"IT WAS FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY": DUST THEM ALL OFF

“I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair; ’77 and ’69, revolution was in the air”, or so sang erstwhile MySpace ‘phenomenon’ and purveyor of the insipid Sandi Thom. The rest of this forgettable track aside, these lyrics (and Thom can claim none of the creative spark for this sentiment) provide an interesting insight into the prescriptive nature of music history. There seems to be a general consensus, usually by those with a vested interest (Stuart Maconie et al I’m looking at you) that there are certain dates that are intrinsically ‘magical’ when it comes to music production, and thus are etched into our collective musical minds as significant. 1969 is one of these sacrosanct years. Even the most cursory of glances at the music press at the moment will yield myriad articles singing the praises of this year. Yet all will focus on one band, one album and one conclusion: the Beatles, ‘Abbey Road’ and that 1969 was a full stop at the end of a creative surge in popular music.

Ok, let’s get the necessaries out of the way. Yes, the Beatles were (and still are) unparalleled. They are among the most significant products this country has ever produced, and I don’t just mean musically, I mean they’re up there with the Magna Carta and the NHS! Yes, ‘Abbey Road’ is an amazing album and it did serve as the perfect end to the Beatles’ career[1]. But the way 1969 has passed into musical history, you’d be forgiven (well, not by me) for thinking that the whole of the music industry shut down, entering a dark-age of self-indulgent stadium rock until punk came along and breathed, or rather spat, vitality back into British music.

The points I’d like to try and get across in this article are firstly, that 1969 doesn’t simply represent the ‘end of an era’ and that a lot of exciting musical ventures took root in that year. Secondly, I want to try and dispel somewhat this prescriptive vision of ‘great years’ or even ‘great period’ of music in history. The sanctifying of an imagined past (almost always viewed in comparison to an un-favoured present and negatively projected future) is an overly simplistic and detrimental way of viewing music.

1969 is traditionally seen as the year that the 60’s hippie culture had its last hurrah – the year that the hedonistic, ‘free love’ finally caught up with itself, looked in the mirror and shuddered. It is regarded as an ending. This view is forged almost entirely from three facts, as far as I can see; that the Beatles recorded what was (when viewed with a healthy dose of hindsight) inevitably their final album, that the Woodstock festival had left many with a feeling that something so (logistically and culturally) huge had taken place, that it was unsurpassable and (most conveniently) it was the end of a decade – a nice little bookend to package what had indeed been a significant period for the still burgeoning art form of popular music. However, a look at some of the other albums released that year will show that 1969 was as much a year of births and new beginnings as it was deaths and ends of eras. I’d like to pick out three examples that demonstrate this.

First, Led Zeppelin released ‘Led Zeppelin I’[2]. Case closed, right? I mean, if you want a ‘handing-over-the-baton-of-Britain’s-flagship-band’ then look no further. Now, I don’t profess to be a ‘Zeppelin expert. I’m not even, as controversial as it may sound, a ‘Zeppelin fan. However, I can see the significance of their debut album. ‘Led Zep’ I’ is seen as the birth of heavy metal through the marriage of blues and rock. They took the new seriousness afforded to guitar groups[3] and used it to create an album that wasn’t scared to put meandering, experimentations such as ‘Dazed and Confused’ next to the distorted (in every sense of the word) Rock ‘n’ Roll riffs of ‘Communication Breakdown’. And here I’ll stop, and appeal to any reader with more knowledge than me to wax lyrical about this album in the comments below.

Second example, and an album I truly love – ‘Crosby, Stills and Nash’ by Crosby, Stills and Nash; another hugely important group releasing their debut album, placing the experimental next to the more conventional pop song – in this case ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ and ‘Marrakech Express’ respectively. ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ in particular I would site as an incredibly influential piece of music. It flows, river like, through four distinct sections that compliment each other delightfully. The song flits from unabashed pop song, to introverted, reflective folk, to poetic, alliterative psychedelica before returning triumphant in its final section to joyous pop and half-heard (possibly Spanish) lyrics. Each section is decorated by three-part harmonies par excellence. Really, I don’t think anywhere (outside the group whose name is synonymous with ‘vocal harmony’, the Beach Boys) have I heard such delicate, compassionate harmonies. The three voices meld into one – American and English cultures and accents[4] meet somewhere over the Atlantic to create a musical moment relevant to both countries. A truly great song and album.

Thirdly, another album held in the vaults of British music history, filed under the category ‘influential’ – ‘Liege and Lief’ by Fairport Convention. ‘Fairport’ released no less than three albums in 1969 – three whole albums[5] the third of which, ‘Liege and Lief’ is heralded as the father of electric folk in Britain. Whereas when Dylan used electric instruments some four years before ‘Fairport’ it had seemed more protest than genuine musical experiment, ‘Liege and Lief’ has an ethos about it; it works. It works because the members of the band had a concept that they had thought about thoroughly – ‘let’s combine out two great passions; the British influence of traditional folk songs and the American influence of electric guitars and repeated, bluesy riffs.’ In what is, for me, the album’s stand out track, ‘Matty Groves’, neither of these two disparate worlds or the traditional and contemporary is compromised. They seem content bed-fellows, with Richard Thompson and Simon Nichol’s dual, mantra-like, syncopated electric guitars dove-tailing effortlessly with Dave Swarbrick’s earthy, virtuosic violin and Sandy Denny’s haunting vocal.

1969 was more than a full stop in music. A number of new beginnings owe their roots to this year. The year was more than just ‘Abbey Road’, Woodstock and the end of hippy culture, of course it was. This is the problem with the over-simplistic music history narrative. Music is not linear and music scenes do not just start and stop (much less with the arbitrary change of the calendar). Music is fluid; genres overlap, sounds and ideas germinate and evolve over time. Genres are very rarely, if ever, invented or ended – especially by the genesis or demise of one band and certainly not by a date.

However, perhaps I have fallen into the trap of the often almost hagiographical vision of ‘great music’ in discussing these albums. It had been my aim to disprove that ‘vintage years’ exist. However, I could have done another three great albums from this year – and then another three after that.[6] All of which means that maybe I have defeated my own argument. Maybe there are great years for music. Maybe social, political and cultural events all peak at the same time to give a condensed period of collective creativity, I don’t know. What I would say is that music doesn’t go away – there will, at any time, be people making great music and people making shit music simultaneously (I couldn’t find a list of ‘forgettable albums released in 1969’) – it’s just as we get further away from a period of time, the good seems better and the bad is forgotten. I don’t think 1969 is any better than any other year.

So, if you don’t fancy playing the new Beatles ‘Guitar Hero’ or reading unending reviews of their work – if you’d rather spread the nostalgic ‘forty-years-ago-today’ net a little wider – if you take a more liberal, circumspect view of music history, then have another look at the albums mentioned here; or better still, listen to albums released in 1970.[7]

TA

[1] Whilst ‘Let it Be’ came out later, ‘Abbey Road’ was recorded last and definitely has an air of finality about it – particularly in the album’s coda, ‘In the End’.

[2] And later in the year Led Zeppelin II

[3] Arguably fought for and won by the Beatles. Again in the simplistic view of music history, it was the Beatles’ ‘Stg. Pepper’ album that tipped popular music into an ‘art form’.

[4] David Crosby and Stephen Stills are both American, Graham Nash (formerly of ‘The Hollies’) is British.

[5] ‘What We Did on Our Holidays’ in January, ‘Unhalfbricking’ in July and ‘Liege and Lief’ in December.

[6] Other albums up for discussion in this article were ‘Live at San Quentin’ by Johnny Cash, ‘In the court of the Crimson King’ by King Crimson and ‘Chicago Transit Authority’ by Chicago.

[7] Some recommendations would be ‘All Things Must Pass’ by George Harrison, ‘In and Out of Focus’ by Focus and ‘In the Wake of Poseidon’ by King Crimson.