I couldn't sleep last night so I ended up debating with myself whether David Bowie somehow rendered himself impervious to the cheesiness of successive generations (patchouli and astrological charts in the sixties, star-shaped glasses and rainbow wigs in the seventies, etc.) by being the great transcendent strange one. But then I remembered the Glass Spider Tour and found the following document. It appears that no one surveyed the Eighties unscathed – no one.
Right now I'm part of a family with small children. I say right now because I'm acutely conscious of the fact that each phase of parenthood is going to slip past in the blink of an eye, and each one is going to cut a chunk out of me. But anyway, as a parent of young kids, I've realised that the early evening is now my favourite time of the day. That's the time when, hopefully, you've got a little bit of respite ahead of you while the kids sleep, but also when you've managed to safely gather together all the most important people in your life so that now you can dismiss all the perils the world has to throw at you in the course of the day, and you only have to watch out for the lurking virus or bacterium. Or the house fire. Or the psycho. Or the end of days.
I met Damon Albarn backstage at a Blur concert in, what, 2003? It was definitely during the interregnum without Graham, when they were playing with Simon Tong. Dark days. And Damon was very fucked and had a huge and terrifying minder standing behind him. For my part, I failed totally to convey the incredible kindred spirit that I had sensed between us listening to his music. In fact, I didn't manage to say a word, just sort of drooled. Very impressive. Anyway, here's some thoughts on 'Stereotypes' that occurred to me as I was walking around this morning and it came on over my headphones.
The first really good bit is on ‘Gimme Shelter’ when Mick Jagger whoops off-mic in response to Merry Clayton breaking her voice in the ‘just a kiss away refrain’. It happens at 3:01 on this version:
The second really good bit is Paul McCartney’s cry of ‘yeeaay’ at the end of ‘Twist & Shout’, which happens on this video at about 2:40.
These are really good bits because they capture forever, on those silently unwinding spools of magnetic tape, the moment when someone felt the pure spontaneous joy of what they were doing. The former is particularly cool because it captures Jagger being so bowled over by the power of someone else’s performance that he forgets all his usual front-man insecurity*.
But it’s the end of ‘Twist and Shout’ which has the real significance. It was recorded at the end of The Beatles first and only day at Abbey Road to record Please Please Me, and Lennon was suffering from a bad cold, drinking honey and lemon all day for his throat. As a result George Martin decided to schedule ‘Twist and Shout’ for the end of the final session as a means of saving Lennon’s voice, because the vocal, as interpreted by Lennon, was a notorious throat-shredder.
When it finally came time to record ‘Twist and Shout’, after nine straight hours of recording, Lennon’s voice was nearly shot and they were almost out of studio time. Everyone knew they only had one chance to get their traditional show-stopper on record – and boy did they make it count.
So that’s what you hear in that ‘yeah’: McCartney exalting in his mate’s reckless, exhilarated tearing-up of his vocal chords combining with his own spontaneous amazement and delight at what they’ve managed to create – perhaps not merely in that song but over the whole course of that day. It’s a moment which not only nails the fundamental Lennon-McCartney dynamic of the affable McCartney encouraging Lennon’s misanthropic genius, but which also shows four guys on the brink of transforming their lives forever. Finally, it’s a moment which captures the ageless, juvenile thrill of being four blokes in a band, a moment which was destined to be played and replayed in millions of little bedrooms by lonely kids needing to dream of a way out of their lives.
All of which brings us to this song, in which you can hear the compressed echo of all those hours kids like me spent playing those classic albums to death, listening to every riff and hiss and squeak for the hidden knowledge which would one day allow us to play like that.
* The horrible flip-side to the exhilaration of this moment is the rumour that Merry Clayton pushed her voice so hard during the session that she went home and miscarried; the Stones were never too far from tragedy.
More specifically, why should you hit me with it? Well, isn't a rhythm stick perhaps a metaphor for that feeling of release and euphoria you get when listening to music, especially rhythmical music? It's about the sense of gratitude you have to the composer or performer who makes you feel that marvellous freedom; it's about how exciting music is, how sexy and - critically - how universal, transcending frontiers physical and mental to twat us into ecstasy. After all, the lyrics take pains to point out that seemingly every person on earth has the capacity to hit Mr Dury with their particular stick - and he'll love them for it, just as we love him for bashing us. So the song is about music. But we shouldn't forget that it is also a wonderful, indirect tribute to the magical properties of language, because without all those wonderful rhymes ('In the wilds of Borneo, and the vineyards of Bordeaux', etc.), we wouldn't get the message. Bloody Clever Trevor...
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 08:09AM 
I couldn't sleep last night so I ended up debating with myself whether David Bowie somehow rendered himself impervious to the cheesiness of successive generations (patchouli and astrological charts in the sixties, star-shaped glasses and rainbow wigs in the seventies, etc.) by being the great transcendent strange one. But then I remembered the Glass Spider Tour and found the following document. It appears that no one surveyed the Eighties unscathed – no one.
