Friday 14 October 2011

Mozart: on form.

Admirer: Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get started?

Mozart: A symphony is a very complex musical form. Maybe start with some simple songs and work your way up to a symphony.

Admirer: But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8!

Mozart: Yes, but I never had to ask anyone how.

Sunday 9 October 2011

John Lennon: some thoughts

Today would have been John Lennon's 71st birthday, and really by rights it should have been. He was taken away pretty young, 31 years ago in New York.

That being said, a lot of people have commented in the past that at least he had achieved all the great things he was going to achieve in his lifetime, and by that I presume they mean the incredible years as a member of The Beatles - officially the greatest band that this or any other country has ever produced.

But to me, the real sadness of his death is the human side of it. Obviously, I never met John Lennon. I was born two years after his murder, so I never even walked (or crawled) the same earth that he did, but I have read and read about both the man and the band he created over the years and while I would not claim to be an expert, I know my stuff. It seems to me that, finally, after a childhood that, while happy, was not without its deeply traumatic moments, and an adolescence marred by the death of his mother, and taken up with the pace of rock and roll, Hamburg, drugs, sex and becoming a quarter of the biggest phenomenon music had ever known, Lennon had spent a lot of time looking for a real sense of identity. It's clear from reading even the most basic account of his life that he hadn't found it in The Beatles, in his friendship with Paul McCartney or his marriage to Cynthia. It's also clear that he had, in later life, managed to find some semblance of identity. Maybe not peace, but certainly getting there. Listen to his later interviews around the time of Double Fantasy - there's no mistaking it. Then, on December 8th, a mother whose 5 year old son was waiting upstairs had to watch her husband murdered in their own front yard. There's no escaping just how tragic it was.

I wonder sometimes why Lennon and The Beatles still hold such a hypnotic effect on the world's media, and the fans of their music. I am fairly publicly a huge Beatles fan, but they're by no means the only band I like, or the only type of music I adore. And yet, above every other, they have fascinated me for my entire life, and I predict they will continue to for many years to come. I wonder why it is. On some level, it's obvious - their story was a wonderful one, childhood friends who pulled together and struck gold by happening to be incredible songwriters and performers. Not only that, but it had a tragic element, like all good stories do. A sad inevitability that familiarity began to breed contempt and soon enough, what had once existed no longer did, and seperate ways were gone. I also think it's fantastic that they never got back together. Of course, it has been impossible since 1980 that they would, but you have to say - with the possible exception of Take That, bands that get back together very rarely hit the same heights that brought them the army of fans they were destined to disappoint in later years. The memory of The Beatles is forever young, and forever golden. They released some awful songs in their time, but they went out on a high and they never came down.

But the individual personalities of the group have always been the glue that held the magic, to me. I don't think I'm alone, either. Look at the media coverage of Paul McCartney's third wedding today, or the fuss being made about Martin Scorcese and his desire to bring the life of "the third Beatle" to the screen. Three and a half hours, the film is, and people are flocking for it.

Ironically, it wasn't until AFTER the Beatles split up that the real personalities of the four began to manifest. McCartney, so often painted as the cute, friendly, soft, bobby headed one, began to get a reputation for hard nosed business dealings and insufferable perfectionism that made him sound impossible to work with. Harrison, the "quiet" Beatle was the first to produce a "great" solo album, and in my opinion, the only one to actually produce an actually great solo album until McCartney's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" in 2004. Ringo Starr, so often relegated to "punchline and sympathy vote" status, got taken seriously as an actor, had a solo number one single and album before any of the rest of them, and was re-evaluated into one of rock's greatest drummers for his musical intelligence and subtle brilliance. Lennon, though, really shocked people. His apparent complete change of personality from the loveable moptop into a bag wearing peacenik shook people and angered them, so did his marriage to Yoko Ono, an unattractive Japanese woman, so unpalatable to 1960s Britain...why HAD he left that nice blonde Cynthia?

But in fact, the more you study Lennon's life before and during The Beatles, the more obvious it becomes that this was not him losing the plot, but finding it. His youthful distaste for authority was given free rein, a rein it had never truly been allowed in The Beatles, and for better or worse, he used that freedom. When it worked, artistically, it was a beautiful thing. When it didn't, it was like listening to a car crash, but at its core was a very human artist, who was not afraid to act like a human in a world expecting something god-like.

Lennon's humanity, and vulnerability is something that the other Beatles never truly displayed. Harrison was a fiercely private person, who revealed much about his beliefs in some things, and almost nothing about his personal feelings except for occasionally lashing out at those he perceived to have wronged him, specifically McCartney. According to those who know him, and to the man himself, McCartney's approach to public displays of emotion is to avoid them at most, if not all, costs. This dates back to when he lost his mother, Mary, at just 14. Yes, McCartney is still the most publicly active Beatle, and this was true long before Lennon and Harrison died, but how often have we ever really seen him with his guard down? Not that often. Hardly ever, in fact. Ringo's story somehow seems intrinsically less interesting than the others, but then that - I think - is because he is not as complex a character as the others. That's not a slight against him, I hope, but I think it is true.

The fact seems to be, that Lennon was simply not made for the world that brought him up. Desperate to be a hard man, masking his true feelings with either humour, or if alcohol was involved, violence, he fit the cliche of the angry young man that we still see played out on many streets in every city in the country to this day. After all, brought up in Liverpool in the 40s, he cannot have had easy access to the things that would one day bring out his true sense of self. Love, genuine affection, a lack of judgement, and an artistic and creative freedom that somehow, being British simply doesn't allow. But he needed it, and he needed it badly. When it arrived, the outpouring was hard to listen to, but it was a catharsis of massive proportions in Lennon's life - and the aftermath was a joy to behold. He might well have painted himself as the rock and roll force of the band, but in actual fact, that was McCartney. Lennon loved rock and roll because of the escape it offered him, but when he was left to his own devices, he wrote songs of complex emotions, insecurity and longing for love. McCartney wrote these as well, but while the bobbly headed soft balladeer was writing Can’t Buy Me Love, Helter Skelter, Birthday, I’ve Got a Feeling, She’s a Woman, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road, Sgt Pepper, Drive My Car, & I’m Down, to name but a few, Lennon’s writing credits include Julia, Girl, Across The Universe, Ticket To Ride, I’m a Loser, Norwegian Wood, Goodnight, In My Life, Yes It Is, This Boy and If I Fell.

Lennon's lyrics weren't always better than McCartney's (an oft quoted myth that forgets songs like Eleanor Rigby and She's Leaving Home, not to mention Blackbird and Fool on the Hill) but they were infinitely more personal. Across what has become an incredibly varied, and well loved output, McCartney very rarely accesses his own emotions in a raw and unsanitised way. This is why he's become known for mushy ballads - because even a simple declaration of love seemed to need a giant swamping orchestra to dilute it. That's also why people love "Maybe I'm Amazed" so much - it doesn't have that. It is from the heart. This pattern started early - when McCartney wrote a simple and beautiful guitar ballad to a lost love, he still added a string quartet. Lennon wouldn’t have. That’s why Yesterday has been named the most successful song of all time, and why Lennon once said he’d never wished he’d written it.

Lennon, on the other hand, allowed the listener in. His voice, while not the best in the universe, had an incredibly open and vulnerable nature. Listen to him sing "Girl" - I don't know who it's about, and I'm not sure Lennon did - but my god, he sings it to us like a broken man. It's the same on songs like Julia and This Boy. It's emotion at its rawest, and there's something irresistible about it. This tradition continued, and then some, on songs like “Mother” and into his later solo work. It’s still there on his Rock and Roll album of 1975, where Stand By Me and Slippin and Sliding get the full Lennon vocal treatment – you can almost feel the demons come out when he sings. He loved Rock and Roll because it was his only kind of therapy. Listen to the scream that introduces the solo of “Slow Down” or the entire throat tearingly fantastic vocal on “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” – he leaves nothing behind.




Despite that, living at 200 miles an hour wasn’t the real Lennon that he longed to be. In his final interview, given a few hours before his death, his enthusiasm for what he is talking about seemed to reach levels it hadn’t previously. That’s not some crappy nostalgic poignancy talking – it’s actually true. He is articulate, and boundlessly enthusiastic about things without any trace of the anger and bitterness that seemed to occasionally mar his efforts for peace in the early 70s. He had found himself – and he was ready for what was next, or so he thought.

People have often wondered what a music industry with Lennon still alive would be like. Obviously I don’t know. He’s not still alive, so I suppose it’s a redundant idea. That being said, I think it is very noticeable that we don’t have anyone like him now. Lennon was dramatically complex, and publicly so. He wasn’t doing it to appear interesting, as so many others since have done. He was not always a nice guy. In fact, in some ways, it’s generally agreed that Lennon could be an insufferably cruel piece of work. Not just in that “oh, it’s just banter” way either, but in a very real and genuine sense. He seemed to have lost this edge by the time he died, but the John Lennon that roamed the world from 1955 to 1975 was not someone I personally would have wanted much to do with, however good his songs might have been. But for all that, he spoke loudly and well about issues that other pop stars would not have touched with a barge pole. He might not always have been on the money, but he was prepared to walk the walk, not just to talk the talk, and what he said about freedom of religion shortly before he died really shows the kind of mindset that I wish more people had. It’s the quote at the end of this piece, so chosen because in all his lyrics, he never said something that spoke to me more. John Lennon’s death might have left a hole in the world of music, but realistically that hole is nowhere near as big as people make out. But the man we could have had, the elder statesman of music would have been someone worth listening to, I think.

Our loss is one thing. Lennon was a public figure and to many different people, meant many different things. But the real tragedy, to me, still – is that he finally meant something to himself, which had paved the way for the future to be bright. Somebody took something from him that wasn’t theirs to take, something he finally wanted to keep. He was stolen, and he is missed.

RIP Winston O’Boogie.

"The concept is imagining no religion, not imagining no God, although you're entitled to do that too. Imagining no denominations - that we revere Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, Milarepa equally...we don't have to worship either one if we don't want, but imagine if there was no Catholic v Protestant, no Jew v Christian. Freedom of religion for REAL...would it be so terrible?"
-John Lennon, December 8th, 1980