Live and Let Die

Sometime in the spring of 1973 I left the children’s home where I’d lived for a few years, and returned to live with my mum, & my brothers and sister.  She was given a house on a council estate, supposedly ‘jerry-built’, by German P.O.W.s during the 40s in blocks of 4 houses, divided by an alleyway up the middle leading to small but ample back gardens. The estate was made up of tree-lined streets with suburban style grass verges, and would seem luxurious to most city tenants. In spite of decent housing, the area felt run down, and many of the families on the estate were seen as problem families,  most were pretty damn poor, and we were amongst them.

A move across town also meant a new school. The school we were chosen to go to was over the other side of a disused railway track, whereas most kids from our neighbourhood went to the nearby estate school. We crossed  that divide both physically and socially every day. Most of the pupils were from the privately owned upper working class housing areas immediately adjacent to it: a few rungs on the ladder – but ‘respectable ‘working class.  I encountered the worst snobbery I probably ever experienced in this time.  It seems incredible now that the smallest of living circumstances created such a big social gap. My awareness of class difference grew sharply & I felt an odd social awkwardness.  School life was bound up in a set of values I could never quite navigate. In spite of this,  my inner world was on an ever escaping meander, imaginative and free. I  played on the street, roamed along the old railway lines, made dens with estate kids, wandered and generally stayed outdoors as much as I could.

One memorable escape and release from this  school snobbery, was a profound music experience.  In  PE class, we were played a piece of music to dance to, and offered a rare moment to let go. Given virtually every other bit of expression had been squeezed out of us, this was not a natural thing. On hearing Live and Let Die, I felt an immediate connection between music and physical excitement. The song moves from the opening verse that draws gently in, it follows through into a crash, racing, scurrying with orchestral drama, erupting in a sheer intense glee of being physically enveloped in music. A large number of children  flinging themselves round the room, like wild things, suddenly free of inhibition, was amazingly liberating. Given how shy I was, I felt slightly embarrassed at having let go so easily afterwards. However, it was my first experience of music as a leveller, and an important one.

Live and Let Die is one of the most famous Bond themes, written by Paul and Linda McCartney. What makes a great Bond song? At the heart of all Bond theme songs is drama, sophisticated  glamour and a timeless appeal. Bond epitomises heroic aspiration and fantasy lifestyle. His life is one of high rolling casinos, glamourous women and sexual encounters, parties and political intrigue, all usually set in exotic locations. A Bond title song goes hand in hand with the film, the overall score, and is designed to set up the atmosphere and drama. Shirley Bassey, through her signature work with composer John Barry, can claim to have stamped a style that make her forever Bond song queen, on Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever and Moonraker. Adele’s Skyfall is undoubtedly an emulation of this style. Live and Let Die had a more unusual structure starting with a wistful balladic verse, before crashing into a big sounding speed symphonic metal chase, followed by a reggae middle 8 breakdown, and back to verse.

Pretty much all the UK Bond song artists are all from working class backgrounds. Shirley Bassey, Paul McCartney, Sheena Easton, Adele, Lulu were all artists made good from fairly humble beginnings. Okay, so perhaps you could argue Duran Duran an exception to this.  All of them had already achieved notable success as artists before being invited to create or sing a Bond tune. Writing or performing a Bond song is truly seen a pinnacle in an artist’s career. The prestige is enormous, along with the status of  performing a timeless song canonised in a soundtrack that forms part of  of a much greater brand, and royalties can warmly line the artist’s pockets into old age.  Paul McCartney is the richest man in UK music, worth an estimated £680 million, most of that from the Beatles, but a decent amount would have come from Live and Let Die. Adele was recently identified as  the highest earning UK artist under 30, her wealth doubling in the year she released the Skyfall theme track.

We love our rags to riches stories, of musicians and artists such as these, along with footballers and actors, don’t we?  Yet these stories hide the straightjacket reality that Britain has some of the worst social mobility rates in Europe. Adele’s well publicised and foolish complaints about her 50% tax rate, seem so crass, given her Tottenham upbringing.  The distance between these artist’s roots and their wealth creates a yawning gap. The taxes which keep our NHS, education, welfare and public transport working, are needed to provide a minimum social net, much less provide opportunity and a hope in hell of any sort of mobility.

I make no bones that I prefer middle class aspirations, in spite of being proud of my working class roots. I’m sad I missed out on the educational and social opportunities that come with the package for some people.  Living in a  house with books would have been a great start, like being able to go to ballet, having a bike to learn to ride, being able to go on school trips. There is no nobility in poverty – its  just a hard bloody slog, and its crap not being able to afford basic stuff, never mind a few luxuries, or being able to engage in key social and cultural activities . it can make you feel like an outsider. There were few opportunities to lose the self consciousness that being poor creates and sets apart from other people in society. I luckily discovered a few moments of liberation early on, and other interludes offered a glimpse of something else, something more aspirational.  Live and Let Die will always feature as a both a reminder of a constraining social time for me, simultaneously with the ability to lose that in some levelling experience,  and perhaps even be something, or somebody else. But perhaps it’s more like the moment in a musical (  Oliver! perhaps…?) where everyone breaks into song and dances together in some harmonious routine, before the end of the song where suddenly everyone returns to their rightful place of what they were doing, and social order. Like leaving the Bond film fantasy, we’re back to our lot.

We may love the escape, aspiration and glamour of which Bond is part of, but I like my social mobility shaken, not stirred. Thanks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/08/rising-child-poverty-uk-poorer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts#

Groove is in the Heart

‘Groove is in the Heart’ is my blog page about music and art, through various meanderings, emotional connections and meaning.

Music significantly shapes our inner and outer world, contributes to our sense of identity, becoming a prism through we which we view life and the world around us. But music isn’t just some passive backdrop, a soundtrack that just happened to be playing like some radio station while life rolls on by like a train. We make an active listening choice, gravitating towards particular songs and music and charging them with meaning and recollection. It can help us make sense of the vagaries of life, and some of the more momentous occasions and times of trouble, loves and longings. As well as imagining what our own soundtrack to our lives might be, so many people plan what they would want to be the soundtrack to their funerals – they imagine the songs that will somehow summarise and define their sense of themselves. Music becomes a vehicle through which people identify and see themselves.

Sometimes it can seem as if there is far too much music, too much noise, too much bland triviality, too much pap throwaway pop. Everywhere around us from advertising to shop stereo, to wildlife and travel programmes, films and video games, music has been designed as part of a campaign to try and tap into our psyches and lifestyles, manipulating our music connections and heroes, to trigger emotions of desire, ambition, hopes, disappointments, as well as our insecurities and collective sorrow and joy. I believe our musical and emotional intelligence is much sharper and runs much deeper than is given credit for.

For me, my biggest obsession has always been about songs, the sometimes intangible moment when a song gets under the skin in some way, through a well crafted lyric, an acerbic wit, a lift and drop, a driven beat that urges along or drifting melody that captures a feeling, or just a beautiful simplicity that feels like it has tapped into your very soul. Sometimes a song says the unsayable. Many great songs leave just enough mystery and ambiguity for the listener to insert themselves within, reflect and mirror feelings. Some create a feeling of commonality and shared experience and belonging.

I don’t just want to write about individual songs, but rather about the emotions they connect with, the wider context they reflect, the impact that music creates. For me, it’s about threads and meaning, sometimes personal and deep rooted, sometimes social & political. Music and songs often challenge wider social perspectives and thinking, sometimes even precipitating change, as part of wider social movements. Music helps us explore who we are as people, our place, class, gender and our aspirations in life, including the big moments such as love, loss and death itself. It’s part of the very fabric of our lives and culture. And let’s not forget that music brings people together, is part of our social fabric from parties to festivals to weddings and funerals, the serious and fun times, the good, sad and glad times.

It became apparent as I started to write that almost the best way to do this is to sometimes reveal my own connections to various music and songs, their context, and follow those threads that stayed part of me, and my identity. My work brings me into contact with some fantastic music, projects and people and I’d like to share some of those experiences too.