bleak, and curiously memorable, and though Iâm glad I saw them, I never felt for a moment as if I lived, or even wanted to live, in the country that had produced their music. Does that matter? Probably not â I have never wanted to live in Mali, or in Trenchtown, Jamaica, either,but Iâve got a few good records that have come from those places. Itâs just a little uncomfortable, though, hearing music of and about your native land that makes your native land sound like the coldest, bleakest place on earth. I want to live where Ian Dury lived; I hope I still do.
24 âLate for the Skyâ
â Jackson Browne
What was I listening to in 1974, when âLate for the Skyâ came out? Not Jackson Browne, for a start. I wasnât really aware of him until 1977, when my musical microclimate was way too ferocious to accommodate delicate Californianflowers; the ubiquity of âThe Pretenderâ in all the record collections of the girls I met at college confirmed my suspicion that when it came to music, girls didnât Get It. And then, a couple of decades later and going through a marriage break-up, I found that Blood On the Tracks and Tunnel of Love , having been mined exhaustively during peacetime, didnât have much left in them, and meanwhile, The Clash and the Ramones, the people who, I felt, had wanted me to turn my nose up at âThe Pretenderâ, had long since ceased to be much use to me. (Which is not to say that the college girls had, after all, Got It back then. We were nineteen â we should all have been listening to punk, not listening to songs about marital discord and early mid-life crises, although considering that the boys were listening to punk while studying English literature or law at the University of Cambridge, you could argue that either option involved an element of make-believe that young adults should have grown out of.) So, after taking advice from my friend Lee (q.v.), I returned home with a couple of Jackson Browne albums, and found within minutes that I had made a new friend.
I didnât know any of the great songs on those first three or four albums, apart from âDoctor My Eyesâ and âTake It Easyâ. Iâd never heard âLate for the Skyâ, or âThese Daysâ, orâFor a Dancerâ, or âFrom Silver Lakeâ, or âJamaica, Say You Willâ. It was almost like discovering a writer Iâd never read â except we discover writers weâve never read all the time, and only rarely, as adults, do we stumble across major pop artists with a decent back catalogue: it is usually prejudice rather than ignorance that has prevented us from making their acquaintance, and prejudice is harder to overcome (indeed, much more fun to maintain). And, yes, of course it was prejudice that had stopped me from listening to Jackson Browne. He wasnât a punk. He had a funny pudding-bowl haircut that wasnât very rock ânâ roll. He wrote âTake It Easyâ, at a time when I didnât want to take it easy. And though I hadnât heard any of the songs, I knew they were wimpy, navel-gazing, sensitive â American in all the worst ways and none of the best.
And suddenly, there I was, aged forty-plus, lapping it all up, prepared to forgive all sorts of lyrical infelicities and banalities in the sad songs; prepared to forgive, too, all the limp, hapless, thankfully rare attempts to rock out (although I would have been much less forgiving in vinyl days, when I had no access to a remote control and a skip button). Iâm prepared to forgive the bad stuff because the best songs are simply beautiful, and beauty is a rare commodity, especially in pop music, so after a while anythingwhich stops you from embracing it comes to seem self-injurious. I canât afford to be a pop snob any more, and if there is a piece of music out there that has the ability to move me, then I want to hear it, no matter
24 âLate for the Skyâ
â Jackson Browne
What was I listening to in 1974, when âLate for the Skyâ came out? Not Jackson Browne, for a start. I wasnât really aware of him until 1977, when my musical microclimate was way too ferocious to accommodate delicate Californianflowers; the ubiquity of âThe Pretenderâ in all the record collections of the girls I met at college confirmed my suspicion that when it came to music, girls didnât Get It. And then, a couple of decades later and going through a marriage break-up, I found that Blood On the Tracks and Tunnel of Love , having been mined exhaustively during peacetime, didnât have much left in them, and meanwhile, The Clash and the Ramones, the people who, I felt, had wanted me to turn my nose up at âThe Pretenderâ, had long since ceased to be much use to me. (Which is not to say that the college girls had, after all, Got It back then. We were nineteen â we should all have been listening to punk, not listening to songs about marital discord and early mid-life crises, although considering that the boys were listening to punk while studying English literature or law at the University of Cambridge, you could argue that either option involved an element of make-believe that young adults should have grown out of.) So, after taking advice from my friend Lee (q.v.), I returned home with a couple of Jackson Browne albums, and found within minutes that I had made a new friend.
I didnât know any of the great songs on those first three or four albums, apart from âDoctor My Eyesâ and âTake It Easyâ. Iâd never heard âLate for the Skyâ, or âThese Daysâ, orâFor a Dancerâ, or âFrom Silver Lakeâ, or âJamaica, Say You Willâ. It was almost like discovering a writer Iâd never read â except we discover writers weâve never read all the time, and only rarely, as adults, do we stumble across major pop artists with a decent back catalogue: it is usually prejudice rather than ignorance that has prevented us from making their acquaintance, and prejudice is harder to overcome (indeed, much more fun to maintain). And, yes, of course it was prejudice that had stopped me from listening to Jackson Browne. He wasnât a punk. He had a funny pudding-bowl haircut that wasnât very rock ânâ roll. He wrote âTake It Easyâ, at a time when I didnât want to take it easy. And though I hadnât heard any of the songs, I knew they were wimpy, navel-gazing, sensitive â American in all the worst ways and none of the best.
And suddenly, there I was, aged forty-plus, lapping it all up, prepared to forgive all sorts of lyrical infelicities and banalities in the sad songs; prepared to forgive, too, all the limp, hapless, thankfully rare attempts to rock out (although I would have been much less forgiving in vinyl days, when I had no access to a remote control and a skip button). Iâm prepared to forgive the bad stuff because the best songs are simply beautiful, and beauty is a rare commodity, especially in pop music, so after a while anythingwhich stops you from embracing it comes to seem self-injurious. I canât afford to be a pop snob any more, and if there is a piece of music out there that has the ability to move me, then I want to hear it, no matter
Similar Books
