MUSIC TO SOB BY…
A while back, as we drained another bottle because it would have been criminal to waste it now that we’d pulled the cork out, a very old friend & I (also very old) fell to talking about ageing. Not the usual stuff about trying to kneel down without joints going off like rifle shots, or having to leave pairs of glasses in every room in the house and in the glove compartment of the car. Instead we talked about emotional change; about leaving behind the whole big-boys-don’t-cry-even-if-they’re-new men thing. As soon as the women left the room, both of us declared – tentatively at first & then with the fervour of converts – that here, in the foothills of the Third Age, tears come much more readily, much more often.
Once the dread admission was afloat, there was no stemming the flood. It became a contest about who could enumerate the most comprehensive list of items likely to provoke the tear ducts. A striking sunrise – a deep crimson sky over the supermarket. Finding an old bus ticket as a page marker in an old school textbook. John Wayne walking into medium long shot in The Searchers. The winning goal that comes from nowhere in extra time. And, of course, music, music, music… When the women came back we’d tugged two more corks & were dealing with the consequences, both of us snuffling like toddlers to a backing track on the stereo of The Kinks singing Days.
All of which leads me inexorably to The List. Compiled long after that epiphanic conversation, this is my Music to Sob By.
I’ll start with 2 hours & 26 minutes of multicultural soul music. On impulse I bought a DVD of the Concert for George, the memorial gathering held by George Harrison’s family & friends at the Royal Albert Hall a year to the day after his death in November 2001. Many of the usual suspects were there – Clapton, Ringo, Paul, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynn - the old stagers who crew those conscience-salving rock fests laid on from time to time by the entertainment glitterati. There was an adoring audience; there were big hugs aplenty; there was confetti in abundance. But this time it was alotgether different. From the start it was clear that this was a labour of love, a celebration untouched by either noblesse oblige or ego. In fact, the first 30 minutes or so are given over to a glorious composition by Ravi Shankar, Sarve Shaam, conducted by his daughter Anoushka & played by an orchestra of Indian & European musicians. But as Clapton peeled off that first solo in While My Guitar Gently Weeps with a passion & commitment he’s not exhibited for 30 years, I was back in the front row at The Crawdaddy Club, Richmond Athletic Grounds in 1964 worshipping The Yardbirds. And I gently wept…
A piece of music can never truly evoke the palpable reality of a place or a time. All it can do is recapture within its duration something of the dream that prevailed in that place or at that time. The dream of childhood; the dream of first love; the dream of first footing into some era that came triumphantly & passed quickly. I think that all the pieces of music that move me – if not, infallibly, to wracking sobs, at least to a temporary misting over of the eyes – link into some dreamscape, once occupied within the real world or simply a permanent feature of the territory of the imagination.
Une Barque sur l’Ocean by Ravel. Initially, half heard from downstairs, played every night by my father during the summer of my eighth year. Falling asleep to dreams of Tristram & Iseult & the ship that returned with black sails.
Words of Love by Buddy Holly. Incipient adolescence at age 12. All of us in love with Lindy Ritter, squeezed onto one sofa with her in the middle. No-one clambering up to change the record on the portable player switched to ‘Repeat Play’.
Lover Man by Charlie Parker. This track introduced to me by an infinitely wise, cool & worldly friend at boarding school. Both of us awestruck in our dormitory as Parker, close to death, blew strings of broken notes evoking only echoes of once greatness.
Boots of Spanish Leather by Bob Dylan. Played constantly on my return home from work at the glasses factory in the year after I left school. Looking out of my suburban bedroom window at an avenue lined with mock-Tudor houses. Wishing it was Highway 49.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones. The perfect confluence of the baroque glories of the London Bach Choir & sneering, raffish rock and roll vocals telling us that the dream is over. The ‘60s fading fast. A sense of tougher times to come.
Santa Fe by Martin Simpson. A gorgeous little tune for acoustic guitar that Doug & I played in the early days. High hopes for what could be achieved with 6 strings & 4 strings working together.
The Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, played by Glenn Gould. Crystalline, fresh & pure. The long car journey home from raucous blues gigs in reeking, sticky-floored pubs in Portsmouth & Southampton. Passing from one world to another.
