Mother Superior Jumped the Gun

I love music, but I don’t have the technical skills to talk about it (or make it). I can’t talk in guitar fills, hi-hat snares, distortion, and varispeeding. I can’t remember how to record a rhythm track on a location sound recording kit and mix it to a stereo pair. I know how to record sound on a Marantz and import it into Protools, where it will look like a pretty block I can cut and play with until it sounds good.

But what I can do is talk about how music makes me feel. I know it’s a digression, as I usually use this page to talk about film, but when people get tired of listening to you talk about music, and the only person who doesn’t hates your all-time favourite band (well, one of them), what else can you do but blog?

The following is a selection of songs that have affected me over the years, and some that continue to affect me.

Eight Days a Week – The Beatles

I recently read a book called The Rough Guide to the Beatles, and the author was dismissive of this simple love song, which is a mistake. I hate that guy in general. Underwhelmed by Across the Universe, scornful of Ringo’s solo efforts, always at pains to point out George’s cold appraisal of his work with the Beatles, I wonder if he likes his subjects at all. Yet it was a fascinating read and has inspired in me a love for the Fab Four that had waned even if it had never wavered.

Which leads me back to the first Beatles song I loved intensely. It was my mum’s favourite song and I remembered a shopping trip which involved her trawling the music collections at all the department stores looking for the album that contained this song (Beatles For Sale, Mum). We couldn’t find it anywhere, until she picked up Anthology 1 at Kmart at Waratah. It has an alternative take of the song which features a vocal intro and outro, rather than the guitar track that appears on the album version and the greatest hits compilation 1962-1966 (known as the Red Album). We listened to it over and over.

When my mum died in 1998 from a lung disease, it was the only song I wanted to hear. I still play it on important anniversaries, and I fully intend on walking down the aisle to it (shut up). I hear it and I’m back in the car with Mum on that night, listening to it as we drive home.

It appears perhaps to the casual observer a flimsy pop song. Lyrics like, ‘ooh I need your love, babe, guess you know it’s true. Hope you need my love, babe. Just like I need you’, and ‘hold me, love me, hold me, love me, I ain’t got nothing but love, babe, eight days a week’. Apparently the Beatles themselves didn’t think it was that important either, never playing it live. But mum loved it and so do I.

Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley

Have you ever heard a song so hauntingly beautiful you burst into tears? It’s probably this song, and more likely this version. Jeff Buckley was an amazingly talented singer-songwriter, and my friend was telling me yesterday that his first EP, a live recording, was so sophisticated musically that she couldn’t believe it was his debut.

The song was originally penned by Leonard Cohen (You have to listen to Tower of Song at least once in your life. It’ll change it for the better, I assure you), and it's heavy with the bitterness of an abandoned child. To me, it’s a song about feeling abandoned by God, and Buckley imbues these amazing lyrics with a raw anguish that makes you want to curl up and cry yourself to sleep.

Vapid US teen drama series can’t even wring all of the emotion out of this song. Every time Hallelujah was played in the OC I cried. Funnily enough, I didn't cry a lot when Marissa died, but that was probably because it was Imogen Heap’s inferior cover that provided the score for Mischa's exit from the series.

Another version that will make you cry is one by John Cale. It was featured in Shrek and an episode of Scrubs (the one in which J.D., Eliot and Turk all lose patients), and it’s heavy piano sound instantly reminds you of Nick Cave. Oh, lordy. If Nick Cave ever did a cover of Hallelujah I don’t think I could handle it. I’d never get out of bed again.

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – The Smiths

Touted as a story of Morrissey’s homosexual tendencies, this plea for popular and critical praise was the first song I ever heard and thought, this is The Smiths? Why exactly have I loathed them all these years?

You see, I was once a non-believer. I dismissed The Smiths as music for people who think they’re too clever to be emo. Boy, was I wrong. My friend did try to warn me. A couple of months ago I sent her a text message telling her I was wrong to criticise Morrissey and company, but alas, it was an old mobile number. I received a reply informing me it was someone else’s number. Sniff.

How did I discover the power of this song? Episode three of one the best British television series ever, Blackpool (never mind Viva Blackpool. We don’t speak of it), featured some of the best music of the entire series, nay the entire history of music. Slade and Elvis Costello featured, but the crème de la crème was Morrissey’s ode to being slagged off on the radio.

The sequence has to be experienced; I can’t really put it into words here. I hear the song and I can see David Tennant dancing. It’s heavenly, I assure you. Morrissey’s plaintive cry, ‘and if they don’t believe me now, will they ever believe me?’ stays with you long after the song has moved on. It made me want to hear every other song by the Smiths and its power over me hasn’t wavered. It’s also on what I think is one of the greatest albums of all time (rubbing shoulders with Unknown Pleasures, Hunky Dory and Abbey Road), The Queen is Dead.

Love Will Tear Us Apart/Dead Souls – Joy Division

When I purchased the limited edition of Closer, I noticed that the sleeve notes had interviews with the remaining members of the band. One of them, can’t remember who it was (I want to say Peter Hook, but perhaps it was Bernard Sumner), in an almost dismissive tone deemed Love Will Tear Us Apart a pop song. I was insulted. First of all, why must a pop song necessarily be meaningless, or less important than other music (I did a course about popular music. Well, I started it. I dropped out)? It was the first Joy Division song I had ever heard and I thought it was beautiful. I still remember the clip Rage would show.

I was slow to get into Joy Division (I know, I know) and I hadn’t heard Dead Souls before I saw Control. In the film, during a performance of Dead Souls Ian Curtis has a seizure. The line between his exalted movement and his epilepsy rearing its head is handled with such skill. The song too is amazing. Curtis’s vocal on the chorus ‘they keep calling me, keep on calling me!’ is so full of fear and vulnerability. The live disc of the limited edition makes me even more devastated that I will never see Joy Division live. Or The Smiths. Or The Beatles. How utterly heartbreaking.

Skin Storm - Morrissey

In my downloading travails (waste of time, energy and computer memory), a night spent trawling through Morrissey's sprawling back catalogue threw up this little gem about something Morrissey has referred to in the press as, 'one small distasteful aspect'; yep, Skin Storm is about sex. Or rather, making sweet love by the fire.

That someone who has appeared for the most part of a couple of decades completely uninterested in sex could write such a tender, poignant song about it is endlessly fascinating. Scratch the surface and you'll find it's more an exploration of the joy of feeling needed by another human being, the line 'And I've never felt so wanted, than when you cling with arms and legs' will make you want to grab your partner and shag them immediately. Or, you know, make you feel incredibly depressed about being single. Either way, this song is proof that Morrissey's not all doom and gloom (and even when he is, he's enormously entertaining).

Cold Turkey – John Lennon

When that nerve-jangling guitar starts, you know you’re in for a bumpy ride with this song. Each note serves to set your teeth on edge, as Lennon’s harrowing tale of drug withdrawal begins with the line, ‘Temperatures rising, fever is high. Can't see no future, can't see no sky’, and spiralling to him screaming in pain. It makes the hairs on my arms stand on end every time I listen to it.

This may be the shortest paragraph for the most affecting song I've ever heard, but I really do feel this song has to be experienced to feel the full force of it. Nothing I write here will do the song justice.

Life On Mars? – David Bowie

My love for this exploration of, well, I don’t really know – writer’s block? The need to constantly reproduce one aspect of your sound in order to gain mainstream success? Maybe Bowie really wants to know if there’s life on Mars? Anyway.

My fascination with this song began with its exclusion in any Singstar battle with my friends, was tickled by the Flight of the Conchords poignant tribute to Bowie (Bowie’s in space, Bowie’s in space, what you doing out there, man? That’s pretty freaky Bowie. What’s a rock musician doing out in space, man’), and was seared in my memory with the following scene:

DCI Sam Tyler, a police officer, drives down a highway, struggling with the disappearance of Maya, his estranged girlfriend, a fellow detective working on a case with him. Unable to contain his grief, he pulls over to the side of the road, near a bypass. We hear the sounds of Life On Mars, by David Bowie, playing on his Ipod. He gets out of the car and leans on the passenger side. Out of frustration, he bangs the door frame and turns to walk away. As he does, he is hit by a speeding car. Lying on the road, the car pulled up in the distance, we see him struggling to maintain consciousness. He closes his eyes. The music continues as we see his eyes open. He sits up, and he is in the middle of an ongoing construction. His dress has changed. When he closed his eyes he was wearing a tailored black suit. Now he is wearing wide-legged trousers, Cuban heels, a wide-collared shirt and a black leather jacket. Through all this, the music continues. Through his confusion, he stumbles to a nearby car. He sees Life On Mars is now playing not through his Ipod but through an eight-track tape.

A scuffle with a police officer reveals he is DI Sam Tyler, no longer a DCI. He has transferred to Manchester from Hyde. He turns from the police officer and sees a sign that chills him; it is announcing the construction of the bypass.

Not my best effort, but whatever. Apparently I don’t know how to write treatments that well, anyway. If you know exactly what I’m describing, let’s talk. If not, it’s the one of the opening scenes of the BBC Wales production Life On Mars. It’s the story of Sam Tyler, who after being hit by a car imagines he is a cop in 1973. They only made two seasons, because the show’s creators didn’t think the premise could be sustained any longer than that, which on the one hand is a shame, because it was such an amazing series. On the other hand it’s a blessing, because the series didn’t outstay its welcome and quite frankly, if the show continued its hectic shooting schedule I think John Simm, who played Sam, would have dropped dead of exhaustion. And we do not want that. He’s one of Britain’s best actors at the moment, along with David Tennant, Phillip Glenister (who is also in Life On Mars and its spinoff, Ashes to Ashes) and David Morrissey.
The song becomes an aural cue for Sam’s movement between the two worlds he is trapped in; 1973 and 2006. The song and the show’s premise seem unrelated on the surface, but listen closer – the song is told from the point of view of an outside observer witnesses strange events unfolding in front of them as though they are watching a film, and at times it seems as though Sam feels he has stumbled into a 1970s cop show (I think it’s The Sweeney). His only communication with the outside world is through the media – predominantly his television.


Happiness Is a Warm Gun – The Beatles

It began with a Beatles tune, it’s only fitting that it end with one. There’s an adage that goes, ‘no one does a Beatles song as well as the Beatles’. Well, it certainly hold true. I found the experience of watching Beatles musical Across the Universe such an amazing journey. I’d never seen these treasured songs handled so beautifully before. Director Julie Taymor has a gift for striking visuals. Watch the sequence for Strawberry Fields Forever and you will see what I mean.

This song was featured in the film, as Max (Maxwell’s Silver Hammer – geddit?) struggles to overcome a war injury and drug addiction he picked up in Vietnam, he imagines a priest brought in to give dying soldiers their last rites becomes possessed by the dead (essentially, he is Mother Superior who ‘jumps the gun’), and his hallucination transforms into five versions of Salma Hayek delivering the much sought after medication he needs, prompting him to cry out, ‘happiness is a warm gun!’
Happiness is a Warm Gun, apparently partly inspired by the Snoopy line ‘happiness is a warm puppy’, is Lennon’s breathtaking experiment with rhythm. It changes so many times, it’s too hard to keep up with. The end result is nothing short of incendiary (I love that word. I also like the phrase, ‘business as usual’). You have no choice but to sit back, close your eyes and go on the journey.