“I’m alive but I plan to die in the future”
A couple weeks ago I re-watched Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, the quasi-biographical examination of British glam artists who may or may not bear a striking resemblance to David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Marc Bolan, Brian Ferry, et al. Much like Haynes’ better received, better realized Dylan “biopic” I’m Not There, Velvet Goldmine mostly contrasts the liberating extra-factual mythology of rock and roll with the dourness of fact-hampered “reality.” Goldmine’s Citizen Kane construction lets viewers to muddle through the drab, phony fascist 1984 of the film’s events between numerous flashbacks that paint the early British ‘70s as an exuberant, sweaty, glittersmacked paradise. The “then was better than now” thesis is made visually obvious. There’s also a whole lot going on rock-trivia-nerd-wise, queer-theory-wise, and even Ewan-McGregor-as-Cobain-as-Iggy-Pop-wise. Still, without going down the fabulous glitter rock rabbit hole, I was really taken by the glamour vs. banality dichotomy Haynes sets up.
Particularly, I was struck by how totally Jarvis Cocker, both on his own and at the helm of Pulp, blurs the line between the two. His work seems mainly concerned with the banality of glamour and the glamorousness of banality. After all, Pulp’s biggest number was a class-baiting song about slumming.
My absolute favorite Pulp record is This is Hardcore – a dark glam record about sexual frustration, aging and death. Further Complications plays like a companion piece to that record. Where Hardcore was all lush Roxy Music lechery, Complications sounds like the first Stooges record – thanks in part to Steve Albini’s hi-fi but no frills engineering, I’m sure. It’s a wiry record. Hardcore was a hangover record, comedown, a waking up in your own fluids ordeal. Complications main thrust (heh) is about carrying on in the face of decay and adversity. It’s about finding something fabulous in doing all the ordinary, ugly crap we all have to keep doing if we’re still going to bother suck air every day.
From “Leftovers”
Trapped in a body that is failing me
Well, please allow me to be succinct
I wanna love you whilst we both still have flesh upon our bones
Before we both become extinct
Pop – with all its sex and glamour and generalized shakin’ it – is a young person’s game. And “young” is becoming younger all the time. It’s a con, of course. That’s what glamour is – a trick. It’s a fey spell. An enchantment. It’s the sort of thing that you chase like the Will o’ the Wisp only to wind up waist deep in the mire. Further Complications is the sound of dispelling the myth of pop.
From “I Never Said I Was Deep”
My morality is shabby, my behaviour unacceptable
No, I’m not looking for a relationship, just a willing receptacle
From “Fuckingsong”
I will never get to touch you so I wrote this song instead
Thinking about you lying in bed, it’s gonna get inside your head
And it’s the best that I can do, this is the closest I could get
So let it penetrate your consciousness
Essentially, Cocker is taking the whole business of pop stardom apart – the big sexual metaphor behind the curtain – and laying all the parts out on a tarp, precisely labeled. Of course it’s not just about the lyrics. A lot of the same ideas are communicated by the direct, unfussy rock sounds and structures upon which Cocker’s hung his lyrics. And Cocker’s vocal performances are certainly a bit more harried and exposed than on his more pop stuff. Heck, Jarvis himself summed up his theory in a 2008 lecture he gave on pop lyrics.
My core argument is that lyrics don’t really matter – they’re an optional extra, much like a sunroof or a patio. But when music and lyrics work together they’re better than the sum of parts. But that’s not all there is to it. Here’s the 1971 promo video from David Bowie’s Heroes which’ll illustrate my basic equation:
Music + Lyrics + Performance = Dynamite
Much like a film (perhaps Velvet Goldmine) a pop song is built of several parts and may wind up better than all of them. The meaning is somewhere is in the operation of the mechanism and not necessarily in the components themselves. Seems like an apt description of any human endeavor.
“It’s a complicated boogie” and all that.
