Call the Police

Another rock 'n' roller is swopping his leather trousers for a Les Miz souvenir t-shirt. Joining the queue behind the likes of Paul Simon, Elton John and Dave Stewart, The Stinger himself is having a crack at an original musical.

"Known for his explorations into jazz and classical, Sting incorporates traditional Northumbrian pipes, shanties and reels into a score influenced by Gershwin and Sondheim."

Personally I would love to hear Sondheim done on the bagpipes.

"Sting said he wanted the songs 'to reflect the traditional music of the north-east of England where I grew up, as well as tipping my hat to the great music of the theatrical tradition – Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Brecht and Weill'” 

Interesting that, for him, the theatrical tradition lies somewhere between Broadway and Berlin. Nothing closer to home?

Well, nivvor mind and canny good luck. Musical theatre probably needs him more than he needs it. So let's hope for a good 'un. It is interesting, 'though. I've said it before and I'll say it again: rock 'n' roll has its limits and musicals are the natural home for the mature songwriter.

Bye Bye Betty

So Betty Blue Eyes has come to close. I blame the bankers:

“It seems that the prevailing economic uncertainties nationally are leading audiences to take less risks on spending their money on new and unknown work and to seek refuge in safe and familiar titles and material”

But deep down it's still a mystery:

“It is very curious — after such amazing reviews and positive word of mouth, no one knows the real reason why Betty couldn't find a bigger audience”

So says Super Mac and that’s a worry. If he doesn’t know, then nobody knows. For a good couple of decades Sir Cameron seemed to know exactly what made a musical a hit: “safe and familiar” material like people pretending to be cats, a lengthy French novel and a weirdo in a sewer. By comparison adapting a well-loved Alan Bennett film should have been a doddle.

Now I claim no knowledge of the show: haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it. So speaking from the twin authorities of ignorance and prejudice, I can only agree with the assessment of the Guardian’s Alistair Smith:

“Stylistically, it feels like it could have been written at any point over the last half-century”

This is generally true of Styles and Drewe shows. They’re new shows but they feel like old ones.

“In the golden age of musical theatre, it was the popular music of its day. Today, the traditional musical is, like opera, more of a niche pursuit. It needs
to reinvent itself if it is to have a vibrant, popular future. You might even argue that plundering the back catalogues of pop groups such as Abba and the Spice Girls are one way forward (TV casting is another), and the best of these have no problems attracting large audiences.”

Firstly, traditional musicals are not a “niche” like opera. Revivals are playing in commercial theatres all across the land. Opera is almost entirely non-commercial. Secondly, jukebox musicals and TV casting are terrific but can’t offer a way forward. By definition these are old shows. Stiles and Drewe songs may sound as if they could have been written at any point over the last half-century but the songs from Jersey Boys actually were written half a century ago. Abba, Queen, even the Spice Girls; this is the popular music of yesterday, not today.

“But if new musicals are to find the large, popular audience required for a sustained West End run, they need to engage with popular forms of music, not
sounds and forms that hark back to a long-distant golden era”

Now I’m not in total disagreement with the analysis. I’m just not convinced that modern pop is the cure.

The problem is in our ears. Just for fun, let’s invent a theory and call it the Problem of the Audience and Stylistic Associative Preconditioning (PASAP). Stiles And Drewe sound old-fashioned. Why do they sound old-fashioned? Because their songs sound a bit like the kind of songs we associate with a certain period from the past. The clever lyrics, the exact and intricate rhymes, the lack of electric guitars and a heavy backbeat; there’s a gentility to their songs that speaks of a different time. By associative preconditioning the style points the listener to the pre-rock era.

Does this matter? Yes and no. On the Yes side:

1. Old-fashioned songs make it difficult to tell modern stories. It limits the potential.

2. Even old-fashioned songs in a period setting can be distracting. An old-fashioned song may be appropriate to the style of the show’s setting but that doesn’t necessarily make it an integrated musical. Oklahoma sounds folksy but it ain’t folk music. Period music is no substitute for drama.
(Incidentally the PASAP theory may explain why Stiles and Drewe have fared better with children’s musicals. Children are less preconditioned and therefore less likely to perceive a song as being “old-fashioned”)

On the No side:

1. Being old-fashioned doesn’t preclude success. The soundtrack to the Sound of Music beat the Beatles to become the biggest-selling album of the 1960s.

2. Modern pop music, despite the self-appointed title, isn’t that popular. At least not as popular as it once was. (In fact, it’s probably better to call it chart music in order to avoid confusion). “Memory” has never in the charts but it’s a far more popular song than most that have been.

3. Chart music faces the PASAP theory in just the same way as old-fashioned music. When you hear chart music, you think top ten, Radio 1, hippity hop, Beyonce, whatever. The point is that you don't necessarily think character, situation, drama. So how useful is it for musical theatre?

Alistair Smith points to the Divine Comedy, Lily Allen and Tim Minchin as songwriters bringing modern pop into musical theatre. It'll be interesting to see the results.

And if it doesn’t work, we can always blame the bankers.

Musical Eurythmics

Not the latest exercise DVD.

Instead it's former Eurythmics man Dave Stewart who has been talking musicals in the Independent. He’s the composer of the new stage version of the film Ghost. And he’s found the going tough:

“There's nothing quite like the massive onslaught that comes with pulling a musical together. I've made a lot of records, collaborated with different singers and worked on music for television and movies, but nothing prepared me for writing songs for musicals...sometimes you need to write songs that propel the story forward, sometimes songs that get an emotion across, and sometimes the songs have to weave in and out of each other”

And sometimes songs that do all these things at the same time. Tricky stuff, musical witing. But we can only be glad he’s trying.

In the good old days, the journey from pop songs (i.e. Tin Pan Alley) to theatre songs (i.e. Broadway) wasn’t such a long road (i.e. literally). It was the career move that many songwriters aspired to make. Not so the boomer rockers. Paul Simon wrote Capeman and, more recently, Bono and The Edge [of what exactly, by the way?] had a crack at Spiderman. But successes these were not. Only Elton John has made a real go of original musicals.

That’s a shame. And not just for musical theatre.

Musicals offer a natural path for a developing songwriter: solos, duets, choruses, writing in character, developing themes. I’m not saying that pop songs are easy. But rock ‘n’ pop is limiting (as is any form, that’s sort of the point). It’s essentially hooky 3-minute singles about lu-u-urve. It’s also a young person’s game which is why there are no rock equivalents to the elderly couple’s song from Gigi:

"We met at nine
We met at eight
I was on time
No, you were late
Ah, yes, I remember it well"

Instead the aging rocker has to rely on his back catalogue:

“Well she was just seventeen
You know what I mean”

From a pensioner, that’s just creepy. In fact Paul McCartney did end up branching out into orchestral works which is just fine. But it’s not songwriting. Only musicals offer the opportunity for songwriters to develop as songwriters.

So I hope that Dave Stewart gets his hit. Musical theatre needs songwriters like him. And, in a strange way, he needs musical theatre.

Ecological Apocalyptism and Rock 'n' Roll

Over at Broadway World they're reporting that The Who's Pete Townsend is working on a new musical called Floss. The story is about a married couple who go through difficulties when the husband, a songwriter, scores a big hit and retires early. But here's where things get really interesting:

"When he tries to return to music after a fifteen year hiatus, he finds that what he hears and what he composes evoke the ecologically rooted, apocalyptic mindset of his generation."

Ecological apocalyptism? In musical terms I guess that translates to a sort of folksy eco-Wagner, then. Pete Townsend explains:

"I now want to take on ageing and mortality, using the powerfully angry context of rock 'n' roll."

My mistake, it's a rock musical. Like Tommy. And Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar and Rent and...er, that's it. There aren't many examples of successful rock musicals. Rock 'n' roll has just not proved to be that great a musical idiom for the theatre. The reason for this is, in part, that "powerfully angry context". That's fine for powerful and angry characters (like Judas Iscariot, say) but what about the rest? What about the sweet-natured ones? Or the old, doddery ones? Or even just the mildly comical ones?

Like rap and hippity-hop music, rock 'n' roll has certain qualities: heavy backbeat, shouty vocals and plenty of "attitude". That may make it dramatic, in the sense of attention-seeking, but it also limits its dramatic possibilites. The first rock musical, Hair, literally lost the plot. After Jesus Christ Superstar, Lord Andy's scores had to get a lot less "rocky" in their sound. Pete Townsend pulled off the trick with Tommy but only by turning the whole thing into a strange allegorical comment on religion. It'll be interesting to see whether he can do it again.