Bookhugger column #5: Townshend, Faber, Electric Eden

For my Bookhugger column this month I was resolved already to write on Rob Young's splendid Electric Eden (of which you will surely read more elsewhere this month, the excellent blog-site in support of which is here.) But since music and its celebration in writing was the matter, and since Faber and Faber have serious form in this area, I thought I'd broaden the piece so as to say a little of the part in the story played by Pete Townshend, Faber's second-most-famous editor in the firm's history after Thomas Stearns Eliot. Townshend is also appropriate to any discussion of English music specifically, or of music as a higher (or lower, Chthonic) power, and such is the terrain of Rob Young's book.
Anyhow, in writing up the piece I discovered on YouTube the 1985 South Bank Show on Townshend, and just wished to share with you a) the sheer genius of opening the show on an extreme close-up of Pete's vibrating strings as they are struck, and b) the commensurate genius of letting the emergent tune, Pete's 'Give Blood', run on over the opening credits as a replacement theme to the episode.

Superbowl XLIV: The Who dares, wins?

This Sunday, Superbowl 44, Colts v Saints, and the bookies say Colts by 4. I haven't a clue myself, and if the Pittsburgh Steelers aren't in it then I have no-one to shout for. The half-time show, though, that's a different matter. For this year the Dolphin Stadium in South Florida, and a few hundred million TV viewers worldwide, will welcome to the stage the 'Orrible 'Oo.

The half-time entertainment is a Superbowl perennial, but looking back at its history one could be surprised at how long the organisers persisted in mounting tame little Disney-like family spectacles for 10 minutes or so, seemingly unaware that when you've got thousands of sports freaks crammed into a stadium, and folks at home getting rowdy and beery, the chief thing they'll want to do is rock.

Michael Jackson (XXVII) and Diana Ross (XXX) were gestures toward superstar power, but, again, whoever imagined that a significant portion of the fanbase wanted to hear La Ross do Ain't No Mountain High Enough or I'm Coming Out? Even Aerosmith were made to share the slot with N-Sync and Britney Spears. Finally, in the decade just past, some genius figured it out - U2, the Stones, Springsteen, unalloyed and no support act - that's what the boys want.

There is something self-defeating about the 10-minute format: I didn't much enjoy Springsteen's set, for instance, not just because the songs were edited but because of the songs themselves - obvious, middle-ground, crowd-pleasing choices from The Boss. With The Who, however, advance word suggests that they will cram in versions of Baba O'Riley, Pinball Wizard, Tommy, Can You Hear Me?, Who Are You, and Won't Get Fooled Again. And let it be said, brothers and sisters, you could not possibly get a better mini-setlist than that, not in the entire annals of rock's lost highway...

Adam Sandler, Who-ligan

Always fun, isn't it, when a couple of your favourite things get happily conjoined? As Adam sings in the clip related to the image (left), everybody loves The Who (or pretty much.) Of course, not everybody loves Adam, and he doesn't always make it easy for them to change their minds. But I remain unashamedly his fan, partly because of inspired stuff like this - the curtain-raiser to some rockers hall-of-fame induction late last year. The only thing wrong with this clip is that it cuts out just as the Oo' take the stage, to the inimitable bleeping hurdy-gurdy strains of the Baba O'Riley intro. But then they've done that tune a lot, and will do it many times more before they get old...
(Photo (c) Kevin Winter/Getty)

Pete Townshend: Sound and Fury, Signifying Plenty

If we're talking Things rather than People, then I can't think of much that brings me more joy in this world than Pete Townshend's guitar-playing (taken in tandem, of course, with his imperishable songwriting and, on occasion, his plaintive/urgent vocals, on those occasions when he's not letting Roger Daltrey be his full-throated interpreter.)
In terms of the guitar alone, it's all about his dynamism and his artistry, isn't it? Re. the former - a few weeks back I had a really enjoyable chat with the musician-turned-filmmaker Simon Fellowes - about film and music, as it happens - during which he revealed that he had attended the Oo's famous Charlton FC stadium gig of 1976, and he and his mates were already feeling fairly excited before the band hit the stage, at which point Pete, in the act of striking the opening chords of the first number, slid to the front of the stages on his knees...
The artistry? The other night I finally watched the authorised Who documentary Amazing Journey, given to me as a birthday gift by my wife in 2007, and it was all very fine, along with a bonus DVD offering the expected extras, but the gems on that second disc to my eye are four mini-films devoted to each band member. The ones on Townshend, Moon and Entwistle offer brilliant musical analysis, and really confirm my feeling about the stunning redundancy of most rock ‘n’ roll journalism - a form that still abounds and yet hardly deserves to exist. No sort of writing about rock music by non-musicians can properly instruct a sincere pilgrim on the true nature of the creative decision-making behind musical composition and performance. But good audiovisual documentary-making certainly can.
For instance: I’m not a massive U2 fan, though I certainly like ‘em; and The Edge’s distinctive guitar stylings aren’t among my favourite sounds; but I must say he’s brilliant on the Amazing Journey films in terms of his comments on (and impromptu demonstrations of) the flamenco influence in Townshend’s acoustic playing. As for the electric side of business, both The Edge and Pete’s brother Simon are also highly insightful about Pete's signature ‘crash chord’, and Simon also offers a useful illustration of his brother's distinctive dropping of 'the third' from regular chords. What documentary film can add to all this, and so set the seal on the excellence of the lesson, is by cutting to the subject in action, and the filmmakers do this well. I should do likewise, in the spirit of underlining that Pete hasn't lost it, in fact in some ways he's getting better.

Hang The DJ: Now In Stores & Collectable

Hang The DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists is now in shops, and editor Angus Cargill blogs here. Last Saturday night Angus and I did a phone interview for the Irish radio show Cultureshock. I don’t know what was going on round Angus’s homestead that night, but for my part I kept cupping the receiver to muffle the Noises Off of a very tired little girl whose mummy was trying to entice her into the Land of Nod.
The presenter Fionn Davenport also had a female rock writer in the studio with him, and in the back-chat for my list of Top Power Ballads this scribe rather stunned me by endorsing my #6 pick of 'Alone' by Heart as her own personal All-Time Top Tune, albeit with the qualifier that it is ‘ridiculous’. It's not a record I feel the need to own or even hear too often, but I think it's great and reflects my general feeling that I'd rather overhear music (e.g. on the radio) than consume and collect it. As I say in the book, '[Alone'] was playing in Woolworth’s just the other day as I was buying my daughter some sweets, and I found myself loitering in the aisles long enough to hear Ann [Wilson]’s unearthly howl of frustration that launches the second chorus.'
Talk later turned to Alexandra Heminsley's list of 'Songs for the Dumped', and I gave a shout to Lloyd Cole whose unexpectedly delightful Don’t Get Weird On Me Babe album has two peerless pieces of solace in that department, 'There For Her' and 'Margo’s Waltz'. The marvelous 'Like Lovers Do' from his Love Story album is also a witty, wise retrospective on the whole fraught business, just right for the age you get to when you can see your romantic history as an interesting sequence rather than anything more painful or disappointing.
Then we discussed John Williams' list about great ‘Rehab’ records, where the hopelessly soused/doped artist nonetheless did far better work than he/she would ever accomplish while clean and sober. I’m not entirely behind this thesis but I see its appeal, and as an 'Oo fanatic it reminds me to stick up for the oft-maligned Who By Numbers, for which Keith Moon was often incapable/nearing the sorry end, and Pete Townshend was steeped in brandy (cf. the self-hating 'However Much I Booze'.) Yet plenty of this record is brilliantly barbed and rocks hard, and it also contains the inimitable brass-and-ukelele of 'Blue, Red and Grey' one of Townshend’s loveliest songs, not about eros but, rather, the unconditional love of this world, a tune to which I was happy to introduce my darling wife, and which we played (not very loud, mind you) at our wedding.

Hang the DJ: rock scholars start listing...

The Bookseller reports on a forthcoming title from Faber and Faber in which I'm pleased to declare an interest:

"Faber fiction editor Angus Cargill has drawn on his personal love of music to produce a book of music lists chosen by high-profile literary names. Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists (Faber, October) contains eclectic top 10 song choices from writers such as Jonathan Lethem, Hari Kunzru, Patrick McCabe and Michel Faber... Lethem contributes “10 Smutty Moments from Bob Dylan”, David Peace offers his “10 Favourite Japanese Bands”, and Cargill has also included his own list of “10 Songs of Heartache, Misery and Woe”, which include “Let Me Down Easy” by Betty Lavette and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Cargill said: “We did a book last Christmas called Ten Bad Dates with De Niro [by Richard T Kelly] which was a film compilation and did nicely, so we had the idea of doing a musical equivalent.”

Great idea! I can't wait for the finished item. I contributed a list of my own to the book by request, a canon of the best 10 'power ballads', that dubious term narrowed by definition to mean tunes that reveal the sensitive side of otherwise extremely hard-rocking turn-up-to-11 artists. I won't waste time being coy on Who is my #1: see photo above. This brilliant image of the 'Orrible 'Oo is by Richard E. Aaron, and you can find it on his Flickr photostream.

The Jill Jones Fan Club (Defunct)

When I was still a boy (this would be the late 1970s?) I read a newspaper column by the then-celebrated TV reviewer Clive James, discussing some surly broadcast interview with Johnny Rotten (then of the Sex Pistols). James disapproved of Rotten more or less totally, as did most responsible media outlets of the day, and made an especially aggrieved point of how rock 'n' roll - which had brought joy to his own Aussie boyhood back in the days of Bill Haley and the Comets - had since degenerated into an obnoxious disgrace. So much for poor old punk. 'Johnny Rotten' (John Lydon to you) is now older than James was when he wrote that Eeyore-ish diatribe. Rock 'n' roll has never died, and some of its leading early practioners are now pension-age, albeit rich as Croesus. In my teens I found it impossible to take seriously any rocker over the age of 30 - maybe 35 at an absolute push. Now past that upper age bracket myself, I just plain don't trust or rate anybody younger. If I count the 'records' I have bought (or requested to be bought for me as presents) over the last two years, the roster of artists is wizened beyond belief: The Who, Dylan, Springsteen, Levon Helm, Robert Plant (with Alison Krauss, of course)...) Be it said, not all my favourites have to be Rolling Stone standard-issue Rock Legends. I remain loyally devoted to Maria McKee and to Bob Mould, once the respective frontpersons of rowdy young bands I adored back in 1986. And then, once in a while, I will try to touch base with other singers and songwriters of that vintage, to revisit their old stuff, and see if there's been anything new since. A simple task in the Amazon/YouTube era, right? Nope. So if anybody can find me a CD of Peter Case's eponymous debut LP (1986) for a reasonable price I am ready to meet and talk cash-money. Did Test Department's The Unacceptable Face of Freedom ever get a CD release? Or Nile Rodgers' Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove? And then, above all, consider the Strange Case of Jill Jones (pictured above, on the cover of her own eponymous debut c. 1987, and 20 years later at some sort of Prince-related reunion.) I shan't detain you with all the varied reasons for her fabulousness. But I do understand she finally released a follow-up album c. 2001-2, an acoustic set, called One? Occasionally I see it offered unreliably around the Web, priced at $40 or so, second-hand - dammit. What I want to know is how come I can't get away from Leona Lewis and her reasonably priced and utterly pointless recordings, but I can't find the last Jill Jones recording anywhere readily to hand on God's earth? What is the point of music? None of this makes me Mean Old Man Clive James the Second, you understand - just the irate president-in-exile of the Jill Jones Fan Club (Defunct).