Pop-music
Turning a deaf ear
Marcus Berkmann
The pop-music world has been having a good chuckle this past fortnight over the antics of Denis Vaughan, the musicologist who suggested that the intense amplifica- tion at rock concerts makes people go not only deaf but slightly bonkers as well. The massive volume, it seems, excites the heartbeat to dangerous levels, thus en- gendering irrational and even violent be- haviour, and we would all be much nicer people if we listened to string quartets instead. Possibly so, although it would be interesting to see how fans of Motorhead would react to such a stiff cultural chal- lenge. Would they assume that the electrics had failed? Would they be disturbed by their inability to buy four-packs of Ten- nent's Super in the circle bar? And would they spend most of the performance wondering aloud why the musicians were playing those big old wooden guitars with bows?
Nonetheless, Mr Vaughan's ideas drifted into my head last week as I sat in Birming- ham's National Exhibition Centre, watch- ing Paul McCartney's first British concert for 13 years. It was, as all the newspapers have justly indicated, an absolutely crack- ing evening's entertainment: a vintage selection of tunes, more than half of them from Beatles days, skilfully and energeti- cally interpreted by McCartney's excellent backing band. Irrational and violent be- haviour, though, was entirely absent, as the comfortably ageing audience declined suggestions from the stage to 'let their hair down' (many didn't have an awful lot with which to do this). Only a few hardcore reprobates sitting down at the front went suitably gaga, and I enjoyed myself all the more for it.
Why was this oddly placid audience reaction somehow disappointing? The screaming teens of the early Sixties were all now well-fed pillars of the Midlands com- munity, for whom the occasional finger click was tantamount to an act of major revolt. One yearned for someone to be- have really badly, or at least badly enough for the bouncers to do something other than yawn and scratch their armpits. But no one did.
Which was roughly when it dawned on me that Mr Vaughan is, in many ways, absolutely right. Rock music at its loudest and most basic brings out the feral side of one's personality — and if it doesn't, something has gone terribly wrong. Like Michael Caine on television last weekend, hideously transforming himself into Michael Caine in a silly rubber mask, rock fans tend to adopt radically different modes of behaviour when confronted with familiar and well loved music played at intense volume. They dance (usually to no known rhythm), they jump around, they sing along tunelessly and, in the most serious cases, they play air guitar (often with remarkable dexterity). And what fun it all is. After a really exhilarating concert you can feel your knuckles spiritually dragging along the ground.
After all, pop-music is hardly an intellec- tual exercise — it has never aspired to be. (Only the incomprehensible ramblings of rock critics ever pretend otherwise.) At every level, pop-music is designed to appeal to the emotions — it thrills or it does nothing at all. Concerts, after all, are much the same as each other. They all include (i) the singer shouting 'Hello, London!' within five minutes of coming on stage (or if not performing in London, 'Hello, England!'); (ii) at least two en- cores, which everyone, from audience to artists, pretends are not precisely sched- uled and rigorously rehearsed; (iii) a cover of an obscure Van Morrison song; and (iv) one row of rock critics with notepads doing their best to look bored. The performers inevitably attain a certain level of compe- tence, but inspiration is rare. And yet the audience still go home with broad grins on their faces, tinnitus in their ears and absurdly overpriced programmes under their arms.
McCartney's concert was no exception. The old fellow may be an amazing ham his manipulation of his audience is expert and entirely shameless — but the wealth of tunes he has to hand renders his rather disingenuous showmanship redundant. Listening to 'Back in the USSR' belted out by a first-rate band really takes some beating. Denis Vaughan may be broadly correct, but he has missed the whole point of Pop-music: who cares if it's bad for you, as long as it's fun?
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