DAI GRIFFITHS Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c.

1972 I hold that a long song does not exist. I maintain that the phrase a long song is simply a flat contradiction in terms. The degree of excitement which would entitle a song to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that progressive rock is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, while listening, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. You may have guessed that those are not my own words, but a cover version of Edgar Allen Poes The Poetic Principle, published in 1848, the original of which1 substituted poem for song, and for progressive rock Miltons Paradise Lost, and was part of a complex debate in critical theory, contriving to bring together questions of duration with the role of the artist in society. These issues are durable ones, and can be found in the song, as a particular musical form, at the period which this conference examined. Indeed, during a piece which Ill examine in more detail later, Robert Wyatt, then with the Soft Machine, drew attention to similar concerns, by singing these words: Just before we go on to the next part of our song Let's all make sure we've got the time Music-making still performs the normal functions background noise for people scheming, seducing, revolting and teaching That's all right by me, don't think that I'm complaining After all, it's only leisure time, isn't it?2 In their history of critical theory, the heartland of 1950s New Criticism, W.K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks explain that: Poetic theory had passed in the course of the centuries from a classic or Aristotelian focus on drama, through a heroic focus on epic (and then a hidden or implicit focus on satire and burlesque) to the romantic focus on lyric, the songlike personal expression, the feeling centred in the image. (Wimsatt-Brooks, 1970: 433) Indeed, an equally peremptory version had already appeared some thirty years before Poes article, during the central, fourteenth chapter of Coleridges Biographia Literaria (1817): a poem of any length neither can be, or ought to be, all poetry. (Bate, 1970: 378) As Poes example from Paradise Lost suggested, the problem was how to identify the genuinely poetic in a piece of great length and the likelihood, in such a circumstance, of having to disentangle poetry from prose, possibly via some intermediaries such as poetic prose or prosaic poetry. In turn, as John Stuart Mill emphasised, these arguments were bound up in the issue of who was allowed to identify themselves as a poet, and judgement over what constituted poetry (Wimsatt-Brooks, 1970: 434-5). Length became a suspect device, since, as Wimsatt and Brooks put it: One conceives [too] that an art formed on the principle of a vast assemblage of diversely interesting parts will tend to promote a certain looseness of relationship among such parts, and in the parts themselves a certain extravagance of local coloring. (Wimsatt-Brooks, 1970: 433) As musicians we may be reminded by this of Nietzsches famously backhanded comment on Wagner:
1 I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase a long poem is simply a flat contradiction in terms. The degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the Paradise Lost is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. (Poe 1848). In Bate (1970), p. 352. 2 Moon in June, Soft Machine Third (1970).

D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Wagner is admirable and gracious only in the invention of what is smallest, in spinning out the details. Here one is entirely justified in proclaiming him a master of the first rank, as our greatest miniaturist in music who crowds into the smallest space an infinity of sense and sweetness. (Nietszche, 1888: 627) To cut abruptly to the issues Im discussing in this paper, all this seems to me true, and that its truth is bad enough, for song, period, and for popular song, even worse. The adjective popular works in many and mysterious ways,3 and I want strongly to assert that one of its key insistences lies in the temporal domain. Popular songs are part of a bunch of shorter forms lined up against any idea that music can be genuinely or honestly listened to for any long period of time. As I wrote with reference to Radiohead, a band sometimes presented as latter-day heirs to the progressive legacy:4 I tend to see this as to a large extent a matter of the occupation of time, so that songs form an alliance in brevity with some other musical forms: Beethovens bagatelle, the character piece, the modernist Stck, the miniature, the compressed version of operas found in their overtures or preludes. There arent really so many forms of music that are intrinsically lengthy: in classicalromantic music the sonata-form movement, with its tonal opposition, extensive harmonic and motivic development, became a formal template that could consciously be expanded by a composer such as Brahms; the continuous stream of consciousness of the Wagnerian opera; composed pieces of musical modernism that, rightly or wrongly, assume listener concentration. For the latter, Joyce is the literary equivalent (with Wagner somewhere in his background, too), describing famously in Finnegans Wake an ideal reader suffering an ideal insomnia.5 But against this view, Edward Macans assertion: Effectively tying together twenty or thirty minutes of music on both a musical and conceptual basis is a genuine compositional achievement, and a well-constructed multi-movement suite is able to impart a sense of monumentality and grandeur, to convey the sweep of experience, in a manner that a three- or four-minute song simply cannot. (Macan, 1997: 49-50) America How did progressive bands musically derive the durational length Macan considers to be so virtuous? A way into this question is offered by comparing the original 1968 recording of Paul Simons song America, from Simon and Garfunkels 1968 album Bookends, with the cover version by Yes, recorded in 1972 by the line-up of Fragile and Close to the Edge (including Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford). A way into this question is offered by comparing the original 1968 recording of Paul Simons song America, from Simon and Garfunkels 1968 album Bookends, with the cover version in 1972 by the line-up of Fragile and Close to the Edge (including Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford). Paul Simons song is a good example, and pace Macan, of what sometimes happens in the short story, a relatively short time period (335) evoking something of the great American novel, an epic theme conveyed through the listing of tiny localized details: Mrs Wagners pies, the named towns of Saginaw and Pittsburgh, a Greyhound bus and the New Jersey turnpike. The lines of song seem to invite being considered as lines of poetry, for instance, the simple rectitude, reminiscent of Robert Frost, of the line: the moon rose over an open field, the inner musicality of a line such as:

Not a day too soon, the journal Popular Music has begun to question its existence. See 24/1, 2005. See Q Classic: Pink Floyd and the story of Prog Rock, Emap, 2005. 5 Griffiths (2004), pp. 26-7. When Schoenberg was bothered by the fact that his pieces were short and always needed the instantaneous setting of texts to get finished, in the pop song view of the world, he was doing fine. What happened next was the issue. Griffths (1999), p. 425-ff.
4

Michigan seems like a dream to me now, and, ultimately pops great easy trick, the packing of meaning into a throwaway phrase: all come to look for America Little of what wed find to celebrate in Paul Simons song applies to the cover version by Yes. The original Yes version lasts 1033, this version rendered faithfully on Keys to Ascension (1996) at 1028. However, of all things, in the US a 45-rpm single version was issued, cut drastically down to 412, and this is the version Ive attended to. Diagram 1 shows Paul Simons song compared with the Yes single edit version, while Diagram 2 provides further detail of the Yes recording. The Yes version has four distinct sections, the first containing Simons first two verses, the second a slow movement corresponding to the contrasting bridge of the Simon song, the third a rock/boogie scherzo corresponding to Simons last verse, and a final quick coda with no words. Even as a single edit, the Yes version is a strong appropriation of the original rather than a faithful rendition. (Griffiths, 2002: 52) Once underway, the relation between the original and cover is fairly close for the first three verses, apart from small extensions and elisions put in for musical interest. (The long version includes non-verbal references to America from Bernsteins West Side Story!) Its at Paul Simons final verse, starting Kathy Im lost that the cover really does get lost, or forget its direction. There seems little reason for the scherzo section to be a rock-boogie workout: it breaks up the restrained continuity of the lyric and becomes, as we might say, mere text for musical presentation. Indeed, in the original long version, the verse is repeated, again with little justification. I might even describe this as a poor cover version, although that does assume that questions of judgement are salient; however, such a judgement points towards my title: memorable music, forgettable words. Robert Christgau 1967: song words and modern poetry Poor old Yes tend to get it from both historical directions: from the perspective of punk as well as from the perspective of British psychedelia. Tales from the Topographic Oceans (1974) feels like a nadir separating the pop-rock peaks of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd (Astronomy Domine (1967)) and the Sex Pistols (Anarchy in the UK (1976)). According to the staple history of pop, rock, and soul, Yes, and Wakemans solo projects, are prime representatives of bloated rock excess which punk blew away; theyre pretty much written out of the script of canon-formers such as Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh, Chuck Eddy, and Jim Miller. But theres also a pre-history which sees the brief period of British psychedelia or experiment also being let down by Yes. Chris Cutler suggested that: UK progressive music declined into groups like Yes, Genesis, ELP and Gentle Giant. (Cutler, 1983: 121) Picking up directly on Cutlers article, Jon Savage, punks great historian, also casts the music before prog rock as a moment of promise: 1968 was the year when everything started to go wrong. Commitment took the place of inner exploration. There was a division in pop, between singles and albums, between bubblegum and progressive. (Savage, 1994: 351) Im homing in on 1972, with an eye to comings and goings: ELP gathered together in 1970, Yes: Wakemans arrival in 1971 and Brufords departure in 1972, Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt leaving Soft Machine in 1969 and 1971 and, rather later, Peter Gabriel leaving Genesis in 1975. These shifts surely circled around musical commitment versus commercial pressure, a familiar negotiation between underground and mainstream; although the sociologist might also point to the scale, ambition even, of visual presentation giving raise to logistical problems which demanded greater economic investment. How the issues of relating words and music, encapsulated by our cover version comparison, appeared at the time is indicated by an article first published rather earlier, in 1967.
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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

That year, Robert Christgau wrote an article for Cheetah, reprinted and slightly extended a year later for inclusion in the first volume of The Age of Rock. The article was entitled Rock Lyrics are Poetry (Maybe) and, with an assiduousness which must have been new at the time but was to become characteristic, Christgau drew attention to several important points. Gravitating towards a discussion of Bob Dylan, naturally as it would have seemed, Christgau asserts that Dylan is a songwriter, not a poet. The next passage is worth quoting in its entirety: Such a rash judgement [of Dylan] assumes that modern poets know what theyre doing. It respects the tradition that runs from Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams down to Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and perhaps a dozen others, the tradition that regards Allen Ginsberg as a good poet, perhaps, but a wildman. Dylans work, with its iambics, its clackety-clack rhymes, and its scattergun images, makes Ginsbergs work look like a model of decorous diction. An art advances through technical innovation. Modern American poetry assumes (and sometimes eliminates) metaphoric ability, concentrating on the use of line and rhythm to approximate (or refine) speech, the reduction of language to essentials, and tone of voice. Dylans only innovation is that he sings, a good way to control tone of voice, but not enough to revolutionize modern poetry. He may have started something just as good, but modern poetry is getting along fine, thank you. (Christgau, 1969: 234)6 Discussing Dylans influence, Christgau arrives at the first two Procol Harum singles from 1967 (Whiter Shade of Pale and Homburg) as examples of the kind of vague, extravagant imagery and inane philosophising that ruins so much good music, the nebulousness that passes for depth among so many lovers of rock poetry. (Christgau, 1969: 235-6). Christgau then sets out what was to become a standard view: rock diction became imbecilically colloquial, nonsense syllables proliferated, and singers slurred because nobody cared. (Christgau, 1969, p. 240) Reaching the Beatles, Christgau takes the story positively forward: Lennon and McCartney are the only rock songwriters who combine high literacy with an eye for concision (as high as Dylans or Simons) and a truly contemporary sense of what fits. (Christgau, 1969: 241) Lennons line, My independence seems to vanish in the haze is singled out. Christgau concludes by returning to the distinction between songs and poems: Maybe I am being too strict. Modern poetry is doing very well, thank you, on its own terms, but in terms of what it is doing for us, and even for the speech from which it derives, it looksa bit pallid. Never take the categories too seriously. It my be that the new songwriters (not poets, please) lapse artistically, indulge their little infatuations with language and ideas, and come up with a product that could be much better if handled with a little less energy and a little more caution. But energy is where its at. And songs even if they are only songs my soon be more important than poems, no matter that they are easier too. (Christgau, 1969: 242) Indeed by the end of the article, Christgau confesses to being less impressed by the poet Robert Creeley (Christgau, 1969: 243), finding more of language-related interest in songs even if they are only songs. When we put in that qualifier, even if they are only songs, it may be worth being clear what we mean. Perhaps issues around song turn around issues of duration, duration being the simple indication of the time taken by a particular track, but made up of several things: the given speed of enunciation in the song, and the shape or form of the track or song. A pop fan could claim that a songs limit is about three minutes and that a longer song is actually becoming something different, a dramatic scene perhaps, a stream of consciousness or fantasy, merely slow, or merely multi-versed. That three-minute limit may in turn owe something to pop musics realist assumption, that the words are enunciated according to the speed of ordinary speech. Christgaus example from the Beatles Help, My independence seems to vanish in the haze, is sung closely to how quickly one would ordinarily pronounce it as speech. In this sense, an exact antithesis of this aspect of progressive rock may be found in the pop principles set out in Cauty and Drummonds The Manual how to have a number one hit the easy way, two of whose four golden rules state that:
6 My italics. Christgau alludes to an article by Paul Nelson which claimed that Dylan had revolutionized modern poetry (as well as the whole of modern-day thought). Also found at: http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/lyrics-che.php

Secondly, It must be no longer than three minutes and thirty seconds (just under three minutes and twenty seconds is preferable). [] Fourthly, lyrics. You will need some, but not many. (Cauty Drummond, 1998: 53) In turning to three case studies, I want to emphasize that song, on the one hand, and music and words, on the other, may refer to different things, or at least to things which carry different connotations. Three examples In these three examples, Im less concerned with the meaning of the words, more with the way words occupy the musical space of the song, although any attempt to keep those two things entirely separate is ultimately futile. As Ian MacDonald memorably said of musical minimalism: Theres no escaping it. Those damned word things will mean something, however purposelessly you play with them. (MacDonald, 2003: 179). The examples are chosen to cover three bases, a range which might be found in other repertories, in post-punk, for instance. Robert Wyatt is there to represent a more modernist position, Greg Lake the traditional lyricist, Genesis the pop-music compromise. The last example is my favourite, though in all three cases the journey is as interesting as the destination. I. Anti-lyric: Robert Wyatt But I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avantgarde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really. A lot of the rock thing came out of people who'd started out doing covers of versions of the English scene and the American scene, the Beatles and Dylan and so on, and then got more and more involved in instrumental virtuosity and esoteric ideas. I was really going the other way. I was brought up with esoteric ideas and modern European music and Stockhausen, Webern, avant-garde poets, and all the kind of avant-garde thing in the Fifities, before pop music--the beat poets, the avant-garde painters at the time, and so on. To me, the amazing thing was to discover the absolute beauty of Ray Charles singing a country and western song or something like that. So my actual journey of discovery was I discovered the beauty of simple, popular music. And it was much more elusive, really, than people who put it down realize. Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't.7 When we were all more nave, it was fine to gasp at their long solos and 11/8 riffs; but today something more is required, and when Roberts voice and Kevins songs are missing, the real limitations begin to show. (Williams, 1972: 16) Building on examples of cross-disciplinary discussion such as Christgaus chapter, Ive argued elsewhere that a simple way into the position of words in pop songs may be to see them, not automatically as being similar to poetry which tends to be how the words get represented on the page but as tending either towards being like poetry or tending towards being like prose. (Griffiths, 2003, p.42) In the chapter in which this argument is set out, the key crossover position is occupied by Patti Smith, a published poet who metamorphosed into rock singer. Its possible to see a track like Piss Factory (1974) bearing elements of the breathed line which had characterized a certain tendency of modernist American poetry from Ezra Pound through William Carlos Williams and Charles Olson to Allen Ginsberg. In turn, Patti Smith is influential directly on songwriters like Michael Stipe and Morrissey. In anti-lyric the words are brought to the music, and what distinguishes one song-writer from another is the internal consistency of the pool of words. This differs from the traditional lyric, a compromise between words and music characterized by degrees of rectitude: words give way to musics formal demands and play to their musicality, while music holds back its expressive capacity. Its possible to hear Moon in June from Soft Machines Third as the most radical solution to the word-music experiments presented on their previous two records. Like the other tracks on
7

Robert Wyatt, interview with Richie Unterberger, 1996, accessed from internet: http://www.furious.com/perfect/wyatt.html Composition and Experimentation in British rock, 1966-1976

D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Third, this one is notable for its duration, taking up one side of the vinyl double album, although strictly only about nine of its nineteen minutes brings together words and music in song. Of those nine minutes, three sections suggest themselves as relatively stable song sections, two of which were re-workings of earlier songs (Thats how much I need you now and You dont remember), leaving only the extended New York song as new for the purpose. If as Ive suggested, once songs go beyond a built-in time limitation then theyre on the way to becoming something different, its tempting to see Moon in June as a sequence of three recitatives and arias. The recitative sections draw attention to themselves for their transitional, prose-like nature, and its these I want to focus on. First, these sections are characterized musically by a particular type of theme, which seems to belong to the generation of Wagner and Debussy. Three examples: Theme A: 038, Theme F: 317, Theme L: 641. Secondly, the words of the song are occasionally characterized by seeming randomness of subject matter, something Robert Wyatt has acknowledged as an aim: I got fed up with songs where the main accents would just make you emphasize the words in a way you wouldn't if you were saying them, and I got interested in the technique of writing songs where the melody line fits the way you'd say the words if you were just talking. ... And that meant singing about things that were true as far as I understood it. And if you're muddled, the only things you're certain are true, are that there's a tea machine in the corridor and it works or it doesn't. This is true, it's not wishy-washy bullshit. It may be low profile, but it's true. (King, 1994)8 However, such an approach makes an example such as the 1969 BBC Top Gear version a curio, the details of which require explanation for understanding: Not forgetting the extra facilities Such as the tea machine, just along the corridor So to all our mates like Kevin, Caravan, the old Pink Floyd Allow me to recommend Top Gear Despite its extraordinary name Yes, playing, playing now is lovely Here in the BBC We're free to play almost as long and as loud As the foreign language classes... and the John Cage interview... and the jazz groups... and the orchestras on Radio 3 Indeed, this version is followed by a direct quote from Dylans All Along the Watchtower (Pop stars drink each others wine/plough each others earth), also found in the 1969 demo, and known at the time from the 1968 cover by Jimi Hendrix. Another modernist element may reside in the tracks self-reflexivity, Wyatt reflecting on the materiality of songs while being in the action of making one up, which I alluded to at the opening of this paper. There are some down sides. The freedom of modern art may also have been equated with non-sense, such as the lines, Youre the thing I are, I knew and I wanted you more than ever now. We might also wish to draw a discreet veil over some of the pre-feminist nature of some of Wyatts sentiments. But I think the third and most clinching point about Wyatts claim to a modernist anti-lyric lies more possibly in his voice than in the words themselves, and a certain and apparent disjunction between voice and song. Wyatts voice has at least two distinct ranges and, as with many singers, the upper range is going to express whichever words are enunciated. (Griffiths, 2004: 51) This is particularly so in the last section, the section derived from You Dont Remember, where I confess to hearing Wyatts vocal commitment being overly emotional for the situation being described. A happier solution occurs at the very start of the recording on Third where, until the first aria arrives after

Also at http://www.lunakafe.com/moon8/en8x.php

126, the ear is unsettled and de-centred: my diagram includes all of four sections in this short period. (Diagram 3)9 II. Lyric: Greg Lake Greg Lakes words to The Endless Enigma, the opening track of ELPs 1972 album Trilogy, can function as an example of standard lyric-writing, where the words are closely tailored to the implications of the music. In the same chapter which presented the lyric/anti-lyric dichotomy, I also suggested that one way into the judgement of rhyming terms was offered by W.K. Wimsatt who suggested, from a study of Pope, that grammatical dissonance between rhyming terms helped a rhyme, and helped structure its couplet. Rhyming cat with sat, a noun with a verb in past participle, is inherently more interesting, more dynamic than rhyming cat with mat, two nouns. I used this as a way of reflecting on a sense I had that a passage of rhyme in Elvis Costello seemed to me less interesting than a passage in Rickie Lee Jones. (Griffiths, 2003: 52-53) We can approach The Endless Enigma with this claim in mind. Many of the rhymes are similar in syllabic count and grammatical type: this might point towards their being uninteresting but, as I said in the article, this is not to say that the words are perfectly apposite for this particular song or track, or for what Emerson Lake and Palmer were generally trying to achieve. Nevertheless, this would I think push us towards the idea of progressive rocks being, at times, the combination of memorable music and forgettable words and, now, also, in that order: The Endless Enigma has lots of sections of challenging music physically challenging, virtuosic which occasionally give way to sections which include the words. Indeed, The Endless Enigma is divided into two parts by an intervening, classics-rocking Fugue. In that sense, the words are perfectly appropriate, and a different set of words might indeed get in the way. I confess to some lingering difficulties: the addressee, the unidentified you, which seems to me to lack the definite ambiguity of the you of gospel music (big y, little y). In turn, that sense of uncontrolled ambiguity, bordering on vagueness, carries into the rhymes themselves.10 Memorable music, no doubt, with something of the organ loft about its singability, not to mention the re-harmonization of the last verse. Here is the second part: memorable music and forgettable words, working well together. III. Diversity: Genesis I always thought we were closer to those seventies groups who made what I would call imaginative pop: Queen, 10cc.11 I know what I like (in your wardrobe) finds Genesis12 in 1973 poised between art and commerce, underground and mainstream. The song was based on Betty Swanwicks painting used as the cover of Selling England by the Pound. Tony Banks category of imaginative pop could include examples like 10ccs The Dean and I or Queens Killer Queen while, in the relation of words and music, a similar point could be reached via a songwriter such as Paul Simon in Rene and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war, or the Richard Thompson of 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. In all of these, the key starting-point is an attention to detail little details are going to count, and subsequent listening can bring a delightful realization of their precision. The second verse is a crucial point in terms of the compromise a songs words have to make with musical form. The second verse of I know what I like is a variation on or embellishment of its first verse, and I want to use that observation as a way in to analysing the song as a whole. If we examine only those verses in comparison, we see immediately that theres no obvious rhyme correspondence at the end of lines, though there are a few internal rhymes along the way. (Jacob/wake up; cuckoo to you; Mister Lewis). So the verses could be rendered, as in my first

Ive also referred to the demo version, issued on Backwards (2002), the BBC version, issued on BBC Radio 1967-71 (2003), and the two tracks included on Jet-Propelled Photographs (2003). Compare Robert Christgau (1969): vague, extravagant imagery and inane philosophising that ruins so much good music, nebulousness that passes for depth among so many lovers of rock poetry, above. 11 Tony Banks, in David Buckley, Genesis article, Q Classic, op. cit., p.90. 12 I assume the words belong largely to Peter Gabriel, with no evidence, but the band always presented the songs as collaborations.
10

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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

diagram of the song (diagram 5), as prose passages: perhaps a Joycean stream of consciousness, or an Alan Bennett monologue, told from the perspective of one of the characters in the painting.13 The song uses something of an unreliable narrator or, more precisely, an unsettled or constantly shifting narrator. In a second diagram (Diagram 6) the words are arranged as a drama, and its for a listener to deduce, much as one does watching a play or film, whether one hears either the characters themselves or Peter Gabriel as a sort of master ventriloquist. There appears to be a difference between the narrator who belongs to the story and the one identified as the first person singular, and Ive made that distinction clear. Lying slightly outside the drama is the chorus itself, which could belong to any of the characters, or not: I know what I like, and I like what I know Getting better in your wardrobe Stepping one beyond your show We note the full rhyme know/show and half rhyme know/wardrobe (sung as wardrobe). I confess that I find the last line (Stepping one beyond your show) mystifying, deliberately obscure, and Id explain the lines structurally (diagram 7): I know what I like I like what I know

This is a sort of palindrome, or chiasmus. And then: Getting Stepping better in one beyond your your wardrobe show

Note too, as a structural trick, that the line: When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hear them talk both concludes the introduction and commences the conclusion, the second to a full rhyme: you can tell me by the way I walk. Keep them mowing blades sharp! also acts as a binding phrase, repeated at the end of both verses. Note too that the second verse phrases the music-word relation slightly differently, organized hyper-metrically (Diagram 8): Verse one: (4+4+4) + (4+4+4) + (4+4) + (4) Verse two: (4+4+4+4) + (4) + (4+4) + 4) In fact, even though the second verse, at eight bars, lasts a shorter time than the first, nine bars, it contains a bigger syllable count: 67 as opposed to 56 for the first verse (bar-syllable averages of 6.2 for the first verse compared with 8.37 for the second). A final diagram (Diagram 9) offers a closer comparison between the verses, and I hope they bring out the suppleness of the word-music relationship. Numbers indicate the verbal space of each line (Griffiths, 2003: 43-48), with scores for syllabic density also showing diversity. The remainder of the song other than its wordy sections leave us with three passages of instrumental music: the very opening, fading in, the ending, with a flute solo, and the terrific link between first and second verse (120 140): the rich organ followed possibly, by a foreshadowing of Gabriels world-music concerns. The live version of the song, from the Rainbow Theatre in 1973 (included in Genesis Archive 1967-75), is close to the studio version, despite timings indicating 409 studio compared with 536 live. In fact, its the framing and non-verbal outer sections that expand, the song itself showing a difference of only one second: Intro
13

Song

Outro

Ive rendered Mister Lewis as dear Mister Lewis, while the CDs word sheet indicates then Mister Lewis. I prefer dear Mister Lewis, and hear it on the studio version, but hear the official version in the live performance!

Studio Live

34 69

155 154

60 92

It is evident that, in live performance, Gabriel was emphasizing the dramatic, multi-vocal aspects of the song. By way of conclusion: some sociological guesswork I know what I like reached number 18 in the British singles chart for 4 May 1974, concluding a four-week stint, holding its artful own in a line-up which firmly put the pop in popular music. (Rees D. - Lazell B - Osborne R.,1992 and Gray M. - Lazell B.- Osborne R., 1993) Abbas Waterloo, at number one, was the winner of that years Eurovision song contest, Gary Glitter and the Glitter Band, not one single but two, Mud, Slade, Wizzard, Mungo Jerry, the Bay City Rollers, and novelty acts galore: child star Jimmy Osmond of the Osmond Family, the Wombles, based on a childrens telly programme, and Paper Lace and Peters and Lee, not one but two products of a television talent show, Opportunity Knocks. The album chart was of course a much more serious affair, and Selling England by the Pound had been quietly sitting in the top thirty since its entry during the week of 13 October 1973, peaking at number six on 3 November, and dropping out just before Xmas. It then re-entered, alongside the single, on 27 April to peak at 17 on the week it disappeared for good, 1 June; a total of ten weeks first time, six second. During its peak week as a single, 4 May, the album chart included a surprising amount of pop music Carpenters at number one, Elton John, Wings, Slade, Peters and Lee, Millican and Nesbit, New Seekers, some singersongwriters Elton again, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel and some prog records: Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd (no prizes for naming the albums), Queen 2 (with Seven Seas of Rhye), Deep Purples Burn and Tangerine Dreams Phaedra. What the charts at least suggest is not so much Allan Moores profusion of styles under the rock umbrella, but something of a battle between pop and rock. Although a musicologist, Im always interested in raising sociological questions; Richard Petersons Why 1955? is a good demonstration of the claim that music can be explained entirely in terms of social conditions. (Peterson, 1990: 97-116) Clearly, the emergent domination of 12 vinyl albums is important for the additional durations which Ive been looking at. However, a more germane question for the sociologist is the nature of the word-carrier in the bands: what set off people like Peter Gabriel, Greg Lake, Robert Wyatt, Jon Anderson, from the others in their respective bands? (King Crimsons Peter Sinfield is comparable to the Grateful Deads Robert Hunter in being a word-provider essentially outside the musical producers.) Part of the background of anti-lyric is that a clear role of word-carrier emerges over time: where the Beatles or Rolling Stones or the Who might have been united as music-lovers first, word-carriers second and later, by the time Morrissey, if not Johnny Marr, was taken to court by others in the Smiths, he could in theory have claimed that without his words, there really was little of distinction about his group; and its said that REM albums have to await Michael Stipes words. Again, these questions of who gets to be a poet, who gets to be a musician, are interesting, especially in cases such as these where musical virtuosity may be a salient issue. Answers to the kind of question which Paul Zollo often and usefully asks of song-writers, concerning the processes of song-writing, would be enlightening. (Zollo, 1997) Songs last by being sung, records last by being played: if neither of these happens a song is, to all intent and purpose, dead. The great alternative to such survival is the academy, and here things may look better for progressive rock, as these compositions become studied by musicologists and - a tip for the future - performed by young musicians in a search for musical health and efficiency: imagine the possibility of progressive records being set as test pieces for ensemble performance. Grateful as I am to the conference organizers for having invited me to revisit and, in many cases, discover the riches of the repertory under discussion, my conclusion is what I vaguely thought at the time, and have thought since: that British progressive rock became more, not less, interesting the more it became like pop music and less like modern art. Around 1972 there was a river to cross, between art-based commitment, and selling out to commercial demands, my ears and mind tell me to trust the ones, like Yes, Genesis and ELP, who recognized

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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

and negotiated that tension. The word tension is borrowed from that theorist of popular culture, and devotee of jazz, the English poet Philip Larkin, writing in 1970, and with whom Ill end: I am sure that there are books in which the genesis of modernism is set out in full. My own theory is that it relates to an imbalance between the two tensions from which art springs: the tension between the artist and his material, and between the artist and his audience, and that in the last seventy-five years or so the second of these has slackened or even perished. I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by Parker, Pound or Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. (Larkin, 1985: 27) Tracks referred to: Simon and Garfunkel, America, Bookends (1968). Song by Paul Simon. Yes, America (1972), long version reissued with Fragile (2003), single edit with Close to the Edge (2003). Live version: Keys to Ascension (1996) Soft Machine, Moon in June, Third (1970). Song by Robert Wyatt. Soft Machine, Backwards (2002), BBC Radio 1967-71 (2003), Jet-Propelled Photographs (2003). Emerson Lake and Palmer, The Endless Enigma, Trilogy (1972). Song by Keith Emerson and Greg Lake. Genesis, I Know what I like (in your wardrobe), Selling England by the Pound (1974). Live version (1973): Archive 1967-75 (1998).

Bibliography Bate, Walter J. 1970 Criticism: the Major Texts, New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Cauty, Jimmy - Drummond Bill 1998 The Manual: how to have a number one hit the easy way, KLF Publications, London. Christgau, Robert 1969 Rock Lyrics are Poetry (Maybe), in Jonathan Eisen (ed.), The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution, New York, Random House, p. 230-243. Cutler, Chris 1983 File Under Popular, New York, Autonomedia. Gray, Michael - Lazell, Barry Osborne, Roger 1993 30 Years of NME Album Charts, London, Boxtree Griffiths, Dai 1999 The High Analysis of Low Music, "Music Analysis", 18/3, p. 389-435 2002 Cover Versions and the Sound of Identity in Motion, in Hesmondhalgh D. - Negus K., Popular Music Studies, London, Arnold, pp. 51-64. 2003 From Lyric to Anti-lyric: analysing the words in pop song, in Allan F. Moore, Analyzing Popular Music, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 39-59. 2004 Radiohead OK Computer, New York, Continuum, 2004.

King, Michael 1994 Wrong Movements. A Robert Wyatt History, London, SAF Publishing. Larkin, Philip 1985 All what Jazz: a Record Diary 1961-71, revised edition, London, Faber and Faber. Macan, Edward 1997 Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Music and the Counterculture, Oxford, Oxford University Press. MacDonald, Ian 2003 The Peoples Music, London, Plimco. Nietzsche, Friedrich 1968 The Case of Wagner, 1st ed. 1888, in Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Basic Writings of Nietzsche, New York, Modern Library, 1968. Peterson, Richard 1990 Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music, Popular Music, 9, pp.96-116. Poe, Edgar A. 1848 The Poetic Principle. Rees, Dafydd Lazell, Barry Osborne, Roger 1992 40 Years of NME Charts, London, Boxtree. Savage, Jon 1994 Time Travel, Chatto & Windus, London. Williams, Richard 1972 review of Soft Machine Five, "Melody Maker", 29.4.72, p.16. Wimsatt, William K. Jr. Brooks, Cleanth 1957 Literary Criticism: a Short History, New York, Vintage. Zollo, Paul 1997 Songwriters on Songwriting, Cincinnati OH, DaCapo Press.

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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Diagram 1: America: Paul Simon song Yes record Paul Simon Verse 1 Verse 2 Verse 3 Verse 4 Verse 5 A A B A A Let us be lovers Kathy I said Laughing on the bus Toss me a cigarette Kathy Im lost Yes A A2 B (slow movement) (not included) C (scherzo) D (wordless coda)

Diagram 2: Yes, America, 1972: single edit. Song: Paul Simon, 1968 Section A 6 beats First verse 2x4 beats 4x4 beats 3x2 beats 2x4 beats 4x4 beats 3x4 beats 4+6 beats Link: 8x4 beats Second verse: 2x4 beats 4x4 beats 3x2 beats 2x4 beats 2x4 beats 4 + (2+4) + 4 beats 4 + (2+4) + 4 beats Link: 8 beats

Let us be lovers well marry our fortunes together Ive got some real estate here in my bag So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs Wagners pies And walked off, walked off, walked off to look for America,

Kathy I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh Michigan seems like a dream to me now It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw All come to look for America All come to look for America

Section B (134) all beats Third verse 888888 Laughing on the busHis bow-tie is really a camera

Section C (2) all beats Fourth verse 8887 8888 8888 8 4x3 4 88 3x4 4x4 3x4 4x4 3x4 4x4 Section D (314) 4x4 4, 4 4, 4 4, 6x4 (to fade) 356 to 407

Kathy Im lost I said although I knew she was sleeping Im empty and aching and I dont know why. Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike Theyve all come to look for America All come to look for America All come to look for America

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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Diagram 3: Soft Machine, Moon in June, Third (1970) Recitative 1 On a dilemma between what I need and what I just want Between your thighs I feel a sensation How long can I resist the temptation? I've got my bird, you've got your man So who else do we need, really? section A

section B 0.17 section C 0.39

Now I'm here, I may as well put my other hand in yours While we decide how far to go and if we've got time to do it now And if it's half as good for you as it is for me Then you won't mind If we lie down for a while, just for a while Till all the thing I want is need Youre the thing I are, I knew

section D 0.57

Aria 1 section E Verse 1: bass solo 1.26 I wanted you more than ever now Verse 2 2.03 We're on the floor, and you want more, and I feel almost sure That cause now we've agreed, that weve got what we need Then all the thing us needs is wanting I realized when I saw you last We've been together now and then From time to time - just here and there Now I know how it feels from my hair to my heels To have you haunt the horns of my dilemma - Oh! Wait a minute! Verse 3 2.39

Recitative 2 3.17 4.16 section F Over - Up - Over - Up - ... Down Down - Over - Up - Over - ... Up 3.38 organ solo with vocal interjections section G Aria 2 section H Living can be lovely, here in New York State Verse 1 4.16 Ah, but I wish that I were home And I wish I were home again - back home again, home again There are places and people that I'm so glad to have seen Ah, but I miss the trees, and I wish that I were home again Back home again Verse 2 4.44

The sun shines here all summer Its nice cause you can get quite brown Ah, but I miss the rain - ticky tacky ticky And I wish that I were home again - home again, home again... Living is easy here in New York State Ah, but I wish that I were home again Dissolve to 6.05

Verse 3 5.10

Verse 4 5.36 sections I and J Recitative 3 6.25 - section K

Just before we go on to the next part of our song Let's all make sure we've got the time 6.41 section L Music-making still performs the normal functions background noise for people scheming, seducing, revolting and teaching That's all right by me, don't think that I'm complaining After all, it's only leisure time, isn't it? Aria 3 section M Now I love your eyes - see how the time flies She's learning to hate, but it's just too late for me It was the same with her love It just wasn't enough for me But before this feeling dies Remember how distance can tell lies! Melisma 7.53 section O You can almost see her eyes, is it me she despises or you? Verse 2 8.09 You're awfully nice to me and I'm sure you can see what her game is She sees you in her place, just as if it's a race And you're winning, and you're winning She just can't understand that for me everything's just beginning Until I get more homesick So before this feeling dies, remember how distance tells us lies... Refrain 8.44 8.58 9.02: instrumental section Verse 1 7.00

Refrain 7.35 - N

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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Diagram 4: Emerson, Lake and Palmer, The Endless Enigma, Trilogy, 1972. Why do you stare Do you think that I care? one-syllable, verb/verb You've been misled By the thoughts in your head Your words waste and decay Nothing you say verb/verb Reaches my ears anyway You never spoke a word of truth Why do you think I believe what you said Few of your words Ever enter my head one-syllable I'm tired of hypocrite freaks With tongues in their cheeks one-syllable, noun-noun Turning their eyes as they speak They make me sick and tired Are you confused To the point in your mind Though you're blind one-syllable Can't you see you're wrong? blind and see? Won't you refuse To be used verb/verb Even though you may know I can see you're wrong? Please, please, please open their eyes Please, please, please don't give me lies one-syllable, noun-noun Ive ruled all of the earth Witnessed my birth one-syllable, noun-noun Cried at the sight of a man And still I don't know who I am (repeat Are you confuseddont give me lies) I've seen paupers as kings Puppets on strings one-syllable, noun-noun Dance for the children who stare You must have seen them everywhere (Part Two) Each part was played Though the play was not shown Everyone came But they all sat alone The dawn opened the play Waking the day Causing a silent hooray The dawn will break another day one/two-syllable, noun/noun Now that it's done Ive begun to see the reason why I'm here

Diagram 5: Genesis, I know what I like (in your wardrobe), Selling England by the Pound (1973) Verses one and two rendered as prose: There's always been Ethel. Jacob, wake up, you've got to tidy your room now! And dear Mister Lewis, isn't it time that he was out on his own? Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds: cuckoo to you! Keep them mowing blades sharp! Sunday night, Mister Farmer called, said, Listen son, you're wasting time; there's a future for you in the fire escape trade. Come up to town! But I remembered a voice from the past: gambling only pays when you're winning. I had to thank old Miss Mort for schooling a failure. Keep them mowing blades sharp!

Composition and Experimentation in British rock, 1966-1976

D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Diagram 7: I know what I like (in your wardrobe), chorus I know what I like Getting Stepping I like what I know your your wardrobe show

better in one beyond

Diagram 8: I know what I like (in your wardrobe), verse one and two, hyper-metre Verse one: (4+4+4) + (4+4+4) + (4+4) + (4) Verse two: (4+4+4+4) + (4) + (4+4) + 4)

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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Diagram 6: I know what I like (in your wardrobe) rendered as one-act drama Dramatis personae: story-based narrator, first-person narrator, Ethel, Jacob, Mr Lewis, Mr Farmer, Voice from the Past, Miss Mort, Lawnmower, two little lovebirds (optional) Peter Gabriel (optional) Action STORY-BASED NARRATOR: It's one o'clock and time for lunch. Dum de dum de dum. FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR: When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hear them talk. STORY-BASED NARRATOR: Theres always been Ethel. ETHEL: Jacob, wake up! You've got to tidy your room now. [And dear Mister Lewis, isn't it time that he was out on his own?] STORY-BASED NARRATOR: [And dear Mister Lewis, isn't it time that he was out on his own?] Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds. Cuckoo to you! [or MISTER LEWIS: Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds. Cuckoo to you!] [or TWO LITTLE LOVEBIRDS: Cuckoo to you!] STORY-BASED NARRATOR: (to Lawnmower) Keep them mowing blades sharp! STORY-BASED NARRATOR: Sunday night, Mister Farmer called, said, MR FARMER: (to Narrator) Listen son, you're wasting time; there's a future for you in the fire escape trade. Come up to town. FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR: But I remembered a voice from the past. VOICE FROM THE PAST: Gambling only pays when you're winning. FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR: I had to thank old Miss Mort for schooling a failure. STORY-BASED NARRATOR: (to Lawnmower) Keep them mowing blades sharp! STORY-BASED NARRATOR: When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hear them talk. LAWNMOWER: Me, I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk.

Diagram 9: I know what I like (in your wardrobe), complete transcription indicating relation of verse one and two as verbal space

VERSE ONE 1 SD 6 1 2 3 4 And dear Mister Lewis:

IR (Mister/Lewis)

1 SD 10 1 SD 10

There's always been Ethel:

Jacob, wake up! You've got to tidy your

1 2 room now SD 2

IR (Jacob/wake up)

Isn't it time that he was out on his

1 2 own? SD 1

SD 6 1 SD 6 1 2 SD 6 VERSE TWO 1 SD 9 1 SD 4 2 3 town! 4 2 3 4 3 4

Keep them mowing blades sharp

2 3 4 1 2 3 Over the garden wall two little lovebirds SD 9

4 cuckoo to you!

IR (cuckoo/to you)

1 SD 9

1 SD 10

Sunday night, Mister Farmer called, said:

Listen son, you're wasting time there's a

future for you in the fire escape trade

Come up to

1 SD 9 1 SD 9 1
failure

But I remembered a voice from the past

1 SD 11

Gambling only pays when you're winning I had to thank old Miss Mort for schooling a

2 SD 6

Keep them mowing blades sharp

Legend: SD = syllabic density, IR = internal rhyme, Bold = line emphasis Total syllable count: first verse: 56, second verse: 67, bar count: first verse, 9, second verse, 8

Composition and Experimentation in British rock, 1966-1976