Something to write home about
As it happens I was out on the golf course yesterday partaking in a traditional practice round in the company of a Canadian relative by marriage in advance of an annual family tournament – an outing in days of yore used to be a welcome warm-up for the main event.
Sadly, I fear that at my stage of life it may have proved counter-productive: even as I was driving home my body was stiffening up, I had aches in muscles I didn’t even know I possessed and my supposedly rested troublesome Achilles tendon was protesting loudly.
There, I’ve got my excuses in early for what I anticipate may be a poor performance in today’s event – but that is not the purpose of this post.
Instead I wish to pick up on an aspect of yesterday’s reflections in the Rust by Michael Stuart upon the BBC’s celebrations surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the issue of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album.
At one point in our conversation yesterday my Canadian pal reminded me of the circumstances in which we had heard of the death of Elvis Presley which occurred (I had to look this up) on 16th August 1977.
I should register immediately that, fascinating though they might have been, I had absolutely zero recollection of what he was referring to, viz. that I was the first to learn of this breaking news and immediately went out, bought every newspaper on the local newsstand, after which we spent the entire morning reading them from cover to cover.
He commented that he wished he had kept those newspapers because in 2019 they might be collectors’ items.
When I got home and visited the website of this organ the angle of the social comments upon Michael’s Abbey Road piece that interested me was the degree of push-back against his regret that today’s youngest generations know so little – or pay so little regard – to the great popular music of the past.
Several people pointed out that, to an extent by definition, as regards musical tastes as well as other things, we are all defined by our youth and it ill-bodes Michael – or anyone of a past generation – to wallow too far or often in nostalgia.
Variations upon the theme “That was your time, this is ours” kept occurring.
My first comment is to acknowledge the issue.
As I reached my own teenage years (broadly speaking 1962) I was emerging from a family home in which my parents championed the likes of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, 1940s Big Band swing music, Doris Day, Gene Kelly and the musicals of Rogers and Hammerstein.
The advent of Elvis Presley, Bill Haley & The Comets, Chuck Berry, Little Richard et al. around the year 1955 – let’s lump it together as Rock ‘n Roll – did not reach the Ingolbly household until about five years later when a black and white BBC television show called Six-Five Special hosted by middle-aged DJ Pete Murray [bear with me, I haven’t looked this up and am relying upon personal memory] featured occasional skiffle groups and the likes of Billy Fury, the youthful Cliff Richard and the US folk group Peter, Paul and Mary.
This departure appeared moderately intriguing to me and my pals at the time but was simultaneously regarded by my parents and their peers are tantamount to the arrival of the Barbarians at the gates of Rome.
On top of which, of course, the arrival of the scene of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and similar long-haired layabouts creating an horrendous din was greeted with dismissive derision by the older generations – ironically, that is, until the third Beatles’ album With The Beatles in 1963 (on which Paul McCartney sang a version Till There Was You, written for the 1950s Broadway musical The Music Man by Meredith Wilson) which converted my father overnight into a faltering but growing appreciation of the Fab Four’s merits.
So I understand today’s youngsters desire (need, even) to create their own ‘favourite music’ which probably also needs to be in a form completely different from that which went before, albeit that – being of my generation, supposedly the first that ‘broke the mould’ and embraced artistic freedom like none before – I also fondly like to imagine that I’m always “alive” to new fashions in types of music. It’s just that (for me) the vast bulk of what is massively popular today comes across as mushy pap, if not tuneless crap!
My other subject today is upon the complexity of the issues surrounding knowing the background of those who produce or perform art – and indeed whether it matters.
Yesterday my golfing conversation caused me to think of the Elvis legend – his poverty-stricken background, love of and country gospel music; what he achieved in his extraordinary career; his semi-deity iconic status today; and the fact that he achieved all he did before dying at the age of only forty-two.
When a ten year old kid today hears Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel, Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, Don’t Be Cruel or Hound Dog for the first time and likes what he hears, does it matter whether he knows anything about Elvis’s life … or not? Surely, to him these songs either sound ‘cool’ or they don’t?
When it comes to painting, someone can either appreciate the works of, for example, Van Gough as examples of art that he or she enjoys looking at – or not. Does it matter that history regards Van Gough as a tortuous genius?
Would it make any difference to his place in art history if instead he’d been a well-to-do bank clerk who simply knocked up the odd canvas as a weekend hobby before settling down on the sofa with his wife and family plus glass of red wine on a Sunday evening to watch the Strictly Come Dancing results show?
To get to my point.
Does it really matter that kids today might never have heard of the Beatles, or know what they meant to so many of us so long ago?
If they like the odd Beatles track now and again surely – maybe – that’s enough?
