I'll do Brian Wilson
Any takers for Macca, Bob Dylan, and the Stones? Or Van?
I think they should all be defended!
(Bumped up 6 May)
11 years ago
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I'll do Dexy's Midnight Runners. They're great. I just wish I'd never Kev met in a caff. He was trying to get into my girlfirends pants at the time. Which pre dates him getting into her stockings.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll do the Stones. George is into them now. As my tutor at School of Architecture once said "you know when keef comes on stage and plays those first few chords - it is going to be KICK ASS ROCK N ROLL!" He should know he was Mary Hopkins manager for a time in the 60's, she was on apple of course. He was a great name dropper, he also once said I bumbed into Ringo in Harrods the other day..." now beat that for a name check. I once pushed one of the Bros twins in the back and said "move" in my best grimace.
Will hapily do The Clash and Marley once my comedy tour is over.
ReplyDelete(One joke I told - I had Chicken Tarka for tea last night. It is like a Chicken Tikka - just a little otter. Classic!!!!)
Brian Wilson touches your heart through music - his happy songs make you happy and his sad songs make you sad. There's no filter of cynicism there, no defence at all. If anyone else had written God Only Knows (and who could have?), the line would have been "God only knows where I'd be without you." With Brian, the line is "What I'd be", I found that quite startling even when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteDerek Taylor was a beautif(1)ul man, and when he left the Beatles’ employ to set up as a Hollywood music biz press agent, he quickly secured The Byrds and the Beach Boys as clients. For The Byrds he wrote charming, offbeat sleevenotes, for the Beach Boys, he started to put about that their 22 year old leader, songwriter, producer and arranger was a Genius.
In the 60s pop was new, it was developing at a rapid rate from its rock and roll origins, and so it caught the imagination of intellectuals, who started to introduce pop stars to more high-faluting circles. So Paul McCartney got to hang out with an avant garde art and political crowd, the Stones with dissolute debutantes, and over in the US Brian Wilson got to meet people like David Anderle and Van Dyke Parks – music industry brainiacs who were ready to work through the idea that Brian might be a genius, and to encourage him to take chances and broaden his horizons.
The problem with all this is that the results – the journey from California Girls to Smile – actually took Brian away from the approaches that made people call him a genius in the first place. On California Girls he’d written a great song, come up with really excellent vocal and musical arrangements, gone into the studio with LA’s legendary Wrecking Crew, utterly bossed the session, and come out the other side with a records the world has loved ever since. But by Smile, as clever as much of it all was, there was less music to love, and at its worst (the Fire sequence, endless repetition of the slight-enough-as-it-is Heroes and Villains riff) it sounded queasy and ill, like too much bad food and too much time in the studio had cast a pall.
So the `genius’ term probably did more harm than good. It’s the wrong way to think of him. The right way is to think of the power he has to touch the listener’s heart through music. The Beach Boys never try to be cool - think of Don't Worry Baby where the thick harmony vocals offer a mother's comfort to the hero, a berk who's to take on some Fonz-type alpha male in a drag race, certain to lose. Or Be True To Your School - how real is that? Or When I Grow Up To Be A Man. All lovely stuff.
Above all though, any defence of Brian Wilson has to list his major achievements - so here they are - i) he was a great vocal harmony arranger, first class in fact, taking barbershop type harmony as far as it could go, ii) he was the greatest musical arranger any pop group has ever had - trying new ideas, textures, feels, all culminating in iii) the beloved Pet Sounds album and iv) Good Vibrations, one of the greatest singles ever, ever, ever. V) As a songwriter he was in the Brill Building class and vi) he helped to create the idea of the modern stuoio-bound auteur record producer.
OK, this is all the standard pro-Brian argument, and I don't have much new to add. All I can say is – The Little Girl I Once Knew, Surf’s Up, Cabinessence, I Get Around, Fun Fun Fun, Wind Chimes, Please Let Me Wonder, Wouldn’t It Be Nice? So, not overrated – from a 20 Golden Greats perspective, to a serious listen to Surf’s Up – not overrated at all.
Paul McCartney is the greatest songwriter, singer, melodist, and musician these islands have ever produced. Almost certainly the greatest in all of pop history. Plus in his prime he was an utter dreamboat prince. All in all, John Lennon is his only equal (I think John Lennon is probably the greatest singer ever - or to be more precise, had the best ever voice), and it's just a miracle that they found themselves in the same group.
ReplyDeleteSlagging off Macca always consists of the same charges - The Frog Chorus, Ebony and Ivory, he's thumbs-up irritating. These charges are all irrelevant (what's wrong with making a kid's record?). All blown out of the water by just hearing (or just thinking about) the first second of Hey Jude.
So maybe he was the least funny Beatle, bossy and ambitious, and he can be mean, unforgiving and spiteful. But considering his whole life has been put under a microscope again and again, this is pretty small stuff.
I love him. His music, particularly the Fabs, but all his life, has been a gift. His bouncy, optimistic rule breaking and totally free and natural melodies haven't palled one iota in the 40 years since he wrote the first of them.
I saw him a couple of years ago at the Electric Ballrom. What a pleasure that was. Macca knows what music's all about. He knows better than we do. He wrote the book. He's groovy. When I was a kid his new hits were Silly Love Songs and Let `Em In - brilliant records.
Is this enough of a case?
OK I called both Lennon and McCartney the "greatest singer ever" in the first paragraph. Whoops.
ReplyDelete