Music, time and place

 

Where were you when you heard that the Everly Brothers had split up? I remember exactly where I was. Sitting on a train en route to a family holiday, reading the news pages in a pop music magazine. I don’t remember what the magazine was. It could have been Fab 208 but I think, because it had actual news pages, it might have been something more gender-neutral. 

Anyway, that shows how spurious the “music and memories” thing is, because that memory is not significant in my life.

(That summer is memorable only because I had my first kiss on that holiday.) Hearing the news meant nothing to me. I shrugged and read on, because (I thought) the Everly Brothers weren’t anything to do with the pop I was listening to. I think I was surprised that they were still going.

I remember where I was, too, when I heard that Phil Everly had died. On Twitter. That’s how I get my news these days. And I was a bit sad this time, because I’d grown to love their music over the years. But I loved it as something distinct from my life.

That’s why I felt annoyed last night, watching BBC Four’s Everlyfest - two documentaries and the Albert Hall reunion concert - because the continuity announcer kept saying things about “memories” and “music to take you back”.

That isn’t what music is for. It’s an art form, not a time machine. Before the Everlys programmes, there was a Prom. I don’t think anyone said: “Here’s some Bach, to take you back to the 18th century.”

Music doesn't have to be about nostalgia. It just has to be good.

It reminds me of when BBC1 ruined Top of the Pops in the early 80s by redesigning the programme as Party! Time! Because they didn’t get it: the fact that music is more important than the background for having fun. And BBC Four doesn’t get it either, because music is more important than the soundtrack of your life. Music is not supposed to be functional. It is supposed to be itself.

My favourite records now, or the ones that I choose to listen to, are the ones that don’t remind me of a specific time or place. Because there are times and places that I don’t want to go back to. And because the best stuff stands alone.

Of course, I do get nostalgic sometimes and one of the things I’m nostalgic about is the time when Twitter was a place to make friends, not just a place for shouting. That’s why I was pleased to find out that the cult radio series Sounds of the 20th Century is getting a follow-up: Sounds of the 21st century. The first episode, last week, picked up where the last series left off in 2000.

It felt weird to realise that it brought me no nostalgia at all. Not about the records anyway (I did have a happy moment remembering the petrol shortage of 2000 and the lovely quiet roads). The songs they played sounded very, well, 20th century. Kind of generic. But not specifically 2000, because I didn’t actually remember them happening in that year (because, that year, other things were happening in my life). They weren’t tethered to memories so, for me, they weren’t tethered to a time. And that felt odd.

Anyway, back to the Everlys. Last night started with a standard talking heads programme and ended with a concert and in between was a brilliant, in-depth 1984 Arena documentary, Songs of Innocence and Experience, that showed you how to make music programmes. And it was all about time and place – especially place.

It went back to the brothers’ roots in the mining communities of the American south, where, it seems, everyone was a musician. Everyone in their family anyway. And it debunked the received wisdom that white music and black music lived in different worlds and that it took outliers like Elvis to synthesise them. Hank Williams famously learnt guitar from a black musician. So, too, did the Everlys’ grandmother (or was it an aunt? It wasn’t quite clear). And the brothers themselves owed as much to Bo Diddley as to Chet Atkins. 

I loved the programme because it was about connections and community and context, and that’s what’s exciting about how music works. Those are the things that matter.