To Where I Am Now

Wednesday December 25th 2024

Jamie Preisz came over tonight so consequently we discussed the evolution of Kandinsky, Picasso’s stylistic theft and claims, the era of Remedios Varo, Miró’s blues and yellows, and how Jackson Pollock got to splatter. This led me to thinking about evolution in music, specifically in groups that evolved. The most obvious one is The Beatles and how they consistently avoided a watered down version of their past. Somehow, that brought me to AC/DC and I wondered how I could like the earlier albums so much and the later ones so little? I guess the moral of the story is, never cater for your audience because the pleasure of getting richer doesn’t satiate your soul, although the soul doesn’t pay the rent. The genius of the Beatles was their eclecticism, their massive success giving them the freedom to do anything. But then, four varied voices, three great songwriters + Ringo and a comedic streak, accelerating through changing times, right place, right time, right city but you still had to deliver, and that magic ingredient comes from an unknown source.

This led me to thinking about Mark Hollis and how he evolved from a semi new romantic sound to Spirit Of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991) via The Colour Of Spring (1986). It showed that you could fit in with the eighties without naff sounds, and generally survive sonic embarrassment, decades into the future. He made one post-band solo album, so minimal it almost disappeared into the cushions before you’d puffed them up, and then nothing, as if the evolutionary process was done. As if it was only backwards from there, or was it just that he’d had enough of the business around it? Perhaps a musical plateau of equality to the past would have sufficed, but that’s not what the music wanted, it wanted to stop and he listened.

On one level it’s much easier for groups that want to make less challenging music but they still have to keep coming up with the goods. A good song is a good song whatever your style - even if your style is repetitive. Even Led Zeppelin evolved, All Of My Love was a long way from Whole Lotta Love, although it came from a deep tragedy and Whole Lotta Love really didn’t, but it was an attempt to grow musically. Other less challenging groups manage some great albums with their songs and their playing, their sounds and their production but often bands don’t equal their earlier releases and the magic drains away, whereas painters and authors just might do their best work later, actors adapt, dancers are pretty much screwed like footballers, the limbs give in before the will. What happened to Eric Clapton? What happened to Rod Stewart? Amazing early work, terrible later work.

Bowie did an amazing job of evolving in the seventies but what happened in the eighties? Eno and Scott Walker intellectualised their progress, although the original Scott Walker fans weren’t that impressed with his kamikaze dive from a soaring voice in the clouds to whacking sides of beef in the cellar. The Stones had it going on for a long time and then forty years of meaninglessness. Chasing the charts - you don’t need to do that when you’re a legend. How could the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership miss the point so badly after classics like Sympathy For The Devil? Where did Ray Davies go or Elton John or Colin Blunstone? How can McCartney not tell the difference between when he does something awful and something amazing.

To sum it all up, I think older artists still feel they need to compete with what’s out there but in fact they just have to ignore the noise and do their best version of themselves. That isn’t to say they should live in the past, they should live in their future, not everybody else’s.

Music today has been Talk Talk - The Colour Of Spring (1987) captured in the middle of their private evolution.

Music Of The Daze