Nice to see Bob Dylan getting the Nobel Prize for Literature
– it shows that you don’t have to be academically acceptable to win it. One of the people he beat to the Prize was
Salman Rushdie, who is eminently academically acceptable but possibly the most
over-rated writer in history. I've waded
through The Satanic Verses and a
couple of his short stories and found them bloody near unreadable…….if it
hadn’t been for the Fatwa and years of personal bodyguards (at tax payers’
expense, I seem to recall) I think he might well have sunk without trace.
But he was not as bad as Roy Hattersley, the former Labour
Party politician and professional Yorkshireman.
Many years ago, in a budget bookshop in Tintagel, Cornwall, I bought a
book of his called The Maker’s Mark,
about a steel family in Sheffield in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. It was billed as “part one of
an epic and unmissable seven part family saga”.
God only knows what happened to parts 2 to 7 – I’ve never seen them
anywhere, which is no surprise: the first book is without a shadow of a doubt
the worst book I have EVER read. Apart
from how badly written and turgid and humourless it was I remember nothing
about plot or character (I think one of the characters rose to fame playing
football for Notts County or someone, but I may have imagined that bit….). I spent the best of part of a year reading the
thing, out of sheer bloody-mindedness and a determination not to be beaten, and then,
exhausted, passed it over to the second-hand book stall at the local church
summer fete. Priced at 10p, it was still
languishing, unsold and dusty, at the last fete day I went to, perhaps 8 years
later. It’s probably still there
now. I remain convinced it only found a
publisher because of who wrote it, not its quality.
So the fact that a songwriter and musician has won this
years’ Nobel is refreshing and a bow to popular culture rather than Academia,
and this is no bad thing. Without a
doubt, Bob is a fine and inventive songwriter, but whether songwriting should
be considered “literature” is an open question.
Judged on sales and influence over a generation, then possibly – and
no-one could seriously question Dylan’s output or appeal over the last 50 years. He knocks Rushdie and the other contenders this year out of the ball-park in that respect.
People will be singing along with Like
A Rolling Stone or Lay, Lady, Lay
long after our Salman has been forgotten, in my view. But literature? Arguable, I would say.
Some poet (who needless to say I’ve never heard of and whose
name I have immediately forgotten) was particularly critical, and described
Dylan’s lyrics as childish, poorly written and lacking in rhyme and
rhythm. Probably overlooked for the
Nobel……. But childish? The early stuff, maybe, when he was learning
his trade (the same as all of us).
Poorly written? No, a lot of it is unforgettable – The Lonesome Death of
Hattie Carroll and Isis are
little gems. Lacking rhyme and rhythm? Possibly, but they are songs, so perhaps the
rhyming bit doesn’t matter as much as it does in poetry (and since when did say
e.e.cummings bother about that? Great
poet, but still trying to figure out upper case letters, never mind rhymes and
metre). Still, each to his own I
guess. If the judges are happy to call
it literature, I ain’t going to argue.
As fine a lyricist Dylan is, though, he is not my
favourite.
Nor are Lennon - McCartney, or Jagger – Richard,
ground-breakers though both pairings undoubtedly were. Nor Elton john and Bernie Taupin, another 70s
duo still going strong in this 21st century. All six of them are touched by genius, and
along with the late great David Bowie formed and continue to supply the
soundtrack to my life and dominate the Music Library on my phone.
In fact, I have two favourites and simply cannot choose
between them. Both have been around
for years, and share another huge chunk of my Library. They are both firmly blue collar working
class boys, much like myself, who have made good (and huge piles of money)
working their arses off and making some quite brilliant music on the way.
From the US is the brilliant (though often denigrated, for
reasons I can’t begin to understand) Boss, Bruce Springsteen. I first heard him way back in 1975 or
thereabouts, when over a few beers in a Tunbridge Wells pub I spent a drunken
hour listening to two close friends complaining bitterly about what a poser he
was, how his music was boring, pretentious shit, his guitar playing no more
than rudimentary beginners' strumming, and much else that was a lot worse. Intrigued, I wandered off to my local Our
Price and purchased an original vinyl copy of Born to Run. It simply blew
me away. I later bought Born in the USA, also on vinyl, tapes of Human Touch and Tunnel of Love, and later downloaded The Ghost of Tom Joad, The Rising and We Shall Overcome (The Seeger Sessions), as well as a two volume Essential…. compilation. And the 30th anniversary box set
of Born To Run, complete with the DVD
of that immortal 1975 London concert that broke him in my homeland.
I remember watching an MTV Unplugged session, with a band of
then young musicians (rather than the magnificent E-Street Band) including, if
memory serves, on drums the excellent Cindy Blackman (now married to Carlos Santana
and a mainstay of Lenny Kravitz’ band).
He played the first song, solo and acoustic, then said something like
“That’s the unplugged bit, now let’s do the real stuff”, brought the band out,
strapped on his battered old Fender and blew the place away for an hour and
half. A short concert by his standards –
I saw him and the E-Street Band in London’s Earls Court in the mid 90s and
was treated to a full-on three hour concert that remains the best gig I’ve ever been to. Twenty thousand people – including yours truly
- singing along word-for-word Born To Run reduced me (and many others)
to tears. Magic is the only word I can
find to describe that night.
But live concerts are transient things, by their very
nature. You buy your ticket, turn up at
the venue, enjoy the show (or not – I dozed off in the front row of one once, Barclay James Harvest in Croydon, many years
ago: sober too) and then go home again. Springsteen at Earls Court was exceptional
and not to be forgotten, others I’ve been to I’ve forgotten before I’ve arrived
home. What makes a show, and an artist,
exceptional is the content – the quality of the music, the skill in the song
writing. In both areas, in my view,
Springsteen is without peer.
He is more than a rocker (though tracks like Tenth Avenue Freeze Out and Born to Run, Born in the USA and Glory Days are American anthemic rock at
its very best). Listen to The Ghost of Tom Joad – the entire album
is country music, and he is as adept at that as his lung-bursting stadium
rock. Or The Seeger Sessions – pure traditional American folk, complete with
fiddles and washboards (and recorded with a local bar band in his kitchen in
New Jersey, apparently). And don’t
forget the ballads – the Oscar winning Streets
of Philadelphia, Nebraska
(which is classic country too), and American Skin
(41 Shots). Ignoring Seeger, all of those feature some
sublime lyrics that are in my view more poetic than anything Dylan has
written.
Springsteen appeals to the American blue-collar worker in a
way few contemporaries have. His songs
are full of small town America, its people struggling with a depressed economy and
unemployment, but always with some hope to keep them going.
In The River, he writes about
a young family, High School sweethearts, whose love is fading – some of the
most poignant lyrics I’ve ever heard are in this song: “We went down to the Courthouse and the judge put it all to rest/No
wedding day smile, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress…” and again: “I got a job working construction for the Jonestown Company/But lately
there ain’t been much work on account of the economy”. Rural New Jersey in the 1980s recession
personified. In Thunder Road there is more hope for the young lovers: “Well I got this guitar and I learned how to
make it talk/And my car’s out the back if you’re ready to take that long walk”…..and
a final bellow of “It’s a town full of
losers and we’re pulling outta here to win!”
You did, Bruce – you surely did.
I could write pages of this stuff, quote lines from song after song –
but I won’t. You can find ‘em all on
Spotify or iTunes or You Tube, and enjoy them all at your leisure.
My other hero (and that is seriously not too strong a word)
is Britain’s own Mod wide-boy, the recently knighted Sir Rod(erick)
Stewart, Highgate’s finest, professional
Jock and Celtic fan. I never saw him perform,
but did once see him on the M25 motorway, near Swanley in Kent. I was driving clockwise towards Sevenoaks one
sunny Sunday afternoon, and across the carriageway, on the hard shoulder of the
anti-clockwise side was a brilliant red Ferrari Testarossa, a cloud of steam
streaming from the rear-mounted engine compartment. And standing at the front, yelling
(presumably) into a mobile phone was Rod.
I guess the AA or Green Flag Rescue was being summoned….. At the time, as well as the LA mansion, he
had an estate near Epping Forest in Essex, in the grounds of which he had laid
out a full-sized football pitch that was kept in pristine condition and was good
enough for the top clubs to use if they were in town and wanted to train away from the press. Gordon Strachan, now managing Scotland but
then in charge of Southampton used it from time to time, I remember. Top man, our Rod.
I bought his classic Every
Picture Tells A Story album back in 1973, largely because I liked Maggie May, the stand-out single taken
from it and his breakthrough chart hit.
I remember seeing him perform it “live” on the BBC’s Top of the Pops
show, using his then full-time band The Faces as back-up, with Radio One dj John Peel
guesting on mandolin. All a joke – Peel
was clearly miming, as was the band – drummer Kenny Jones was pretending to
play bass, guitarist Ronnie Wood was a half-beat behind on drums, keyboard
wizard Ian MacLagan tried to look as though he knew how to play guitar, and
bassist Ronnie Lane tinkled the ivories.
During John Peel’s little mandolin “solo” (played on the record by
Lindisfarne’s Ray Jackson) the rest of the band started playing football on the
stage. It was fun, and summed up that
band’s entire ethos. Thirty years later
a couple of greatest hits compilations came out called, very accurately, Five Guys Walked Into A Bar and Nice Boys (When They’re Asleep) - the latter of which I downloaded and thoroughly enjoy.
If there is one thing The Faces enjoyed, it was having a
good time. A few beers (well, several,
actually), some Jack Daniels bourbon or a vodka or two, Rothman’s King Size
cigarettes, maybe a Castella cigar. A
game of darts or bar billiards (pool was not as ubiquitous as it is
nowadays). And of course, girls. A whole string of them. So basically what the vast majority of us
were doing on a Saturday (or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday)
evening……Friday was usually a night off, because we had football matches to
play the next day. Followed by fish and
chips, a curry or a Chinese. Happy days.
But while the rest of us just enjoyed it all, Rod was busy
chronicling it in a catalogue of good-time English rock songs, of which Maggie May was the first and still best
known (although in my mind not the best song).
Lyrically, the songs are like Springsteen’s – working class guys
enjoying life, stuck in dead-end jobs, looking to better themselves, falling in
and out of love. But instead of
America’s vast plains and dusty dirt roads (to quote Springsteen again, from Thunder Road), Rod spread his net
further afield to catch a decent phrase.
Whether he had been to all the places he referenced, at that relatively
early stage in his career, is doubtful, but they worked exceptionally well in
his songs. The Faces classic Poolhall Richard, for instance, talks
of the legendary Minnesota Fats “standing
at the back in a plastic mac” while our hero beats the titular Poolhall
Richard in a frame of eight-ball in order to save his relationship with his
lady – “Man, you’ll never ever steal my
lady then!” he sings joyfully.
There’s another reference to the States in You Wear It Well, a later single from
the album Never A Dull Moment. It starts “I had nothing to do on this hot afternoon/But to settle down and write
you a line/I’ve been meaning to phone ya but from Minnesota…/Hell, it’s been a
very long time”. Call me cynical,
but the American Midwest seems a bit of an unlikely destination for an up and
coming singer from north London just starting out – but it works well in the
song.
There are more geographical references throughout the
Stewart catalogue, especially in what for me is the best song the man ever
wrote, the title track from Every
Picture…. The vinyl I bought is long gone, sold for the price of a beer
sometime in the alcoholic haze that was 1972 to 1976 in my life, but even then
I knew it by heart and loved it. I found
it again on a CD compilation called The
Millennium Collection, in a Tesco superstore in Gdynia of all places. It remains one of my favourite albums and has
pride of place on my Music library – there is nothing on there later than about
1976, all taken from his classic solo albums (nothing by The Faces), and every
track is good-time English rock that evokes memories of my own misspent youth.
Every Picture….
tells of Rod leaving home to seek his fortune with his father’s advice ringing
in his ears – “Daddy said son you’d
better see the world/I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave/But remember
one thing – don’t lose your head/To a woman that’ll spend all your bread/So I
got out….”. And out he goes – to Paris (“I got arrested for inciting the people to riot/When all I wanted was a
cup of tea!/I was accused!”), then on to Rome (“My body stunk but I kept my funk/At a time when I was right out of
luck/Oh my dears, I’d better get out of here/’Cause the Vatican don’t give no
sanction”). I was jealous of the
man, and wanted to go too, especially after the next bit….."On the Peking ferry I was feeling merry/Sailing on my way back
here/When I fell in love with a slit eyed lady/By the light of an Eastern
moon/She took me up on deck and bit my neck”.
But it was perhaps a bit risky, because “Shanghai Lil never used the pill/She claimed that it just ain’t
natural!” And that little couplet
sums up Rod Stewart…….a little bit racist (Slit Eyed lady indeed!), a little
bit sexist (never used the pill?) but for all that having the time of his life
– while I slaved away in what I considered the kind of dead-end job he had
escaped from. And of course I escaped
too, in his music.
Apart from a slushy interlude when involved with Britt
Ekland, his music never really changed, and the same themes and word play
cropped up again and again. In Dixie Toot from the album Smiler, he sings about being in New
Orleans for Mardi Gras – “Sitting in my
back yard, wondering which way to go/The sun shines on my back and it hurts”
and in the next verse another brilliant batch of fun and games: “I might lose control of my powers/I might
even lose my trousers/Smash my glass, behave like trash if I want! Ha!” Who cares what anyone else thinks, I’m having
a great time! From the same album, in Sailor,
he sings about a narrow escape: “Running
down the highway in the pouring rain/Escaping from my wedding day/I heard the
bells ringing in the local church/The ceremony’s nearly under way/Her mama got
hysterical, the bitch was cynical/Daddy’s in the corner drunk” then a cry
of “Sailor, show me which way to go!/I
screamed out loud!” Considering the
man has been married about four times and has eight kids, I find that one a little ironic……but it’s a great song.
He was the same in The Faces before they broke up (when he
left to go solo and make his millions in the States, and his co-writer Ronnie
Wood replaced Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones - still there forty years
later). The best example is probably Stay With Me: another classic that these
days may not have seen the light of day, with a final verse going “So in
the morning/Please don’t say you love me/’Cause I’ll only kick you out of the
door/Yeah. I’ll pay your cab fare home/You can even use my best cologne/Just
don’t be here in the morning when I wake up!”
On Miss Judy’s Farm there’s
another nice throwaway couplet that again offends, this time animal lovers: “She had a peroxide poodle/That I would kick
if I was given the chance”. Not my
favourite mutt, either, Rod……
Over the years he mellowed and rather than being the cockney
rapscallion he showed a more romantic turn of phrase, but there has always been
the odd throwback to a freewheeling youth –
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy is a more or less a disco re-run of Stay With Me (boy meets girl in club,
takes her home…..the twist is in “watching the early movie” rather paying
“a cab fare home”), Lady Jane (bitter ex-lover who knows “secrets about you” and has “plans of my own”) to name but two of
the better known. And of course the
universally panned (but I quite like it) Hot
Legs (“You’re wearing me out/Hot
legs, make me scream and shout/I love you honey!”). Not sure whether that makes Rod the
irresponsible kid or me……probably both of us.
So there we have it.
The Boss and Rod the Mod. Two
very different songsmiths, whose art has entertained me for most of my adult
life and continues to do so still in my 60s.
Born to Run, Thunder Road and The River still bring lumps to my throat and a tear to my eyes, and Every Picture…..,
Miss Judy’s Farm, Dixie Toot and pretty much anything by The Faces a smile
to my increasingly wrinkly old face. Whether either of them
are worthy of a Nobel Prize in the same way as Dylan is doubtful, but for this
listener at least their work is better and more accessible than Bobby Z’s
sometimes opaque verse.
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