so, I read my first Bronte novel; it was, inevitably, Wuthering Heights.  The edition I (and all my fellow students at White Oaks) had wasn’t the Penguin edition but the US one, bought at the start of the year in the office where they sold books in high school.  It looked like this.  The reason I mention it isn’t because I liked the novel (I struggled with Joseph’s dialect and had to work at the novel’s structure, even though a convenient family tree was part of the introduction) but because of what was said about the author.  Especially what her sister, Charlotte, said about her* : “Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone.”  Well, I thought, that’s an odd thing to say about someone who has written something so complex; but Emily’s general stoical nature (I seem to remember, but can’t find, something about her removing a nail or tooth or some such thing from her skin with utter calm) appealed to me.  And so did the instruction of Patrick Bronte, to Mrs. Gaskell, on her writing about Charlotte – “No quailing, no drawing back!”

And so it is with this blog – some might want me to draw back from writing about certain people, certain songs, and while a few – a very few – I am avoiding for my own sanity, the rest I can and will write about.  Indeed, I would be cheating myself if I skipped anything, especially since the very things that some might object to I didn’t hear in the US; and they are part of UK pop culture, whether UK pop culture is willing to admit this, or not.  Some might object to my writing about Jonathan King – in this case, about his smash hit “Johnny Reggae” (an NME #2) – and some others just might feel a little…uneasy.  All things considered, I can understand that; to this day, I have noticed, for instance, that chart shows (radio shows that go through charts of the past – Pick of the Pops, Double Top Twenty, etc.) always conveniently swerve around or contrive to avoid King’s works; I am not sure if this is a legal matter, a matter of taste, or something of the two combined.  As a man with a criminal past – of a sexual nature – I am not sure if the radio silence is some odd kind of shunning, a continuing punishment. 

We are in the depths of something here, dear readers, that goes beyond the Void and into some kind of re-writing of history, as if songs like “Johnny Reggae” never happened in the first place, where the industry that King thrived in for a long time suddenly turned on him, in a way that looks a bit scapegoatish to me.  That he did time for terrible things is well-known; but then Phil Spector and Joe Meek’s productions still get played, and they both murdered someone, something far worse than what King did.  To an outsider like me, this is unfair; something like an aesthetic as well as a legal judgement has been wrought. 

This UK quailing and drawing back from what actually happened, what lots of people actually bought and danced to – because hey, I’m sure this was played at a lot of parties at the time – is a shame; this is a fine song, King’s foray into reggae, with one girl telling another about her fine fine boy, and how she’s so into him, and vice versa.  It’s just suggestive enough to be real, detailed enough so that you too can imagine how handsome and cool the guy is.  Not for one minute is it trying to be real reggae (the girls have Cockney accents) and if it was deemed a novelty at the time, well, it was a popular one, one written and produced by King, who had already had hit (“Everyone’s Gone To The Moon” from ‘65), named the band Genesis and helped them with their first album, and otherwise was one of the stars of King’s College in Cambridge in the mid-60s (along with fellow students at the time Nick Drake and Ian MacDonald; I’m not sure if they knew each other though)**.  King thus covers a lot of ground here, from prog rock to bubblegum, a man who could sense a trend or geist and get a hit – such as this one – with a kind of irreverence balanced with an actual understanding and love for pop. 

But the UK media has swept all this away under its figurative carpet; and so in the mosaic that is 70s pop, there are bits and pieces missing, because it cannot, for whatever reason, separate the person from their works, observe Larkin’s Law, and understand its past.  That sweeping has removed this song from pop currency, for all intents and purposes; and as a lot of you well know, this is not the first time I will have to deal with music that is unplayed, unknown by anyone under 40 or so, in this blog.  As uneasy as I know it will be for some, I will be trying to understand the 70s and how they were, and in this case how the UK deals, or doesn't, with those who have done their time and are all but outcasts, who were famous in the 70s and beyond and how they are seen (or rather not seen, not to mention not heard) now. 

Next up:  and so the legacy begins.  

            

*I realize that what Charlotte wrote might be an exaggerated or romanticized view of Emily’s character, but at sixteen I had no idea about this.

*This recent interview with King provides a lot of information on his conviction, the murkiness of the law, and how he sees himself - as a man who did bad things, but not nearly as much as what he has been accused to doing. 

"Flowers Are Better Than Bullets": Edwin Starr: "War"

“The United States recognizes ‘membership in good standing’ in the Mennonite church as a justifiable reason to bestow exemption from military service.  Being a Mennonite is like having a note from your mom.  This exemption is due to the fact that throughout their history Mennonites have defined themselves by their refusal to fight.  Pick a war, any war, and the Mennonites have opposed it.  In Mennonite doctrine, there is no such thing as a Just War.  Moreover, we believe that violence leads only to more violence…Mennonites traditionally called themselves Die Stillen im Lande (the Quiet in the Nations) – meaning that civil resistance could be achieved through the twin activities of thoughtful active nonparticipation and farming.  Both of these activities involve practical action.  If it’s worth believing, it’s worth doing.”      Rhoda Janzen, Mennonite In a Little Black Dress

War is such a huge topic that I feel it only possible to write about my father; to use his experience, or what I know of it in any case, as one tiny facet of war.

My father was supposed to be – in the Mennonite tradition of family patterns, I suppose – a preacher.  Yes, Mennonites have preachers – those who lead exemplary lives and are of course highly religious.  But my father, since he was a kid, had the drawing bug; by the late 40s he had done the illustrations for his high school yearbook, so good and obsessed was he by taking pen, pencil and paper and observing and then drawing.  By 1948 he had decided that as good as this was, he wanted to get to know something else, something a bit more modern – the motion picture camera.  Such things were much harder to come by in Reedley, Ca., and so he joined the army, just so he could, eventually, take classes in how to use one and then go and film something.

As you can see, my father was a rather single-minded man whose ambitions lay far away from being a preacher; the visual arts were his thing, whether drawing, painting or the movies.  Staying in a small town was not something of interest to him, when the big wide world was out there.  Voluntarily joining the army was also, as you can see, something of a rebellious move; he even went to church in his uniform once, a gesture that may well have gotten him kicked out of church altogether, for all I know.  (He was also a budding agnostic, I should note.) 

And so he joined, and got sent to Fort Benning in Georgia, where on Sundays he would go to a local church there to see a very different service from the ones he knew, ones he would refer to when playing me his James Brown album – what he heard in Brown’s music in the 60s was what he’d heard there in ’49.  He never talked much about his pre-war days, though he did say he lost weight, as back home on the farm they ate four times a day (the last a meal near midnight, in case you were wondering), in the army, three.  And then the Korean War began, and my father was sent over as part of the motion picture camera division, responsible for filming action in all weathers, for newsreels back home. 

He never talked very much about his war days, either; but I could sense that they were maybe something that had changed him, how much I don’t know as he met my mom years afterward and they had me years after that.  He had lost a good friend by a random sniper shot in an alley somewhere; he had made it across the alley, but Pete didn’t .  My father had made a tough bargain for himself – do all this and learn about cameras, angles, lenses, etc. – ‘this’ being stuck in the endless cold of Korea, day in and day out…but he came out of it in one piece, if not emotionally and otherwise scarred in some ways.  I have no idea if my father’s grumpiness, depressive streaks or moody moments came out of being brought up in the Great Depression or having seen war; he had a mean teasing streak and yet was oddly non-preachy with me.  He was rarely angry with me, but he could be bossy (Mennonite fathers definitely rule the roost) and silly by turns. 

By the time my mom was pregnant with me, he was a skilled animator of many years, and was at this time (he’d worked at Disney amongst other places after returning from Korea) working for the military.  The Vietnam war was looking to be more and more unwinnable, which didn’t stop the military one bit in piling on money and effort to get more and more technologically advanced weapons into battle.  My father grew uncomfortable with this and decided that by the time I was born he would go back to civilian work, and the short film he did just before I arrived he was very subtle in showing others the reason why.  The film is about a super-duper new plane that can swoop and dive easily; in one swoop in the film you can see two ribbons of air from either wing, one blue, one pink.  I arrived in January 1967, pink, and named by my mother after my father’s mom, Lena.  After that point, my father did not work for any military anywhere, and instead animated various Nasa activities, including the Moon Landing and the Mars explorer.  

The one thing he would tell me about war was how he thought – he knew – it had turned men into machines.  I think he even showed me some pictures he'd drawn – incredibly dense and depressing ones – of humans literally turning into machines, losing their bodies and souls in the process.  He did the military animation as it was a job; but his conscience told him that this was wrong, morally wrong.  The Mennonite anti-war stance was fashionable in some circles in the 60s, but my father was not a hippie; he had seen war – he had filmed it, after all – and knew the whole process.  As much as he had to support my mom and me, he couldn’t do it by working for the military in any way.  Vietnam was just too awful, and I can imagine his anguish at coming home to watch the news every night, and seeing the war, and then going back to work to animate a machine designed to kill quickly, every day.

My father’s taste in music was mostly for jazz, some Romantic classical and whatever else took his fancy; anything that swung was okay with him.  What he thought of this song I don’t know, though once in a fit of letting me actually play what I wanted on the stereo (usually I had to wait for him to be out of the house to play anything I wanted) I played the huge four-album Motown box set I got from the library.  Was this on it?  I don’t remember, but the only song on it he didn’t like was “Baby Love” (“Too many ‘babys’” was his verdict).  By 1970 the anti-war fervor was building to a head; four protesters had been killed at Kent State University in Ohio in May*and the Hard Hat Riot was just a few days later.  I am too young to remember any of this of course, though there is a picture of me around this time wearing overalls with a peace dove patch on the front, and mom’s key chain – which she had for years - was a metal rectangle, with the slogan “War Is Not Healthy For Children And Other Living Things” engraved on it.

This song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong in 1969; it was first recorded by the Temptations and appears on their Psychedelic Shack album.  Motown got tons of requests to release it as a single, but the label and the group were a bit nervous about releasing something so anti-war, and thus possibly alienating fans.  (Even though most of “young America” was against the war, the Temptations were not about, I’d imagine, to do this in a supper club in Middle America.)  Whitfield wanted it to be released, but got nowhere, so he decided to re-record it with someone else; Starr, who had just joined Motown the previous year, volunteered himself for the job.  Whitfield got to do the song his way (the Temptations version is more laid-back); wailing guitars, the Undisputed Truth on backing vocals, clavinet, marching drums, the works.  None of that would have worked if Starr’s vocal wasn’t the most furious one – not nobly pained, but angry – that Motown had yet released.  Starr comes across as the righteous preacher, knowing “there’s got to be a better way” even as he sees the relentless machine of war eating humans alive – “Induction, then destruction – who wants to die?”  That Starr does this song with a mean grin on his face – a complicated one, as if to say, hell yeah I’m doing this song, just try to stop me, this is the greatest anti-war song and I’m doing it right now – makes it even clearer, in a way, just as this is a bright, tight production that points to what anyone could see on the streets – the young men, veterans, broken and damaged, or the families of those that lost loved ones, struggling to keep it together.  “Good God, y’all” snarls Starr at the whole situation, saying what the Mennonites had been saying for centuries; war is good for nothing, absolutely nothing. 

Whitfield had his way, the song went to #1 in the US – the only openly anti-war one to do so – and #2 here, where the Troubles were showing that they too weren’t going away any time soon.  Young America – and perhaps some of Middle America too – were beginning to see that this war was not going to be won, that it was indeed pointless.  Kent State was seen by some as the turning point in events, leading to the end of both the Nixon administration and Vietnam itself, though I like to think of this song's success as part of that process as well.

That Motown would have such success with this still didn't exactly pave the way for the more laid-back - if no less heartfelt - What's Going On by Marvin Gaye in '71 (that Gaye had to fight to record an album based on the point of view of a Vietnam vet shows how Motown would grudgingly release "Ball of Confusion" and "War" itself just to show it knew what time it was, but strangely balked with Gaye's far less openly strident work).  If I associate the early 70s with anything it is the socially-conscious soul/r&b that, as Greil Marcus puts it, was "nervous, trusting little if anything...driven by great physical energy, determined to get across the idea of a world - downtown or uptown, it didn't matter - where nothing was as it seemed."  He names this as one of the songs that helps to start this new era, a song that plainly and frankly tells things as they are, not as some would wish them to be.  A song about the pointlessness of war must be alive, super-alive in a way, leaping from the radio to startle an unwary listener.  That my parents would have agreed with him is obvious, that the grieving students would buy this is also obvious, but that this would not just be a song of its time, forgotten by future generations, was unthinkable**.  Whitfield, Strong and Starr helped to get the anti-war message out with that fierce smile; a complex look to match a record that took the military march and effectively threw its propaganda right back in its face.  It will be a long time before I get to another song as uncompromising as this one.

In Memoriam of my father, Dietrich Peter Friesen, 1930-1988

*A future subject of mine was there at the time and knew the four killed, was perhaps even friends with one of them; but that is for a different blog. 

**Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band did this live with Edwin Starr back in the 80s, as did Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  I'm not sure if that makes Starr a friendly forebear, but he did move to the UK to record and perform, just as Desmond Dekker did. 

A Kind of Seizure: Barry Ryan: "Eloise"

We have had songs before where, clearly, a line was being drawn between the present and the past; songs which, once they get out into the general world of pop, charts and listeners' ears, prepare them for what is to come, and inspire a few to follow...this is one of those songs; it's a dangerous song, as well.

Songs like this usually come from bands that are already fairly well known (The Beatles did it several times) or from the most unexpected of corners, those who are brand new or are determined, to quote Ezra Pound, to make it new.

Avant-MOR, a term I've used enough, is simply taking regular middle-of-the-road balladry down a strange lane or two, until something like "MacArthur Park" or "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" - songs that take lyrical and emotional flight, whether they are anguished or secure. This takes guts - in a way it is too easy to just sing the same songs, essentially, over and over again - and the skill to pull it off. There is no halfway point here, no way to just say 'let's just be a little avant-garde' - this is unvarnished stuff emotionally despite the high production values.

Twins Paul and Barry Ryan were popstar pin-up types in the mid-60s; Paul suffered too much stress performing live, though, so the two decided that Paul would write the songs and Barry would sing them; in this way there is already a doubling effect, as if two men had one voice. Paul had heard and absorbed "MacArthur Park" and wanted to do something like it; not a neat song that would be something a mailman would hum, but a proper EPIC song that would unashamedly give voice to something far bigger and uncontrollable, that would gallop along, at first dramatically, then pause as if to recall reality, if only for a second or two, and then speed into a maelstrom that makes much of UK music in '68 sound as if it is asleep.

Which is to say, this is not baroque at all but romantic, the kind of romanticism where emotions are high-pitched to the point of hysteria; wild, as if she has loved him and spurned him but he will not give up, he cannot give up as he has no other point in living.

This is a dangerous song. I'll explain what I mean: we've had Cupid before, and The Casuals had that experience too, if a bit stronger, but I must go back to Joseph Campbell to explain the difference between those and "Eloise":

“The troubadours were the nobility of Provence and then later other parts of France and Europe. In Germany they’re known as the Minnesingers, the singers of love. Minne is the medieval German word for love. The period for the troubadours is the 12th century. The troubadours were very much interested in the psychology of love. And they’re the first ones in the West who really thought of love the way we do now — as a person-to-person relationship.

Before that, love was simply Eros, the god who excites you to sexual desire. This is not the experience of falling in love the way the troubadours understood it. Eros is much more impersonal than falling in love. You see, people didn’t know about Amor. Amor is something personal that the troubadours recognized.

The troubadours recognized Amor as the highest spiritual experience. With Amor we have a purely personal ideal. The kind of seizure that comes from the meeting of the eyes, as they say in the troubadour tradition, is a person-to-person experience. That’s completely contrary to everything the Church stood for (in medieval Europe).

You know, the usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn’t a person-to-person decision at all. In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of (impersonal) marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous.”

Or, as Bill Moyers summed it up: "The point of all these pioneers in love is that they decided to be the author and means of their own self-fulfillment, that the realization of love is to be nature’s noblest work, and that they were going to take their wisdom from their own experience and not from dogma, politics, or any current concepts of social good.”

Even if Barry Ryan didn't know it, Paul had written a troubadour's song for him, a song of obsession, which didn't care for taste, politeness or anything modest. People think of courtly love as being stuffy and formal, but once the true origins of it are recalled and understood, the whole notion of The Summer of Love as revolutionary begins to make sense. Love goes against everything here, including common sense and even sanity (at the end when he sings about not being "there" I am not sure if he means not with her or not in her heart). Ryan sings like there's pretty much no tomorrow, attacking the song and freaking out at the end, passionate and fierce, the go-faster guitars and AAAAHHHHs of the backing singers forever egging him on.

Because it was now nearly 1969 and with that finality ahead, there was nothing to lose. Revolution wasn't just in the air, it was the air; the cute, the maudlin, the merely okay were not enough now. Not when songs like this and this* were in the top ten at the same time; not when Hendrix was singing about a coming apocalypse.

"Eloise" was a huge hit not just in the UK but all across Europe, in part because it was so unhinged ("Kitsch" was a later hit for Ryan, it being "a beautiful word"), and its follow-up, "Love Is Love" goes beyond even this lyrically to sum up love so totally that it's almost embarrassing. But that was the point; to go beyond what had come before, and belatedly to inspire those to come. Years later a certain band, wanting to do something big and memorable themselves, would be inspired by "Eloise" to write their own EPIC tune that would not just stomp all over their rivals but become one of the best-loved UK songs of all time; which is how Queen got to "Bohemian Rhapsody," itself a song that drew a line neatly between old and new rock, not to mention deliberate kitsch. The only way in which it differs is that the narrator there claims that nothing really "matters" to him, whereas the narrator in "Eloise" is so utterly focused that nothing besides her matters to him.

The drama of this song cannot be ignored; the sense that something out of the ordinary is happening, the sense that in hearing it you are participating, sharing his desperate need. Certainly a couple of boys in Dundee heard and absorbed it, coming up with their own 'popera' years later, with songs such as this. Here, as with "Eloise" I can only feel awe: this is what music is, what it is capable of, something beautiful and fearless and intense. Music that comes from somewhere else.

In a way there is nothing after this, though as '68 comes to a close there are a few more songs, pointers this way and that. But with this the Ryans abruptly took UK pop into a different world, a world that others would and did find inspiring, and I thank them for that.



*The Motown resurgence was due to Tony Blackburn on Radio 1 and the saintly Dave Godin, who were determined to get as much Motown in the charts as possible.

The Man Can't Stop Our Music: The Rolling Stones: "Let's Spend The Night Together"

"Nineteen sixty-seven was the watershed year, the year the seams gave way...There was a tension in the air. It's like negative and positive ions before a storm, you get that breathlessness that something's got to break."

Keith Richards, Life


Though technically we are now in mid-February '67, I want to go back a month, specifically to January 15th. On that night this song was performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show with an altered title - the more modest "Let's Spend Some Time Together" - with Mick rolling his eyes every time he had to sing the bowdlerized lyric. Afterwards the band then went backstage and changed into Nazi uniforms (not sure where those came from, the episode is not mentioned in Life) and Sullivan told them to change back into their regular stage clothes; the band refused and left and never appeared on the show again. For any other band this would have been a disaster, but for The Rolling Stones this more or less cemented their bad-boy status. The rest of the year for them included the "stitch-up" bust, trial, imprisonment, bail, a psychedelic album that was "flimflam" to Richards. But back to the song...

The song (an NME-only #2, by the way) is about as straightforward as the Stones ever get, both musically and lyrically; it's simply a demand/request from the hard-of-dancing Mick to his new love, Marianne Faithfull, who he had met not long ago. That she was a mom and wife didn't seem to matter to him (nor to her) and I wonder if Sullivan knew this was about more than just a mere lusty crush. It is shameless, in all senses of the word, and just changing the title barely disguises what is going on - "I'm going red and my tongue's getting tied/I'm off my head and my mouth's getting dry" - put that together with the pumping music and the way the words and music seem to be coupling themselves and there you have it.

However far-out music is getting, here are the Stones to kindly remind everyone what rock 'n' roll actually means and if Mick is a bit of a clown here, well, all for the better. That they get sidetracked by psychedelia just shows what purists they are, or perhaps how what they want to do (and do best) has very little to do with fashion, and more with an obsession over sounds, textures, moods. Here it's heart-pounding, nearly unbearable excitement, pure and simple. (It was banned when they went to China a few years back, but having matured as a band, they simply played other hits instead.)

The day after the Rolling Stones were banned from Ed Sullivan's show, I was born. It was also the day after the weekend of the Human Be-In in San Francisco, where some of the hipper people already had copies of The Doors' first album. The Rolling Stones, whether they knew it or not, were now a part of the counterculture, the ones who said 'no' to straight society and would thereafter have to deal with the outside world at increasingly desperate ways. When a lusty song is enough to rile the Establishment, you know they must be scared of something much bigger - namely, the breakdown of society altogether. The tensions Richards mentions are growing, this song is a (hapless) symbol of one generation's attempted censorship of another.

What comes next was not what anyone expected; it made the Stones look old-fashioned, practically Teds in context. The crossroads are going to become startlingly clear.

You Can't Play That On The BBC part 1: The Who: "I'm a Boy"

Away from the pastoral sweep of The Beach Boys, now, and back to the UK, where something was most definitely happening, though for just now there are only glints of it on the pop charts. That something is the division between pop and rock, easily seen by the differences between album and singles charts. For now they remain more or less the same, but this state will only last for a couple more years, at best. The word 'art' comes back naturally with The Who, lead by the self-consciously audacious Pete Townsend, who wanted more- more than just regular pop songs as provided by everyone else. Other groups did too, of course (the Rolling Stones always being hip to trends, and The Beatles personified restlessness) but Townsend's sincerity makes this song (from an abandoned project about a world of gender-selected babies called "Quads") stand out.

There is no overt menace here, just a refusal (because she wanted another daughter) of a mother to accept that she has a son, which makes Bill into a "headcase" - dying to escape from the world of femininity to one of cricket, mud and bicycles and blood - but who "gets it" if he does. This goes beyond the Stones' dressing up in women's clothing for "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadows" (a different way of defying norms and testing of their audience; the song stalled at #5).

"I'm a Boy" wins out because it seems to be leading the listener into something, something different and interesting, unless you are a light programme devotee and songs about gender differences and incipient madness make you...uncomfortable. The song is full of harmonies (influenced by Pet Sounds, I'd guess) and sung as prettily as possible, as well, by both Townsend and Daltrey. It is nearly weightless (anticipating "I Can See For Miles") and the anger comes out in Moon's drumming as usual, but the two harmonize at the end, lamenting and asserting the boy's point of view, one that can't be denied forever...

...it is a good point to ponder the role of pirate radio at this time, mainly because it would play what the BBC would not - songs such as the ones mentioned here. The pirates - from what I can tell - created the utterly free climate for bands and songwriters to do whatever they wanted, within reason, and then to see just how much they could get away with. Would they have been as daring without the pirates? Just how closely did people then listen to lyrics? Part of pop - or rock, if you will - is to push limits, to say the previously unsayable, to give the outcasts and freaks and geeks a voice - a voice that was needed and at present able to be heard, though by now objections to pirate radio were getting louder and louder, much like the music itself.

Townsend would eventually write longer and longer pieces about confusion and alienation and the search for some kind of resolution; this song is the start towards Tommy and Quadrophenia as well, rock as art (as opposed to art rock, which this blog will reach in time). In the meantime a whole new crop of bands would appear, blowing the minds of some listeners and driving others (more timid ones, perhaps) to the more standard fare of love songs and cheery uptempo toe tappers. Pop is the girl and rock is the boy? If only it were as simple as that; but once the door is open then anything can happen, and the idea that a song has to be anything will be tested during this time, until something breaks.

The promise of this song is that the boy can sing at all (unlike Tommy he's not dumb) and he will go on singing, even to himself. Another singer/songwriter heard this and was perhaps encouraged to write his own song, one that would be too much for even pirate radio. Something was happening, indeed.

The Choice Is Yours: Del Shannon: "Swiss Maid"

As it sometimes happens, there are strange and lovely things to be found in the most unexpected places, places that seem almost innocuous, at first...

So here we are, after a couple of sweaty dances, bumping along in a thump-a-thump way through Switzerland. "One time, a long time ago" a young woman sits/stands atop a mountain and wonders and waits for someone to notice her - her father tells her one day she'll go down to the valley and meet someone; but instead she ups and dies unhappy, pining her heart out. A simple enough story, save for the ending...

And this is where the figurative floor of the swimming pool, if we are walking along it, slips; we are floating; we are still in water, still upright, but the floor of the song is gone...

And it's all because Del (covering a Roger Miller song here, btw), after causing us listeners to care about a fictional woman's death as only he can, sings...

"If she did or not I really don't know...I'd rather think she'd found her love, wouldn't you rather think she did find love, somewhere, someway..."

And thus the fourth wall is not just acknowledged but the regular way of telling a story in a song is casually and deliberately broken down. To say this is extraordinary is putting it mildly; suddenly to turn to his audience and ask them to think of this woman and her story and think of it differently, to in essence ask them to write their own ending - these are not exactly new in storytelling, but it nevertheless feels as if something new - postmodernism? - is in the air. Del's clear compassion for this lonely girl (oddly emphasized by all the girls yodelling behind him) makes us agree with him - it would be better if somehow she had met someone, gone to the valley and found her man.

When I first heard this song it just sounded strange; but this is the point - before I expected it - that a song can in effect double up against itself, that the imaginative power of the songwriter opens up to include his audience. It is practically an invitation for others to write their own songs, which is the big difference in the 60s. And it starts here.

The Cheery Quiet: Bobby Darin: "Things"

The last time we heard from Mr. Darin (and how long ago does that seem now?), he was inviting us all to join him up a lazy river; he pounced and trounced and played with the song like a lion cub. He still has that "he's got savoir-faire because he's debonair" about him here, but note the differences; he has written this song himself. And he sits by his window, watching other couples go by.* He sees them cuddle and laugh and then remembers what they did; walking, kissing, going out and just hanging out listening to the jukebox and - most importantly - remembering 'the night we cried.' The song ambles along in a pop-country way, girls in the back singing as if they themselves are just mere representatives of her, the one he lost, the one causing him such heartaches.

The whole song is like a jaunty walk and smile, the person saying they are fine when really deep down they aren't; it is also yet another song wherein introspection (all he has to talk to are his own heartaches and they are, presumably, quite vocal) is starting to creep into the story - notice how here he doesn't even have a picture of the woman in question. But what happened on that night when they cried? Was it something to do with their lovers' vow? I feel that with song that the intensity of the 60s has just increased by that much, the cheery optimist still only just winning out over the profound void of being by oneself in total quiet. (One of the most important songs of the 60s, I feel - at least in this vein - comes along about a year from now, released as a b-side in the U.S. only, and it takes all of pop to a different place; a place that I would say culminates in Manchester in the late 70s.) If you compare these two songs, you can see how swiftly the 60s evolve and how the pressure to be not just good but great was already building up; also how the Rat Pack/Mad Men era was starting to slowly change despite itself, how showbiz was turning slowly from one thing into something else altogether. Mr. Darin smiles, stares out the window and resists crying - for now.


*For those of you who know the number two list already, there is another one that starts with this same premise but takes it to a different and radical conclusion. That's not for a few years yet, though.

It Came From The Basement: Lonnie Donegan: "Lost John/Stewball"

If the previous entry had a woman at its centre – sitting late at night by herself, listening to a record – then here we have a different venue and a different attitude. At momentous times like this, it’s good to look at the surroundings and see what is up.

The charts look like they are not just at a crossroads, but are at a place where two rivers meet. It is dangerous, I feel, to say that the one river is more ‘natural’ or ‘spontaneous’ than the other; there is only so much credit I can give for ‘authenticity’ or ‘purist’ qualities, these being at the very heart of music which may well be good, but which lacks a vital something – you might call it punctum – once it exhausts whatever innate qualities it has.

That is why the transatlanticism (thank you, whoever coined that word) of 50s music matters so much. Already on this blog there have been many US as well as UK artists; any idea that Americans suddenly ‘invaded’ the UK charts with rock ‘n’ roll must be put aside. As an American myself, I find it strange to read the story of Lonnie Donegan reviving a fairly casual and homey music – skiffle – and being so successful; but it is often in the strange that something new can happen. Much has been made of Donegan’s being from the UK and making simple, direct and easily playable music as being a cornerstone of what is to come; but staying in the here and now (June 1956), a great deal is happening, and “Lost John/Stewball” (songs about a prisoner and a racehorse) has gone up the charts, amidst movie themes, instrumentals and a song improbably called “Rock and Roll Waltz” – a clear indicator that this new thing is at least worth a dance, even if said dance is all wrong. (Just as “Rock Around The Clock” is described as a ‘foxtrot’ to those unable to jive and swing.) Lonnie’s woebegone narratives, delivered with a voice like cheery 5th grade teacher who wants the whole class to join in (and thus, they do) are not aimed at those who know dances, or have aspirations to sing with full orchestras. It is fairly clear that the teenager (that now no-longer mythical creature, if s/he ever was) is starting to buy singles and hang out in clubs like The Two Is and others where skiffle is played. Acoustic guitars are bought; bands are formed; but this has yet to happen. Lonnie Donegan has his foot in the door and a young man – even younger than Lonnie – is about to rip the door down altogether.

(Let me now also pause and note that Donegan is from Glasgow, Brewer is American, and how nice it s to have them together, just as Marcello and I will soon be together in London.)