The Man Who Hath No Music in Himself: Confessions of a Slade Fan, And Other Musings on Music

My father liked to quote these lines from The Merchant of Venice:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.

Actually, he would misquote it as "The man who hath not music in his soul". I've only realized now, when seeking the quotation out, that he was misquoting it all those years. I'm inclined to say that my father's version is better than Shakespeare's.

Perhaps it is an exaggeration to say that I am the man who has no music in himself. But it's certainly true to say that music is quite far down on my list of priorities. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to write about this. We tend to focus on our passions, but what about the things we're not passionate about, but which are generally considered to be an important part of life?

I could live quite happily without music. I would be miserable without books. I would hanker for movies if I couldn't see them. Not being able to write would drive me demented. But music I could live without.

I've given up music for Lent several times, and I haven't missed it terribly.

It's not that I don't like music, or don't listen to music. I do. Sometimes music even transports me. But it doesn't mean even nearly as much to me as does cinema, reading, writing, or any of the other things that I would call my passions.

Friedrich Nietzsche said: "WIthout music, life would be a mistake". I disagree with this. I might apply it to chocolate, but not music

 

I'm pretty sure I have poor taste in music, for the most part. Of course, it's hard to tell, since poor taste would seem to be by nature ignorant of itself.

But there are various considerations that lead me to this conclusion. There's something very abitrary about the music I like. There seems to be no pattern to it, it doesn't seem to follow any principles. I can't really say why I like what I like. This is in sharp contrast to my tastes in poetry and literature and film, where I can generally find a lot of words (too many, some might say) to praise a particular poem or book or film.

As well as this, the things that please me in music tend to be the most obvious things; hooks, especially. I can see quite clearly that a hook doesn't really allow for much deeper enjoyment; you can't explore it. I can see (or hear) that classical music, for instance, has a lot more nuance and range and depth than a Led Zeppelin song.

But, to my great regret, classical music is completely over my head (or my ears). I've made many, many, many efforts to enjoy classical music over the years. With a few exceptions, it leaves me cold.

I think it's fair to say that, whenever anything really speaks to us, the effect is involuntary. It might be a beautiful face, or a scary moment in a horror movie, or a line of poetry, or a joke. In every case, the reaction is akin to a shiver, or goose pimples, or a sneeze, or involuntary laughter. We're overtaken, surprised. The surprise can endure even when we encounter the thing for the hundredth time. Think of some particular beautiful face, for instance-- a face that bewitches you. Isn't there an enduring sense of surprise in your reaction to it?

I don't have this reaction with classical music. Or rather, I have it with a very few classical compositions. (Here is one of the few exceptions-- Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie, which I know from the film My Dinner with André.)

 Even when it comes to popular music, my tastes are very restricted and middle-of-the-road.

Here are some of the bands and musicians I enjoy: Slade, Horslips, Led Zeppelin, The Bee Gees, Rory Gallagher, The Lightning Seeds, The Beatles, Wings, The Wildhearts, Prince, Iron Maiden, Guns 'n' Roses, Queen. As you will see, none of that is particularly original or sophisticated!

When I'm asked to name a band that I like, the first name I come up with is usually Slade. This isn't because they're my absolute favourite band. That's probably Led Zeppelin. But how boring is that? I proffer Slade because it seems more interesting, and because proclaiming myself a Slade fan gratifies my contrarian instincts, since they are often regarded as something of a joke.

 

For anyone who doesn't know, Slade were an English band who rode the wave of glam rock back in the early seventies. They dominated the English charts for a few years, and are particularly remembered for "Merry Xmas Everybody", which nobody on this side of the Atlantic could fail to hear in the last few weeks of every year.

What I especially like about Slade is the contrast between their glam aesthetic (the outlandish costumes they wore on stage, for instance) and their rugged, down-to-earth, Black Country attitude. The get-up they wore was theatrical, but their actual music and lyrics were unfailingly man-in-the-street. The contrast becomes even more pointed when we consider the time and place in which they flourished; seventies Britain, the era of the three-day week and endless strikes and industrial disputes. I've always found something deliciously bleary and run-down about seventies Britain, as it appears to me through film and television and other media.

But I do genuinely like their music. One of my colleagues describes Merry Xmas Everybody as her least favourite song of all time, but I'm never bored of it (whereas I never want to hear Fairytale of New York again, as good as it is).

To quote from a blog called Darren's Music Blog:

Unlike the treacly nostalgia of previous Christmas classics, Holder and Lea managed to capture the essence of a working class family Christmas:

Are you waiting for the family to arrive
Are you sure you’ve got the room to spare inside
Does your granny always tell you
That the old songs are the best
Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rolling with the rest?

That was combined with a genuine spirit of bright, breezy optimism.

I love other Slade songs, too. Mama Weer All Crazee Now and Cum On Feel the Noize are perfect companion pieces, raucous celebrations of rock. These were number one hits, but I also like some of their lesser-known songs: critical favourite How Does It Feel?, the bouncy Thanks for the Memory, and the irresistibly catchy Gypsy Roadhog. (Since this latter seems so obviously to have hit potential, there's been some discussion why it never became one. The consensus seems to be that glam rock had suddenly gone out of style, and that radio stations refused to play it because of its references to cocaine. Much as I like the song, I think this was entirely appropriate.)

Another seventies glam band that appeal to me are The Sweet, who enjoy even less musical respectability than Slade-- if Slade are the Carry On of music, The Sweet are the Confessions Of.. series. (At least this was the case until their song Fox On The Run became popular through being featured on the Guardians of the Galaxy series.)

I appreciate The Sweet's utterly ridiculous lyrics, such as these lines from WIg Wam Bam:

Hiawatha didn't bother too much
About Minnehaha and her tender touch
'Til she took him to the silver stream
Then she whispered words like he'd never heard
That made him all shudder inside when she said
Wig-wam bam, gonna make you my man
Wam bam bam, gonna get you if I can
Wig-wam bam, wanna make you understand
Try a little touch, try a little too much
Just try a little wig-wam bam.

Talk about cultural appropriation! Then there is this very fresh take on telecommunications history in their song Alexander Graham Bell:

A candle flickers in a window
Two thousand miles away she was there
There's a young man thinking by a window
How was she to know just how much he cared
He always knew just what he could do
He always knew that his dream would come true
Alexander Graham Bell - well, he knew darned well
He could find the only way to talk across the U.S.A.
Telephone, telephone, never be on your own
Many, many years ago
He started something with his first "Hello"
"Hello"
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell

But the attention I've given to The Sweet here is entirely disproportionate-- I've only ever owned their Greatest Hits.

The first album I ever owned was Slippery When Wet by Bon Jovi. I was given it by one of my sister's friends, but I do remember liking it.

My elder brother and my cousin were heavy metal fans. Since they were older than me and I looked up to them, I became a heavy metal fan, too. Iron Maiden were their idols, so they were mine too. I shared their icy contempt for the teenbopper music of the time; Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Michael Jackson, Bros, and so on.

 

I still like Iron Maiden. My father regarded all contemporary popular music with disdain, and Iron Maiden with outright dismay. ("What kind of a name is that for a group of fellahs?", he asked, and he was not much mollified when I told him they were named after a torture device.)

As a matter of fact, Iron Maiden were a surprisingly wholesome influence in some ways. They didn't at all in for sex, drugs, and all of that stuff. Their songs were actually very educational. They drew on history, mythology, literature, and similarly high-minded subjects. I first heard about the Charge of the Light Brigade from the Iron Maiden song The Trooper, and about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner from their rendition of it. Indeed, Iron Maiden even use a verse from G.K. Chesterton to preface one particular song!

As I grew up, I started discovering my own tastes, and I became a big fan of the Irish singer-songwriter Rory Gallagher. I learned about him through my eldest brother (not the Iron Maiden fan) playing his album Calling Card. A few years later, that brother having moved away, me and my youngest brother bought a replacement copy of this album and listened to it again...and again...and again... We both became fervent Rory devotees, at a time when his popularity was at its lowest and his albums were almost impossible to find. (This was before the internet, of course.) After his death in 1995, his popularity revived and his albums were everywhere, but I'd more or less lost interest by then.

My favourite Rory Gallagher song was the jaunty Barley and Grape Rag, which had the excellent line "where the whiskey flows and the dices roll till dawn."

Funnily enough, though, I rarely listen to Rory Gallagher these days-- and the Rory Gallagher songs I still enjoy were not among my favourites back then.

 But I didn't intend this post to become a chronicle of my musical tastes. I wanted it to be a reflection on what part music plays in the life of a not-very-musical person.

I've often heard the statement "There was always music in our house", coming from musicians or devotees of music. Well, there was music in my own house only intermittently. My mother hardly ever listened to music, my father only occasionally. He liked John McCormack and Glen Miller, but he was more likely to listen to current affairs on the radio than music.

My eldest brother is a multi-instrumentalist, but I never played an instrument, nor did I ever feel a particular desire to do so. I have a strange, disconnected memory of a single piano lesson in school, after hours, when I was very young. It was just me and the teacher and nothing came of it. It's one of those spotlights of memory which are surrounded by darkness.

I did learn to play the tin whistle a little bit, in school. I had no choice, it was compulsory. At one point I tried to compose a tune on the tin whistle, on my own intiative. I remember it was called Bean An Tí (Woman of the House), since this seemed an appropriately folksy title. I can't remember how it went. I was playing it on the street once and a kid passed and said: "That's awful". Crestfallen, I gave up on it, and on any thought of ever composing music again.

Occasionally, a song that I overhear will captivate me. A couple of years ago, I was in a café and the YMCA song "Macho Man" was playing in the background. I'd never heard it before and it filled me with delight. It's rather embarrassing to admit.

Sometimes the songs that captivate me are a bit more prestigious. The first time I'd heard A Day in the Life by the Beatles (it was in 2005, since I remember where I was lodging at the time), I felt that I was floating. I've ever since found something otherworldly, even pleasantly eerie, about this song. It's one of the few times my tastes line up with those of the critics. A Day in the Life would be my favourite Beatles song, and listening to it is always an emotional experience (although this effect wears off if I listen to it too often in close succession.)

 

Other songs are connected to particular memories. I have a very happy memory of Christmas shopping with my brothers in Dublin city centre,  back in the days when we would save pennies for months in order to buy Christmas gifts. It was a crisp winter's morning, and I can remember encountering the scent of fragrant soaps in one shop. In the window of Brown Thomas, Dublin's fanciest shop, there was a large glass model of a ship, which swayed slowly back and forth in a long rectangular box, filled with richly-coloured liquid. All these sensual associations are tied to the song Life of Riley by the Lightning Seeds, which was being played with crystal clarity through the speakers of one music shop that day.

So I guess music has been important to me. But only now and again, here and there, once in a while. When I find myself in conversations about music, I still feel pretty much at sea, and tend to keep my mouth shut. I guess it just goes to show life's richness, how much it always has to spare.