THE
SOUND AND THE FURY -
EDITED BY BARNEY HOSKYNS
Like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime there's a certain
type of book that I keep coming back to and I'm not really sure why.
It's books on music, basically.
As a teenager I would read the weekly music press as in Sounds
newspaper, the NME, and Melody Maker and what undue influence this
has had upon me I can only hazard a guess. I was probably lucky
because in those days there were a lot of very good writers working
for these papers and there were a lot of very good bands and records
to write about. I do suspect, however, that every generation says
the same thing about themselves. Whereas in those days all we had
were these newspapers along with sundry fanzines, nowadays there is
the Internet and I believe it's here where the best writers can now
be found rather than in what passes for the NME these days.
Barney Hoskyns used to write for both the NME and Melody Maker so
that puts him in good stead from the start, as well as the fact that
he was always one of the more intelligent writers if I remember
correctly. Apparently he went on to write a number of music books and
has continued to this day as far as I'm aware to be a music
journalist and editor, setting up along the way a website called
Rock's Backpages (Google it) where thousands of articles, reviews and
interviews of the music variety are archived.
The Sound And The Fury - 40 Years Of Classic Rock Journalism,
edited by Barney Hoskyns is essentially a sampler of that website and
is a collection of articles and interviews culled from past issues of
the aforementioned newspapers as well as Creem, Zig-Zag,
International Times, Crawdaddy, The Observer, and so on. There are
even a few articles that have never been published before and it's
actually one of these that I found of most interest. Entitled 'How to
become a cult figure in only two years: the making of David Bowie',
it was written by someone called Steve Turner for a magazine called
Nova in 1974. Nova folded that same year which is why it was never
published.
The article describes how Bowie was turned from a scruffy songwriter
dressed in roll-neck and jeans into Ziggy Stardust superstar.
Apparently, it was all down to manager Tony DeFries. Bowie designed
the style (and wrote the songs) but DeFries designed the image or to
be more precise, the public perception of the image, using the same
methods that Richard Nixon's team used to make Nixon President. "It's
not what's there that counts," as one of Nixon's aides is
quoted as saying "It's what's projected." So DeFries
manipulated the media by controlling what pictures were released of
Bowie, charged £1,000 an hour for an interview, vetted interviews,
surrounded Bowie with an entourage and bodyguards so as to elevate
his importance, controlled the flow of information, and then finally
killed Bowie (or rather Ziggy Stardust) off at the height of his fame
before managing 'the comeback'. It obviously all worked, didn't it?
Rock'n'roll suicide
Other items of interest include an interview with Joni Mitchell where
she talks about Herman Hesse and his book Narziss And Goldmund (which
happens to be one of my favourite books), and the caves at Matala in
Crete where the hippies used to live (and where I lived also for a
while once upon a time). Then there's metaphysics with Marvin Gaye,
Will Self on Morrissey, the brilliant Mick Farren on Nashville, an
excellent piece on Altamont by David Dalton, an informative piece on
Andy Warhol by Mary Harron, and others that are not so interesting.
Pop apocalypse - Altamont
Strangely, for a book that's been edited by an accomplished writer
and editor, there's quite a few mistakes in it ranging from
paragraphs repeated to ill-researched references leading to clangers
of spelling mistakes. In one piece regarding the Beach Boys and The
Manson Family entitled 'Surfin' Death Valley USA' written by David
Troop it says that Sharon Tate was the star of Rosemary's Baby, which
is quite an unforgiveable mistake, really. Yes, Tate was murdered by
The Manson Family but she was the wife of Roman Polanski who directed
Rosemary's Baby and it was Mia Farrow who starred in it. When the
pieces were originally written, the authors would have been facing
deadlines so I suppose for that reason they can be forgiven (to an
extent) but when being reproduced for inclusion in a book I'd have
thought these mistakes would have been spotted and corrected. It
doesn't appear to have happened though.
Barney Hoskyns, however, is well-intentioned and his commitment to
music journalism is obvious as evidenced by what he writes in his
introduction: 'There is a fundamental loss of faith in the value
of pop culture, with so much coverage reduced to bland,
consumer-guide homogeneity. So what can we in the media do? Well, we
can resist the relentless banalisation of rock'n'roll. We must resist
it. We have a sacred duty to inject magic and danger into the
bloodstream. We cannot let capitalism erode our souls. Music is about
spirit, not matter: it's about our emotional lives, not our material
status.'
Which is all well and good but I personally reckon it's all too late - to a
point. The four corners of the world of music have already been
explored, recouperated, accommodated and commodified. For example,
music as a force for social change has done all it can (the ultimate
protest statement set to music being by Anarcho Punk band Conflict
with their EP 'This Is Not Enough - Stand Up And Fucking Fight') as
has music as a means of communing with God (the ultimate stairway to
heaven being the raves of the '90s and defined by Faithless in their
'God is a DJ'). The only way forward now for music in my opinion is
for it to be completely free, as in free downloading; and if a
musician wants to make money from music to do so by performing live.
So prove me wrong.
In the meantime, however, I won't deny there's still some enjoyment
and possibly enlightenment to be gained from listening to music, as
well as in reading about it in books such as this. Although obviously
a book is a bit more difficult to dance to than a song.
Or is it?
John Serpico
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