Singular life
Tunes for the Tories
Petronella Wyatt
The other day my singing teacher, Kate, took me to see a show at the King's Head pub in Islington, which has a small theatre. The government has stopped funding its enterprises, which is a scandal as the King's Head produces some of the best entertainment in London. If Covent Garden can be subsidised so that fat businessmen and their dyspeptic clients can sit through operas they don't understand, appreciating only the interval, then why not give money to this tiny theatre which often succeeds in putting on more imaginative and crowd pleasing productions?
At present, it is offering one of the best shows in London: Dorothy Fields Forever, a celebration of the lyrics of Dorothy Fields. When I told a friend that I was going she remarked, 'Oh, isn't that the woman who said, You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think", and sat at a round table?' Well, no, that was another Dorothy. But Fields was equally witty and enjoyed a longer career, spanning the early 1920s to the 1970s. Her collaborators began with Jerome Kern, he of 'OF Man River', and Harold Arlen and ended with Cy Coleman.
Fields began writing lyrics aged just 24. Her first big hit was during the Depression: 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love'. It contains the lines, 'Gee, I'd love to see you looking swell, baby/diamond bracelets Woolworths doesn't sell, baby'. The only female lyricist in an abrasive male song-writing world, she was the first woman to win an Oscar for the best song in a motion picture. This was the iridescent ballad 'The Way You Look Tonight', composed for Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Aside from love songs, Fields also wrote sarcastic numbers such as 'A Lady Needs A Change', which contains lyrics as good as anything done by 20th-century satirists and certainly up to the standards of NoO Coward. Then there was 'A Fine Romance', again for Astaire and Rogers: 'True love should have the thrills that healthy crime has/we don't have half the thrills that the March of Time has'.
Fields herself had man trouble, She was married, divorced, remarried and then her husband copped it. She then went on an extended alcoholiday. Amazingly enough, her career revived at the height of the success of bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. It is extraordinary that the woman who wrote 'The Way You Look Tonight in the 1930s had her biggest hit in the late Sixties, with 'Big Spender', the song that made Shirley Bassey.
The cast of Dorothy Fields Forever weren't bad either. Few people realise how easy it is for popstars to sing on stage, heavily miked up and sometimes, at their deceitful worst, to backing tracks. But real performers, like those at the King's Head, don't use mikes. It's all in the abdominal muscles, as my singing teacher says, which leaves your legs aching like a geriatric who has run up a flight of stairs pursued by a thief. And, crikey, these performers had strong abdominal muscles. The same is true of opera singers. A famous soprano was asked after a performance of Norma if she could do it all over again. 'Yes,' she replied, 'if you let me sing sitting in a chair.'
At the risk of sounding fogeyish — well, to hell with it — what encouraged me was the number of teenagers in the audience. I watched their faces intently for signs of boredom and whispers of, why did dad make us come here? We should have gone clubbing. Instead, I observed intense fascination, pleasure, great amusement and flushed excitement. The old songs are coming back with the young. Maybe Robbie Williams helped things along when he recorded a tribute album to Frank Sinatra last year. I was shoved on the committee of a Rodgers and Hart gala a few months ago and the same thing happened there. Every It Girl in town wanted to muscle tone in on the music.
I take this to be not only a musical seachange but a political one. The young aren't stupid. They are becoming sick of artificially created, bland, crapulous words, belted out by greedy cynics — I refer of course to most of the Labour party, particularly Alastair Campbell.
What we want now is something clever but sincere, heartfelt but not histrionic, melodious, not grating, It's time we heard these kinds of songs from the Tories. We're ready for you now. Believe me, the Rodgers and Hart, Dorothy Fields, Cole Porter, et al revival may prove good for your ratings. Take advantage of the shift in mood, or it will be a case of Mr Duncan Smith Regrets. Perhaps Robbie should make some more tribute albums. Unless, of course, God forbid, he is a Blair fan, But no one who sings 'Mack The Knife' so well could possibly support David Blunkett and his policies on crime. And surely Cole Porter's hit from High Society, 'What A Swell Party', is no longer applicable to Labour.
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