‘Words resonated because we were young and felt ambivalent’
File under POPULAR: Pop Groups. This quaint direction, to staff in record shops, was one of several printed by EMI (Electrical and Musical Industries) at the top of its one foot square long-playing record sleeves in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Popular’ did not necessarily mean ‘popular with all the family’.
Frequently, the bands that my friends and I listened to were not parent-friendly. Even sound engineers remarked how difficult it was to record them, given their extraordinary dynamic range, which could bound from the delicate to the window-rattling within a second. My parents kept to a separate room for the more restrained entertainment of the television.
One might expect such bands to have produced nihilistic lyrics, and sometimes perhaps they did. After
Greg Lake had roared, ‘Nothing he’s got he really needs/ 21st-century schizoid man’, King Crimson crashed in with guitar chords, screaming saxophone and drums that were anti-matter to ‘easy listening’. The words resonated because we were young and felt ambivalent about the consumer society. The irony was that we were consumers ourselves, of this music, while the artwork on the album covers was both art – and advertising.
Did this stuff have anything to say? Peter Hammill, the songwriter for Van der
Graaf Generator – whose output rivalled King Crimson’s for extremes – was brought up as a Catholic, and his lyrics covered an astonishing range. He was not afraid to address metaphysical issues, and even faith.
My parents must have wondered what I was listening to, and whether I would come through the ordeal in a state that was still recognisably human. They kept out of my ‘den’, our so-called ‘front room’, so rarely saw the album covers, let alone the song titles or lyric sheets. Even now, a title like Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End is not standard fare for a rock song. Hammill’s lyrics include the lines, ‘We might not be there to share it / if eternity’s a jest, / but I think that I could bear it / if the next life is the best’.
That’s a fitting thought for Easter, with its hope-affirming message of new life.