When technology glosses over reality, says Jon Honeyball, we put history at risk
Ihave been incredibly lucky in my life with the people I’ve met. The list of names is too long, and I’m sure I impacted their lives infinitely less than they influenced mine. Jobs, Gates, Wolfram, Allchin, Silverberg: the list is long.
The same is true for musicians. Having a classical pianist background, I was fortunate to study with Curcio, Boulez, Kondrashin, Dutoit and Groves. And to meet on recording sessions with Ashkenazy, Marriner and many more.
They say you should never meet your heroes, but they are wrong. No-one is perfect, but each of these people had a spark, a passion and a genius that showed you why they had succeeded in their chosen field.
In the early 1980s, the One True Goddess was Joni Mitchell. The words “voice of an angel” wouldn’t even begin to describe the talent of this lady. Every album, every song is there to be savoured time after time. Her career spans so many decades, over various genres, that dropping in on a random playlist of her back catalogue never becomes boring.
The next song is always a treat, a delight that can make your heart soar and plummet to the depths.
I wasn’t alone among my university friends in my worship of Joni, and I clearly remember a small group of us working on Ken’s ancient and tired Morris Minor. We were listening to Capital Radio and heard that there was to be a special recording of conversations with Joni the next day in central London. The car was reassembled at record speed, and we drove up the A3 to buy tickets. Then returned the next day for the event, where we sat in the front row, entranced to be in the presence of Joni herself. It’s there on her website, and I recommend you head to tinyurl. com/355joni so you too can enjoy it.
Joni is now 80 and hasn’t been well, suffering a brain aneurysm. Recovery has been slow, but she shocked the 2022 Newport Folk Festival where she sang in public for the first time in 20 years. Again, it’s there for all to see at tinyurl. com/355newport. It didn’t matter that she was frail and relying on the support of her fellow musicians. She was there, in person, a sight I feared I would never see again.
She had just received a Grammy award and gave a performance to mark the moment. The fire was there, if the intonation was a little rocky in places. But any imperfections from the original performances decades ago were irrelevant – it was Joni, and she was singing. It was a moment of reality and humanity. And no sign of the dreaded lip-sync beloved of lesser artists, who rightly find it embarrassing when the unreleased live mic version gets leaked to the public.
Of course, we not only have the library of Joni’s recorded material, but the internet affords us video material, too. This is a critically important record for posterity. People will be listening to Joni when we have colonies on Mars. Or when we finally get to the Gamma Quadrant.
Which is why I am extraordinarily angry and disappointed to read that the Superbowl half-time concert has been doctored. Alicia Keys was singing and, on one note, her voice had a little wobble. A tiny, insignificant nothing. Indeed, something to be treasured, showing that she was actually singing live in front of a global audience. A moment of reality and humanity.
On the official NFL YouTube channel, posted some hours after the event, the wobble had gone.
Now autotune is a well-known tool, made famous in its overdriven state by Cher. There are phenomenal tools that allow you to edit a recording – taking out the hum of an airconditioning plant, or a truck driving past the hall in the middle of a take. These are all parts of the toolset of a recording engineer, and essential when the clock is ticking on a session. A top flight orchestra costs tens of thousands of pounds per day. Hiring a world-class studio, with staff, can run into multiple thousands of pounds. Doing a retake because a police car drives past with its siren wailing isn’t affordable.
It’s a very different thing to take a live performance and adjust it. This sort of modification of a live transmission means that trust is eroded even further
But it’s a very different thing to take a live performance and adjust it. Perhaps Alicia Keys is unaware of the change, and maybe it’s just her team “protecting her digital legacy”. But it doesn’t sit right with me, and this sort of shameless modification of a live transmission means that trust is eroded even further.
Compare and contrast to Joni’s recent performances. She has an integrity and honesty, and we love her all the more for it. The idea of trying to touch up her singing makes my skin crawl, and hopefully hers, too.
But then again, one of these ladies is a musical goddess. The other – to my mind at least – a product of the entertainment industry. Why am I surprised at the outcome?