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I don’t know if you’ve seen the Beatles Get Back documentary, but there’s a point at which Paul crafts Get Back out of the ether. He’s just strumming some ideas, one minute it’s not there, the next, like a ghost manifesting itself in ectoplasm, it has appeared as the riff we know so well. It is art appearing before our eyes and is quite remarkable to witness.
As familiar as some music is, it’s worth remembering there was a time when it didn’t exist and it needed birthing. This was the case when I was watching Brian May talking about Bohemian Rhapsody and I was remembering a time before it existed, because I’m that old and it feels almost impossible that it wasn’t in existence and we had no sense of it.
It makes me wonder what music is yet to be pulled out of the universe. A common suggestion is not much that’s original, the concern that basically music has peaked is a common one. None of us can escape the 12-note tyranny, there’s only so much we can create.
I’m not sure this is true. I understand that we can’t go back and reinvent Jimi Hendrix or Cream or Mahavishnu Orchestra. My delight here is to celebrate their music but let’s face it, none of us can imagine hearing anything as original as say, the Inner Mounting Flame, Machine Gun or Crossroads again. Partly this is because the context has changed and partly because they were exceptionally brilliant. But they’ve all been done now and previously stood out because they hadn’t.
The context matters. There’s so much music around now, an almost infinite amount but back in, say, 1970 there was much, much less. Rock could only be said to be 15 years old at most. There were so few bands that many knew each other and would meet up at 3am at Watford Gap service station as they all headed back to or away from London after playing a gig.
Originality is different. It means doing something never done before. I think that is different now, 60 years into rock n roll. I was listening to Joe Bonamassa’s Driving Towards The Daylight yesterday. You couldn’t say that it broke new ground but it is excellent with some fantastic playing and song writing and I think that is where the future lies. It might be a reworking of stuff that has gone before in some way, but there is much pleasure in that. It might not be the reinvention of heavy metal or anything but it is a pleasurable development.
Good music of all sorts still gets made, it may be harder to access, but it’s still there. And let’s not discount a future revolution where someone creates some new kind of hybrid. There are prog-metal bands who are certainly on that road.
It’s easy for us, if we are of a certain age, to think we lived through so many musical revolutions already, that there can’t be anything original left to be said, but I’m hopeful there is.
