OU pretty things

‘While other utopian visions of the Sixties have faded, The Open University remains and has grown,’ according to Yvonne Cook. Her good thumbnail history of the OU appeared in Wednesday’s Independent, in a special supplement to mark the 40th anniversary of the granting of the Open University’s Royal Charter on 23 April 1969.

Cooper quotes the author Philip Pullman, who describes the OU ‘as one of the last remnants of the impulse towards real social inclusion and betterment that underpinned the welfare state. Nothing like it could ever be created today, and so much the worse for today.’ I tend to agree. Happy birthday.

‘Papa’ John – sufficiently ‘Hairy’, but too spaced out

Of all the numerous genealogical links to and from the Rock Operas which I have pursued (and, occasionally, simply stumbled across) during the last few years, Chris Campion provided one of the most intriguing and bizarre in this Sunday’s Observer Music Monthly. Campion’s excellent, in-depth article on the post-Mamas & Papas life and career of chief ‘Papa’ John Phillips is well worth reading in full.

For anyone interested in pop-rock music on the cusp of the 1960s and 1970s, John Phillips is an important figure. He wrote, for The Mamas & the Papas (and Scott McKenzie), some of the anthems of the ‘peace and love’ generation which had the widest transatlantic appeal at the time, and which have proved most enduring as iconic musical statements of the era. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, The Mamas & the Papas were and sometimes still are subjected to that tiresomely frequent accusation of ‘commercializing’ or ‘selling-out’ the ‘Counter-Culture’. A broadly-based audience warmed to their non-threatening version of hippiedom, their beautiful (by anyone’s standards) vocal harmonies, and Phillips’ melodies and lyrics. This wide appeal, combined with the fact that they did not play their own instruments (because they were singers – and we should note that this was never an impediment to ‘counter-cultural’ acclaim for Janis Joplin) has often made them rather too ‘pop’ for many ‘Counter-Cultural’ purists. Campion’s article goes some way towards redressing the perception of The Mamas & the Papas, and Phillips in particular, as ‘squeaky clean’. On the contrary: Phillips’ ‘spiritual’ and environmental concerns, prodigious libidinousness and even more prodigious drug intake place him firmly within the (admittedly contradictory) ‘mainstream’ of the ‘counter-cultural’ rock milieu of the time. This was, after all, a man who apparently ‘”believed in drug-taking as a way of life”‘.

Phillips also, it seems, developed a rock musical-theatre work with Hair producer Michael Butler. As Campion explains, in the early 1970s, between his first solo album and his dissolute 1977 recording sessions with Keith Richards, Phillips was ‘obsessed with the idea of writing an opera set in space’. The Apollo 11 moon landing had provided the inspiration, and the central role was written with Elvis Presley in mind. (Yes – Elvis.) Having ‘pitched the idea to Michael Butler’, Butler ‘brought on board a young director called Michael Bennett [who would take Broadway by storm in 1975 with A Chorus Line]. For several months, Phillips’ mansion became a hive of activity. Brainstorming sessions were held in the library, a pile of cocaine available for anyone to dip into….Unfortunately, it was not to be. Michael Butler pulled out of the project just as the final cast was to be approved. “Drugs made John very difficult to work with,” Butler says. “He also had a lot of paranoia. And that was the last thing we needed.”…The idea of turning the musical into a sci-fi comedy movie faded too (despite some interest from Jack Nicholson and the mooted involvement of George Lucas)…Nonetheless, with the help of Andy Warhol, Phillips had found new financial backing for Space, now to be retitled Man on the Moon….Harvey Goldberg attended one of the 45 preview performances. “It was so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to go backstage,” he remembers. “It was truly one of the worst things I’d ever seen.”…The New York Times wrote: “For connoisseurs of the truly bad, Man on the Moon may be a small milestone.” The show closed after five nights…What was left was a suite of 22 songs (which will be released for the first time ever later this year) in which Phillips reinvented himself as a space-age Cole Porter, questing after love and truth in the outer realms.’ Read the full article here.

R.I.P. Tom O’Horgan

Tom O’Horgan, the man who brought nudity to London’s West End, died on 11 January 2009. Michael Coveney’s excellent obituary of ‘the big daddy of the modern rock musical’ ran in The Guardian on 21 January.

O’Horgan – not least as the director who first staged Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar – figures prominently in my thesis. Coveney makes many highly perceptive observations about O’Horgan’s artistic reputation, which soared and plummeted (in both cases sometimes unjustly) during his lifetime. O’Horgan personified, in many ways, the often artificially-amplified tensions between the ‘Counter-Cultural’ and ‘the mainstream’; ‘experimental’ and ‘conventional’ theatre; ‘artistic integrity’ versus ‘selling-out’.

As Coveney notes, O’Horgan’s ‘style of direction…was organically evolved in the off-off-Broadway theatre of the mid-1960s and rooted in an alternative lifestyle and the hippy culture’. By 1971 Hair and Superstar were two of four O’Horgan productions running on Broadway. ‘This was his time’, however, and, sadly, ‘he never really thrived beyond it’. In large part, this was because ‘O’Horgan attracted scorn from the critical avant garde, who felt he had sold out, and disdain from the purists for his wacky, outrageous style of synthesising many influences’. Such ‘avant garde scorn’, combined with the commercial disaster of O’Horgan’s 1972 production of Dude by MacDermot and Ragni would, ultimately, result in O’Horgan’s rather sad – but not unjustifiable – reflection ‘in 1993 that he had been put on “an enemies list” by critics and other members of the theatrical establishment’.

“It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” – but it is Art too

The Rolling Stones: now, officially, national treasures….Thought they’d been put in a museum years ago….Artistic ‘Satisfaction’….’Wealth and Taste’….

Insert your own witty headline to celebrate the news that the original of the Stones’ famous “tongue ‘n’ lips” logo has been bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Highbrow/lowbrow? Culture/Counter-Culture? Art or ‘merely’ Pop Art? Such are the questions which currently keep me (and Keef, I’m sure) awake at night.

“What have you got, 1968, that makes you so damned superior?”*

Image (from London Shaftesbury Theatre production): http://www.michaelbutler.com/hair/ holding/photographs/hair/images/London5.jpg

[*The title of this post is a quote from Hair. In a debate amongst the generations, Claude, the hero, is asked 'what have you got, 1968, that makes you so damned superior....and gives me such a headache?' He replies: 'well if you really want to know, 1948....', then launches into the number 'I Got Life' (made famous by Nina Simone, amongst others). Later versions of the prompt script from the London production reveal that this reference was updated during the five-year run of the show. Thus the line later became, for example : 'what have you got, 1971.....well if you really want to know 1951....']

I mentioned below that there was a comment in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme which I found somewhat dismissive, unjustified, and all too typical of the ‘canonical’ view of the key case studies of my thesis: the ‘Rock Operas’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In ‘London’, the first episode of the series 1968 – The Year of Revolutions, presented by John Tusa and first broadcast on Tuesday 18th March at 9am, the playwright (and, generally, astute social commentator) David Edgar discussed the state of theatre during that year. So far, so good. Surely, I thought to myself, Hair, (the undisputed British theatrical event of the year, which opened one day after theatre censorship ended in September) will finally warrant the recognition it deserves?

And lo, we got a burst of the original London cast singing Aquarius, while Edgar told us that the Lord Chamberlain putting down his blue pencil for the last time resulted in ‘this sudden whoosh of work, I mean things like the musical Hair which knew it was coming and wanted to be the first on the block. But much more importantly all kinds of radical theatre work from America in particular but also from Europe which just couldn’t have been performed in Britain which of course came much more in 1969 and subsequent years and transformed the British theatre.’

Mmmm.

Sweet (Saint) F (of) A

The relentless nature of our raw material finally catches up with me this week, when I teach my undergraduates about Margaret Thatcher’s government. This is a situation in which I never, ever dreamed I would find myself: rehearsing the entire political landscape of my formative years (in the west coast of Scotland) with (London) students who have no living memory of those events. And doing so “dispassionately”. Mmmm.

In lieu of further comment, here is a clip from 4th May 1979 which, for a variety of reasons, none of us who watched it live will ever forget. In my case, as my mum and I rolled about the sofa, laughing like the aliens in the Smash adverts, I vividly recall my complete conviction that good old Messrs Callaghan and Healey and that very nice Mrs Williams would be back within a matter of weeks.

I still struggle to believe that they never did return.

All of this is now, of course, History. Most bizarelly of all: so, it seems (at least in part), am I.

Image: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/images/thatcher_is_pm.jpg

Nicker-less Parsons on “Hair”

One of the best things about writing a PhD on a subject such as mine is that ‘what archives are you using?’ – the ultimate historian-stuck-at-drinks-reception-and-lacking-in-social-small-talk question – seems almost laughable. I am frequently tempted to reply that ‘the world is my archive’; but that can sound both arch and somewhat ‘unprofessional’ (dear boy).

But it’s true, as proved by this week’s edition of Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs. Kirsty Young’s guest on Sunday 4th November was actor/game-show host/personality/national institution Nicholas Parsons. Charming, articulate, and with a touching interest in and empathy for all social stratas and walks-of-life, he also revealed himself to be a great admirer of Hair (if not quite a closet ‘counter-culturalist’). He was a late-1960s audience member who interpreted the famous nude scene in precisely the way intended by its authors. Here’s a transcript of his comments, which provided the context for his choice of the song Aquarius as one of eight pieces of music he would take to his desert island:

Kirsty Young: ‘In 1967 you won Radio Personality of the Year. Briefly, how did that come about?’

Nicholas Parsons: ‘People, young, and middle-aged like me, were breaking down all kinds of traditional, arcane attitudes and so forth, and the big breakthrough on television came with That Was The Week That Was. And I went to the Head of Light Entertainment for Radio and I said ‘you haven’t got anything similar on radio’. He said ‘no, we haven’t’. And I said ‘well, I’ve got this idea’. And we called the programme Listen To This Space and it took off, and I was lucky to get the award – the Variety Club Award of Radio Personality of the Year.’

Q: ‘Tell me about your next piece of music then.’

A: ‘Well, it’s all part of the Sixties, my next piece of music. New things were happening in the theatre. And there was a musical came over from America called Hair, and I went to see it. And it was memorable for one scene, I remember, because at the end of the first half they all seemed to be under a huge blanket and they struggled to get their kit off. And then the blanket was whipped away and they all stood up absolutely stark naked and they went into another number. And, you know, it wasn’t done to be provocative, it was actually rather innocent. And that was the joy of this period – there was an innocence, there was a great love going on everywhere. And one of the songs from that musical which has always been with me ever since is The Age Of Aquarius.’

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Thanks, Nicholas. I think you’ve just earned a little citation in my thesis.

Images: http://www.nicholasparsons.co.uk and http://www.michaelbutler.com/hair/

 

Twentieth Century Boy

Dandy in the Underworld? Or a traitor to the Counter-Culture, who turned his back on it as soon as it went out of fashion? Nothing more than Donovan with a gold Les Paul (and a brilliant producer – Tony Visconti – to pull his fragmentary ideas together)? Quintessentially English, hence unable to break America? Or already so successful here (and living an increasingly dissolute lifestyle) that he no longer cared to put in the effort?

Or how about, simply: a guy who happened to write half-a-dozen of the best and most distinctive rock/pop singles of any decade, which are instantly recognisable and difficult to hear without provoking at least a half-smile? And who not only didn’t deny that he could only play about six chords, but asked, sagely, ‘do you need any more than that?’ And who died when a Mini with under-inflated tyres driven by his girlfriend left the road and hit a tree in Barnes 30 years ago this Sunday – when he was just short of his 30th birthday? Yes – the second paragraph, for me, sums up Marc Bolan better.

Newspaper image: http://blogs.salon.com/0004217/2004/10/26.html

Tony Wilson

Another real loss to the British (and particularly Northern English) cultural landscape. Anthony Wilson, founder of Factory Records and all-round Punk/Post-Punk Renaissance man: dead from cancer at the age of just 57. His programmes and links from Manchester are some of my very earliest pop-on-TV memories. I recall thinking at the time how intelligent, articulate and charming he seemed to be for a man talking as a ‘mere’ muso/TV/critic-type (they just weren’t so ten-a-penny in those days, you see – JQ please take note).

But I’ll let others do the talking on Wilson. Pat Kane has written a good tribute on The Play Ethic, and, for the uninitiated, The Beeb’s Ian Youngs gives a precis of his main achievements.

R.I.P. George Melly

What a great loss. I’ve always loved George Melly. Taking my cue from Airminded’s recent delve into childhood inspiration, this stems from his ubiquitous, colourful and extremely fruity presence on British TV in the 1970s. As a child I found his Trilby hats, big cigars and loud suits, posh-but-approachable accent and total theatricality – through an apparently instinctive awareness of ‘life as performance’- very appealing; largely because they were so far removed from the culture which surrounded me. The ‘panto’-like qualities (in a non-derogatory sense) of his singing performances – costume, direct address, blatant innuendo and sexual ambiguity – made George, on one level, a kind of jazz equivalent of Glam Rock.

Only later, of course, did I discover what a learned man he also was. But his ability to mix inspirations and move effortlessly between cultures – high/low; musical/visual/literary; black/white; straight/gay (and everything in between); ‘highfalutin’ and ‘base’; ‘respectable’ and ‘deviant’ – was clear to me even as a child (when I also found his gloriously polymorphously perverse tone quite hilariously naughty). His eclecticism was outstanding and unique.

Bizarrely, just yesterday I was searching for George Melly’s writings on life, art and culture in the 1960s (which have been high on my ‘to read’ list for too long). I was thinking that George represented a fascinating link between earlier incarnations of English ‘Bohemia’ and the Sixties ‘Counter-Culture’; that he was an exceptional combination of the learned and the (literally) ludicrous; and also that he wasn’t going to be around forever. So I’m going to get his books out of the library today. We need more Georges.
Photo (c) Colin Thomas, 2004