(#327: 21 December
1985, 2 weeks)
Track listing: Do
They Know It’s Christmas? (Band Aid)/I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (Roy
Wood with Wizzard)/Merry Xmas Everybody (Slade)/Last Christmas (Wham!)/Step
Into Christmas (Elton John)/In Dulce Jubilo (Mike Oldfield)/Another Rock ‘n’
Roll Christmas/Wonderful Christmastime (Paul McCartney)/Blue Christmas (Shakin’
Stevens)/Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band)/I Believe
In Father Christmas (Greg Lake)/A Spaceman Came Travelling (Chris de
Burgh)/Stop The Cavalry (Jona Lewie)/Little Saint Nick (The Beach Boys)/Thank
God It’s Christmas (Queen)/Lonely This Christmas (Mud)/When A Child Is Born
(Soleado) (Johnny Mathis)/White Christmas (Bing Crosby)
First of all, I should apologise to any neighbours who last
night might have been wondering who these strange people were in there, playing
Christmas songs in the middle of August. But that didn’t stop a cast of
hundreds, or possibly dozens, or maybe tens of thousands, singing “Do They Know
It’s Christmas?” in Wembley Stadium on a rather hot 13 July 1985, nor Slade
from recording “Merry Xmas Everybody” in New York in the middle of a heatwave,
so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it too much.
Still, here we have the first – but not the last - Christmas-specific
number one album at a time when such compilations (the cover pointedly
advertises “18 ORIGINAL CHRISTMAS HITS”) hardly existed, and an opportunity for
me to ponder on exactly what Christmas means to the British, since this record
is not exactly a merry party-down affair. In fact, listening to most of it, you
would imagine that the British are somewhat guilty about, and even afraid of,
Christmas, so many of these songs being about loss or war or doubt. It is as if
Britain is obliged to apologise for
Christmas. But it is fitting that the last number one album of 1985 should
begin with the song which did more than anything or anybody else to permit 1985
to happen.
Band Aid
Objectively, it would not take long to analyse "Do They
Know It's Christmas?" Essentially it is a cheap, shitty little tune which
sounds like the theme from Z-Cars
played on a Stylophone. And that isn't me talking; those were the words of Bob
Geldof when first he heard Midge Ure's backing track. Over it (and Ure’s own
Fairlight-manipulated voice at the beginning, which in conjunction with the
Yamaha DX7 bells, bring back memories of “Forever And Ever”) come the voices of
prominent British pop stars of the day, some solo, others in harmony and at the
end everyone together, singing for charity in the manner of those old Decca All-Star Hit Parade 10-inch albums of
the '50s where sundry leading crooners took turns in singing each other's hits.
If only it were that simple. But, as you have doubtless long
since gathered, it is absolutely impossible to consider these records in some
idyllic notion of etiolated aesthetic isolation. There were, of course,
precedents. But the Band Aid single, and consequent phenomenon, could be
considered, as Danny Kelly in the 1985 NME
mistakenly considered Sgt Pepper, “an
Exocet to the heart of pop”, and pop records in particular, which as a
side-effect of attempting to save actual lives struck several near-fatal blows
to popular music.
As "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the last word to what one
might term the second chapter of a sustained history of British pop, namely the
experimental idealism of 1967-75, the third part can likewise be closed down with
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" The irony of its being co-written and
co-initiated by the leading light of the last gasp of glampop (Slik) need not
be underlined. We can applaud to a certain degree the "bloody doing
something about it" activity arising out of the determined apathy of punk
and the subsequent aesthetic liberation of post-punk and New Pop.
However, Band Aid was determined to attack and resolve a
painfully central question about music and its role, if any, in changing the
world, however slightly. All those Lennon sales pitches about peace and having
no possessions were all very well, and anarchy is never less than tempting -
but what price any of this against the undeniably greater factor of saving the
lives of millions of people?
The solution Geldof found was an uncomfortable one. As
general post-Band Aid trends will confirm, it very quickly turned out to be an
option of better music or a better world. And even the efficacy of Band Aid and
Live Aid in terms of the latter can be questioned, since most of the billions
raised by the enterprise seem to have gone straight into the pockets and
coffers of the ruling Ethiopian elite, all the better to crush and control
their hapless subjects. As Geldof himself realised by the time of 2005’s Live
8, it was the system which needed changing from the ground upwards rather than
sending in astronomical sums of undefined money - i.e. relief from the ruinous
interest rates demanded by the West in terms of Third World debt repayments, an
end to the industrial/military interdependence which actually favours tinpot
tyrannies in famined nations over workable democracies, and so on.
Does that therefore mean that Geldof simply shouldn't have
bothered? This is a hugely uncomfortable question. By decrying "Do They
Know It's Christmas?" one is in danger of favouring mass deaths so that we
fortunate Western consumers can continue to avail ourselves of higher-quality
art (as Bono’s line less than quietly spells out). Yes, it should have been
done in preference to not having been done. But still there are those side
products which in another way have proved massively destructive.
Possibly only someone in Geldof's position could have turned
Band Aid into action in 1984. In the same week that "Do They Know It's
Christmas?" went to number one, "Dave," the then-current single
by the Boomtown Rats, was sitting at number 100. The Rats, four years after
their last top ten hit, were fading fast, and so Geldof's evenings were
quieter; quiet enough for him to be sitting in front of the TV to watch Michael
Buerk's BBC1 Nine O'Clock News report
from Ethiopia. The author of "Looking After Number One" then speedily
set about disabusing that song's central notion; inspired by Lennon's
"Instant Karma," Geldof and Ure wrote the song, recruited as many
musicians as they could assemble in West London of a late autumn Sunday
morning, recorded and mixed the single, and released it in the space of some
2-3 weeks.
It was all done on the turn of a determinedly amateur dime,
and sounds it. Of the featured singers, Paul Young and Boy George appear to
carry the bulk of the song while George Michael, Simon le Bon, Tony Hadley and
Sting do their respective vocal party pieces and Bono is left with that
deliberately ambiguous, if clumsy, line. The lyric is awkwardly phrased
("clanging chimes of doom"?) but obviously heartfelt, at least in
Geldof's heart if not necessarily in those of anyone else present.
What counted though, besides the direct (hopeful)
life-saving effects, was what this all meant to the concept of the pop record
as an art form and/or simple three-minute tickler in itself. In addition, of
course, it slaughtered and buried New Pop. No more room for shiny yellow
philosophical abstracts; this was cold rationalism run carefully riot. No more
room, either, for the divided loyalties essential to any pop movement which can
count itself as truly alive - in the Christmas 1983 edition of the BBC's
children's television programme Saturday
Superstore Duran Duran, Culture Club and the Police - in their entirety -
all appeared as guests, but the Police refused to be filmed in the company of
the others or even talk to the others, and Duran Duran and Culture Club
appeared uncomfortable sitting together. Twelve months later and we have Simon
and Sting and George all shaking hands, mucking in together and being mates -
what was the point, then, if it had only ever been about business? It torpedoed
the concept of rivalry which would take a decade to resurface with the
(engineered) Blur/Oasis "war."
Moreover, by assessing the personnel on "Do They Know
It's Christmas?" and subsequently those invited to Live Aid, we were
conveyed a horribly clear diktat
about who mattered and didn't matter in pop - suddenly there was a pecking
order. Nearly all of the original motivators of New Pop were conspicuous by
their absence; Heaven 17 and Bananarama were there, Phil Oakey was invited but
angrily declined when the rest of the Human League weren't. Frankie Goes To Hollywood
were gigging in New York and couldn't attend the recording but Holly Johnson
(together with Bowie, McCartney and Big Country) did a specially recorded
message for the B-side ("I can't get the laugh right Bob") which
Trevor Horn astutely and mischievously made the centre of his 12-inch remix.
But as for ABC, Adam Ant, Marc Almond and the Associates - and these are just
the "A"s - commercially they were all more or less washed up by the
end of 1984, lucky even to squeeze into the Top 40 for a week. The Durans, the Spandaus, the Wham!s, those eager to please - all
dutifully turned up; Jon Moss helped out on drums alongside Phil Collins but
Boy George flounced in too late for the photo shoot. Those who still awkwardly
stood outside, and/or apart from, the 1984 mainstream - the Smiths, the
Bunnymen, New Order, Scritti, Madness - were not asked; others unable to attend
but who subsequently turned up at Live Aid included the Thompson Twins, Sade
and Alison Moyet.
Perhaps the most peculiar inclusion of all was Paul Weller,
the sole representative of "punk" (if we don't count Geldof) present.
Since he'd spent the best part of three years loudly slagging off nearly all of
the artists in the studio, hardly anyone would talk to him except Phil Collins,
Marilyn and his old mates Bananarama - although he was awestruck by the
unexpected and unannounced appearance of Kool and the Gang, in town to promote
their "Fresh" single and just dropped into the studio, he spent most
of that Sunday trying to convince fellow musicians to participate in a
fundraising single for the striking miners (only Heaven 17 agreed, and helped
produce the Council Collective single "Soul Deep" which sold
considerably less that season than Band Aid). He must have wondered why he'd even
bothered (he can be heard, deep in the mix, on the line "where nothing
overflows").
In its five weeks at the top - it debuted the same week as
Wham's only UK million-selling single, the double-sided "Last
Christmas"/"Everything She Wants," entered at number two (and
still Britain’s best-selling number two single), where it was compelled to stay
for the entirety of Band Aid's run at number one (the first occasion in UK
singles chart history, apart from the first chart of all in November 1952,
where the top two were both new entries, but since George Michael was
prominently featured on "Do They Know It's Christmas?" he could
hardly complain) - it passed the three million sales mark, shattering the
record set by "Mull Of Kintyre," and would remain the UK's all-time
best-selling single until 1997. The effects, as we have tried to demonstrate,
were immediate - all of a sudden, pop in itself was no longer enough, yet
Geldof was only setting in active motion what the Beatles had started back in
the sixties. But now there seemed little, if any, room for fun, mischief or
sex; the Frankie trilogy, with both "The Power Of Love" and Welcome To The Pleasuredome still in the
top five, already seemed like a vaguely decadent and indulgent remnant of
another era. Now the scene would be set for Soul and Sincerity and Good Works
and Efficient Passion; the old values had speedily reasserted themselves, and
charity records would soon routinely ascend to number one, not because they
were good records, but because...well, do we want a better world, and can that
better world still accommodate better music? The subsequent evidence might suggest
that the two are incompatible. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a
poor pop record which ended up being maybe the most important pop record, such
that it seems "indecent" even to give it a mark. But the mark it has
left on pop may take centuries to wash away. As for the 13 July Live Aid
concert, which I attended, the general feeling was that of a gigantic sports
day; all very nice, all very make-do-and-mend “uplifting,” and I didn’t
remember a thing about it in the tube station half an hour later.
Roy Would
This is not quite the only place I get to talk about Roy
Wood on TPL, but since Lena has
admirably dealt with the Wizzard Christmas song elsewhere, I might as well have
a go here. Wood was the British Todd Rundgren…an almost unhealthily profligate
sonic architect who at his early-mid ‘70s peak straddled pop and avant with
love and disdain, but who subsequently has become undervalued. Time for some
re-evaluations.
Were Wizzard the anti-ELO or simply a Bizarro version of
ELO? The strangely yearning psychosis of the unmatched debut single by ELO
“10538 Overture,” in which both Wood and Jeff Lynne were involved, indicates a
future reluctance to be embraced. Indeed, though credited to ELO, only four
musicians participated on this recording; Jeff Lynne on vocals and guitar, the stalwart
Bev Bevan on drums, Rick Price on bass, and Wood on everything else (including
all string and horn parts). He says that he started mucking about with a cheap
Chinese ‘cello he had bought, playing Hendrix riffs on it and thinking that
this was damn good heavy metal. At the song’s climax, the increasingly wayward
strings threaten to overwhelm the riff (later purloined by Weller for “The Changing
Man”) altogether. The first ELO album delved into even murkier waters with
various improv players amongst the string section, sounding rather like King
Crimson’s Lizard in dub conference
with Penderecki.
It didn’t last, of course; Lynne and Wood argued, Lynne
decided to give his tunes some tunes, while Wood walked off to set up Wizzard
and initially had the greater success with his primary-coloured assault on good
old rock and roll, Spectorising its elements to such a magnitude that you could
gladly bathe in them. Wood played a lot of the instruments on the Wizzard hits
himself, and despite the epic surface of their hits, there was always that
home-made, peculiarly British element lurking underneath the whole enterprise –
the perfect meeting point, in other words, between Spector and Meek – coupled
with a very theatrical pre-postmodern grandiosity which foresees both Frankie
Goes To Hollywood and the KLF.
Listen to things like “Ball Park Incident” and “Angel
Fingers.” Their sound is intensified to such an extent that you wonder whether
these aren’t photocopies of, or blueprints for, “classic” rock and roll songs
rather than songs per se. Above all, luxuriate in the five glorious minutes of
“See My Baby Jive” which predates and outdoes “Born To Run.” The ornamentation
here is so top-heavy that the whole cake threatens to collapse on the flimsiest
of bases. No battalion of saxophones is too undermanned; no backing vocalists
too propulsive. It is a celebration, an attempt at resuscitation of a dead spirit,
a Doppler simulation of “rock and roll history” hurtling past you almost too
quickly for you to absorb it. It is amongst the greatest of number one singles.
This was only half the story of Wizzard, however, as anyone
who has listened to their albums will testify; elsewhere on tracks like the
ELO-baiting “Bend Over Beethoven” we could almost be listening to the Zappa of
Grand Wazoo; there is even proto-Ambient to be found in pieces like “Dream of
Unwin” and “Nixture.” It didn’t last, of course; their last top 10 single in “Are You Ready To Rock,” essentially
heralded a return to basics R&R with odd tangents here and there (another song from the same period, “Rattlesnake
Roll,” suddenly devolves into bebop).
(And of course there may even be another half; note the
crucial influence of Wood’s Wizzard arrangements and productions on the record
which confirmed pop’s renewed supremacy over rock, “Waterloo” by Abba).
But the real genius of Wood is to be found in his solo work
of the same period, usefully assembled on a twelve-year-old 2CD compilation
entitled Exotic Mixture – although
one CD would have more than sufficed, since CD1 in itself may well represent,
if not the British SMiLE, then the
British A Wizard/A True Star.
Certainly songs like “Wake Up” achieve what Beck can no longer quite manage to
reach, with its paddling in the water rhythm and the graceful yet surreal
backwards sonorities at its close; similarly the astute queasiness of “Nancy
Sing Me A Song.” “Dear Elaine” – a post-psychedelic folk ballad - is like Syd
Barrett attempting to emulate the Incredible String Band; the lo-fi sung
“brass” backing vocals echo into each other disturbingly and in the middle
section threaten to drown out the song altogether – it eerily predicts what Robert
Wyatt would do on “Sea Song” just a year later. Incredibly, this was a top 20
hit.
The songs then ricochet gleefully between styles – the
immaculate Wilson pastiche of “Forever,” the Barry Adamson-outdoing “Premium
Bond Theme,” the completely mentalist “Going Down The Road” (subtitled,
appropriately, “A Scottish Reggae Song,” and yet another unlikely top 20 hit,
with its queasy saxophones, pipe bands and police sirens). “Music To Commit
Suicide By” is an MoR waltz which could pass as a sitcom theme tune, were it
not for the rasping saxophones and ‘cellos which arrive to cast some darkness
in the middle. “Mustard” is a recreation of ‘40s danceband radio.
At this stage, with the hits more or less over, Wood
burrowed further into adventure. The 1976 single “Indiana Rainbow”/”The Thing
Is This” was credited to Roy Wood’s Wizzard, but represented a quantum step
away from Eddy and the Falcons. “Indiana Rainbow” in particular is a racing
breeze of Tropicalia; with its knowing female backing vocals, danceband
saxophones and determined percussion, it sounds remarkably like a foretaste of
what August Darnell would later get up to with Kid Creole and the Coconuts.
“The Thing Is This,” meanwhile, is an indescribable melange of Gershwin, Zappa,
Varése, King Crimson and Autechre – Wood’s own “George Fell Into His French
Horn.”
Which leaves us with Wood’s “Surf’s Up” – “The Rain Came
Down On Everything,” the greatest and most moving song Wood ever wrote. Vocals
and piano refracted through an icy, fuzzy screen (as though he’s already
drowned), MBV meets George Crumb’s “Vox Balaenae” meets Dennis Wilson’s
“Thoughts Of You,” it sounds as though Wood is bringing down the curtain on his
whole life.
Where could he go from there? The second CD illustrates with
great sadness where he actually did
go – initially to forming the Wizzo Band, with its 13-piece horn section
(though certainly no Arkestra – more like Wood’s Utopia). This specialised in intermittently
interesting jazz-rock, though occasional flashes of Wood’s genius still shone
through occasionally; hear the 1977 single “Dancing At The Rainbow’s End,”
divine, seductive and knowing AOR which Gregg Alexander would kill to have
written, and its B-side “Waiting At The Door,” with its vacillations between
AOR and metal culminating in a bizarre C&W fadeout. His subsequent work,
sadly, I find of little interest. But note, amongst all the melancholic,
self-pitying and quietly furious British performers here, how “I Wish It Could Be
Christmas Everyday,” sparkles with humour, invention and a positive,
future-embracing approach that was so vital in 1973 Britain.
What could possibly have kept it off number one?
It’s Chriiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaas
(a.k.a. BS Johnson, You Stupid Bastard, Look What You Missed)!
John and Yoko had released “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” the
previous year, but otherwise it’s surprising, if only from a financial point of
view, that major British acts didn’t make a habit of recording special
Christmas singles; perhaps the Beatles and the Stones thought themselves too
“cool” for such base exercises, and indeed the likes of Floyd and Zeppelin
considered themselves far too “cool” to release any singles (although Pink
Floyd would quite violently make up for that right at the end of the seventies;
it is perhaps unsurprising that on this compilation children’s choirs are
represented by “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” rather than “Another
Brick In The Wall [Part II]”).
But the glam boom had restored showbiz to British pop, so
it’s equally unsurprising that in 1973 seasonal offerings came from Wizzard,
Elton – and Slade. “Merry Xmas Everybody” remains Slade’s most famous and
biggest-selling song; a perennial cash cow which has returned to the chart
almost annually ever since. Yet it was recorded halfway up a skyscraper in New
York, in mid-August at the height of a heatwave. They ventured out into the
studio stairwell to add their trademark clapping, stomping and yelling, leaving
passing Americans thoroughly bemused (as Slade, and glam, did generally – the
British charts of 1973, though sharing many records with the Billboard listings, overall must have
looked as impenetrably parochial to American observers as the charts of, say,
Latvia). John Lennon, then busy in the studio next door working on Mind Games, was tickled to hear what
sounded like his hollering doppelganger.
The melody and arrangement dated as far back as 1967 (the original song was
entitled “Buy Me A Rocking Chair”); an aborted attempt by Holder and Lea to
write a psychedelic song, though that aura is still very evident in the
major-minor descending chords (“Hi Ho Silver Lining” after a fashion) and the
swooning middle eight, with its subtle backward guitars.
But the song was absolutely right for the times; Holder
stated that he explicitly wanted to cheer up British audiences at a time of
grave crisis, and his vocal is benignly cheeky throughout (“Do the fairies keep
him sober for a day?”), excited with expectations (“Are you hoping that the
snow will start to fall?”), winking to previous generations (“Does your granny
always tell ya/That the old songs are the best/Then she’s up and rock ‘n’
rollin’ with the rest?” – aren’t you rather old not to be writing your memoirs?)
and good-humouredly lecherous (“What does your daddy do when he sees your mama
kissing Santa Claus – a-haha!”). It’s a tinselly knees-up with which anyone
could identify; and yes, I loved Christmas, couldn’t wait to be spellbound by
those gleaming gifts under the lit tree when I woke up at five on Christmas
morning, and no, I didn’t like it when I learned the truth not long afterwards.
But “Look to the future now/It’s only just begun,” the
chorus chants – reinforced by Holder’s climactic Lennonesque yell of “It’s
CHRIIIIIII-SSSSS-TMASSSSSS!!” – but in fact “Merry Xmas Everybody” and its
co-conspirators represented the apex of glam’s commercial and aesthetic appeal,
as well as appealing to a Britain sorely in need of cheer, reassurance and
basic happiness.
Last Christmas
Eleven years later and any cheer had evaporated; the bitterness and rancour from Make It Big persist through both record and video; George sees her
again, but no, he remembers the pain from before, and has no desire to relive
or recreate it. Cold Christmas rationalism; keep your countenance, say pleasant
little things, bleed in private if you must.
Step Into Christmas
Much played and loved now, but back in 1973 Elton’s seasonal
offering was a slow starter, peaking only at #24, perhaps overlooked in the
dazzle of Slade and Wizzard’s songs. Although it does play like something of a “Thank
You For This Gold Watch” record, it’s an agreeable Beach Boy-ish sleigh ride. “Step
into Christmas – the admission’s free!” So who ends up paying?
In Dulce Jubilo
Probably the oldest song on Then Play Long – known in former times as “Good Christian Men
Rejoice” – “In Dulce Jubilo” is reckoned to have been written in 1328 by
Heinrich Seuse (a.k.a. Henry Suso), something of a German antecedent of Blake,
with his unending search for the “Eternal Wisdom” and the visions of dancing
angels conjoining with his soul which inspired the song. Oldfield sounds happy
playing everything on it; his own angel, his own vision.
Track Seven
“A donation from the
proceeds of sale of this record will be made to the National Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
McCartney IIa
Strange how McCartney sounds so much happier when he’s on
his own. Recorded at home and performed entirely by the artist, mainly on a Sequential
Circuits Prophet-5 synthesiser, during sessions for McCartney II, “Wonderful Christmastime” sounds exactly like the
uncomplicated, simple demo it was perhaps always meant to be. The video was
shot in the garden of his local pub. But did the children really need to
practise “Ding-dong, ding-dong” “all year long,” or was this a subtle rejoinder
to George Harrison’s terrible “Ding Dong”?
Shaky!
Although Shakin’ Stevens did end up with 1985’s Christmas
number one – the markedly happier “Merry Christmas Everyone,” released too late
for inclusion here – he nearly did it in 1982 as well; his reasonable, if no
more, crack at Presley’s morose “Blue Christmas” was the lead track on The Shakin’ Stevens E.P., prevented from
reaching the top only by Renée and Renato. Then again, the extremely disturbing
“Peace On Earth-Little Drummer Boy” Bowie/Crosby duet from 1977 – neither of
them really knowing that the other was there – finished in third place.
War
Did you know that “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” despite what
the books and archives say, was a number one single? In those pre-Gallup,
pre-computer days of chart compilation, the Christmas singles chart stood for a
fortnight. In view of the reduced opening hours of chart return shops, the
absence of new releases and the workload involved in coordinating a team of
nationwide couriers to collect cumbersome diaries from record shops and return
them to the British Market Research Bureau headquarters for assessment, it was
not felt worth publishing a new chart for the first week of the New Year. A
chart for that week was subsequently compiled but only for internal/industry
purposes.
This almost never had an effect on the composition of the
singles chart, since such lists showed virtually no change from the Christmas
list, and invariably no change at number one - with one exception. "Happy
Xmas (War Is Over)" was indeed the biggest-selling single of the week
ending 3 January 1981, but by the time of the next official chart the following
week had been overtaken into second place by "Imagine."
It was originally recorded just before the Christmas of
1971; too late for release that year, so it was held back until the following
Christmas, when it peaked at #4. It deserves special mention here not only
because it is one of the most underrated of all Christmas hits of our era, but
also because it is one of the finest and least heralded productions of…well, we’ll
come to that, and him, in a moment.
The single was perhaps the last formal chapter in Lennon's
ongoing proto-blog concept of the single as the front cover of today's
newspaper, addressing topical concerns and quickly recorded and circulated. It
is also simultaneously the happiest and the saddest record in this series;
directly from the jokey introductory whispers where John and Yoko wish
themselves a merry Christmas to the blunt accusatory opening line of "So
this is Christmas/And what have you done?" The mood is processional and
celebratory, especially when the Harlem Community Choir enter at the start of
the second verse with their "War Is Over" chant - like much else in
the Lennon singles canon of the time, a clear influence from Yoko's Fluxus
school of ambiguous homilies. The message is deceptively straightforward -
"The world is so wrong," "For black and for white/For yellow and
red ones/Let's stop all the fight" - and its setting majestic; the
producer bridging the slow-burning epic/eulogy ballad style which he had
explored with Checkmates Ltd and others in the late sixties, with its finest
realisation in his mid-seventies work with Dion. The Wall of Sound is as
imposing as ever, yet the track still manages to sound live and spontaneous
(which it more or less is; there was apparently little need for overdubbing).
Eventually everyone joins in with the "War Is Over If
You Want It/War Is Over NOW!" motif, sleigh bells and hammering drums
working to a climax; and then, as the song "ends," the strings
continue to play their lines as John & Yoko and the kids heartily roar
seasonal wishes at each other. It is nearly unbearable in its poignancy, mainly
because in Lennon's delivery there is a rueful undercurrent wherein you sense
that he knows "we" won't want an end to the war, but also because of
the strangely logical symmetry which the Lennon/Spector partnership turned out
to form - one destined to be shot by someone he'd just met, the other in prison
probably for the rest of his life, convicted of shooting someone he'd just met.
Actions being far harder than words, and so forth, and let it be.
War Is Over – But Do
You Want It?
For years I thought Greg Lake was singing, “And I saw Eamonn
through his disguise,” i.e. Eamonn Andrews with his big, red This Is Your Life book. I still prefer
it to the “And I saw him and through his disguise” that it actually is, but
this is a song expressly against the commercialisation of Christmas, a huge,
defiant “NO” to jollity and ignorance of the wider world; the video was shot
partly in the Sinai desert and partly on the West Bank.
Lake reminds me of that other dissatisfied progressive rock
bassist Roger Waters in both subject matter and delivery, and as the song
remorselessly builds up to its triumphant – or apocalyptic – Prokofievian climax,
it seems ready to send Christmas and the rest of pop music crashing down around
its embers. It was a scary listen on late 1975 pop radio, but a necessary
fightback (and one which its lyricist, Pete Sinfield, would continue in 1981’s “The
Land Of Make Believe,” wherein Reagan, Thatcher and nuclear annihilation are sung
about cheerfully in colourful, nightmare costumes).
What could possibly keep it
off number one?
Spaceman, Where Do
You Come From, Where Are You Going To?
The second coming of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” in Then Play Long, and contemporaneous with
the Greg Lake song, and the younger, broke de Burgh was reading Chariot Of The Gods and wondering who
These Beings really had been. The song traces out an interesting timeline of
how a certain strand of anxious British – or, should we say, Anglo-Irish –
singer-songwriter music evolved; initially on “Spaceman,” de Burgh’s delivery and
sceptical but sincere spirituality are but the narrowest of breaths from Bill
Fay. But then the song turns into a Moody Blues album track, and by the time of
the fadeout, when de Burgh can no longer contain himself, his yelling sounds
like, of all people, Noddy Holder. This is the first of two songs on this
record optimistically calling for a new Christ to make him or herself known,
the second being “When A Child Is Born,” on which latter I have nothing new to add.
Nuclear Shuffle
It could only really be 1980, couldn’t it? “Mary Bradley
waits at home/In the nuclear fallout zone.” 1980, for those who didn’t live
through it, really did feel as if it were going to be the last of all years,
and this shivering synth/brass band romp through history, war and anxiety still
disturbs, mainly with its warmth of uncertain provenance. Annex the “Thatcher’s
Britain” hashtag or weary two-word paragraph as you deem fitting.
Thank God For
America!
Americans don’t have anything like the same hang-ups that
the British do over Christmas, are far less likely to get distressed or
saddened by it. No matter what else was going through Brian Wilson’s head half
a century ago, he could – with the help of Mike Love, never let it be forgotten
- make even a miniaturist Christmas song sound ingenious and holy. See subsequent
recordings such as “Santa’s Got An Airplane,” “Winter Symphony” or Dennis
Wilson’s bone-chilling “Morning Christmas” for proof of how far they were
prepared to fuck with the formula.
Christmas Standards
People can tell whether you mean it or not when you put out
a Christmas record. If you’re too “cool” even to trifle with the notion of
doing so – as most musicians appear to be these days – then it’s little wonder
that there have been so few, if any, Christmas songs since Mariah Carey nearly
twenty years ago that have become standards, revived and replayed on radio
stations and in boutiques and supermarkets every twelve months.
“Thank God It’s Christmas” would seem to be the most reluctant of Christmas records. Written
by Brian May and Roger Taylor, it is not particularly memorable or striking,
and perhaps Queen were lumbered with the problem that, in “Bohemian Rhapsody,”
they already had their “Christmas” song (although “Bo Rhap” has nothing to do
with Christmas, “New Year, New Year” notwithstanding). Perhaps the public were
exhausted after the release of four straight singles from The Works, but at the end of 1984 the song crept up, amid much
competition, to #21, subsequently appeard on the odds-and-sods Greatest Hits III compilation (rather
than Greatest Hits II), and indeed
disappeared altogether from later pressings of Now – The Christmas Album, as though recalled to the factory by its
makers.
Mud, Mud, Inglorious
Mud
The story tells itself, does it not? 1973 ended, or
climaxed, with Slade’s boisterous and cheery denial of apocalypse, and 1974 –
that most David Peace of pop years - sloped to a close with a limping sigh of
resignation and dulled senses of loss. The model for Mud’s second number one
was, vocally and musically, Elvis’ “Blue Christmas,” and the record – or more
precisely, the performance – raises key questions about the worth or otherwise
of camp.
On television, Mud promoted “Lonely This Christmas” as a
comedy routine; Les Gray doing Presley, lost in the mirrored corridors of
Gracelands; in the spoken section Gray produced a ventriloquist’s dummy. Snow
fell in the studio, before the camera cut to reveal a Mud roadie atop
stepladder sprinkling talcum powder upon Gray’s generous head.
All this while Gray is delivering, in an Elvis croon
(including a mock-Tupelo accent for the closing salutation “Merry Christmas
darlin’, wherever you are”) “Try to imagine a house that’s not a home,” “My
tears could melt the snow” and “It’ll be cold, so cold, without you to hold.” I
press this point because there are moments in the song where Gray suddenly
bursts into what sounds like genuine pain: “That’s where I’ll be, since you
left me” in the first verse, and “I just break down as I look around” in the
second.
Now, Mud’s success was in considerable part due to their
“wackiness” onstage, and all testimonies suggest that Les Gray was the nicest,
kindest and most lovable chap anyone could ever hope to meet, and a total
professional as a performer. Yet I wonder whether there are places and
circumstances when comedy is being used as a smokescreen for actual pain and
hurt. There’s Gray’s grey voice, intoning: “Do you remember last year, when you
and I were here? We never thought there'd be an end.” And there are the props
and bits of business, as though the ashes of glam were reluctant or afraid to
betray tears.
The End Is The
Beginning
This is not quite the oldest performance – to (1985) date –
to appear on Then Play Long; it was
originally recorded on 29 May 1942, but the more familiar version was the
re-recording undertaken on 18 March 1947; hence Perry Como’s 1945 “Prisoner Of
Love,” technically speaking, predates it. However, it does raise the most key
of questions; in these eighteen songs, only a very, very few actually address
what Christmas is for, the reason for it being there at all. “White Christmas”
skilfully avoids that subject too, preferring a semi-abstract picture of
comforting times, Christmas as a pleasant afterthought to Thanksgiving,
performed by perhaps the first singer to owe their fame to how they worked the
microphone, and the recording studio.
And yet, look at that date again – 29 May 1942. When
released in July of that year, as part of a six-track E.P. of songs from the
movie Holiday Inn, the song
unsurprisingly took some time to register, but by October it had moved to
number one in the “Your Hit Parade” chart
and was still there in January (with eleven weeks on top in Billboard and even three weeks at number
one in the “Harlem Hit Parade,” the forerunner to today’s R&B charts).
Listen to those words – “just like the ones I used to know,” “where the
treetops glisten” – and absorb the nearly unutterable sadness felt by the
people who took the record to number one a
year after Pearl Harbor.
Yes, like the works of Vera Lynn here, “White Christmas” –
which had originally been intended for Crosby’s Holiday Inn co-star Margaret Reynolds to perform (or at least mime
to the voice of Martha Mears) – is, above all else, a war song, a reminder of
what things were like before the war did things to “us,” the promise of a
homecoming, of the existence of a tomorrow. It returned to number one in the
States in 1945, and again in 1946, and even today is never far away, having
long outlived its composer and singer. As with “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
and “Candle In The Wind ’97,” it tells us that celebration and warmth cannot be
experienced without knowing of pain and cold.
