We mean it, maaan!: the lost art of the pop manifesto
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/29/pop-manifestos-manics-malcolm-mcclaren
Steve Jelbert on the great and not so great statements of intent
in rock history
Steve Jelbert
29 April 2010
The only certainty about next Thursday's general election is that
more voters will be holding their noses as they visit the booths than
ever before. Idealism is in short supply, the national mood a dull
grumble rather than shining optimism at the prospect of change. The
party manifestos might appear uninspiring or glib or unrealistic,
depending on one's politics, but the one thing they aren't is romantic.
Once, though, manifestos were sexy, wildly utopian documents
platforms for dreams, rather than promises of efficiency savings.
Whole generations found them inspiring, and on rare occasions their
promises were even brought to fruition with lasting effects upon the
country. These weren't the manifestos of politicians, though; they
were the policy platforms of musicians and pop impresarios.
Julien Temple's movie about the Sex Pistols, The Great Rock'n'Roll
Swindle steered by the late Malcolm McLaren encourages the viewer
to believe the career of the Pistols had been scripted from the
start. That might not have been true, but the punk era and its
emphasis on ideas being as important as music saw an explosion of
manifesto writing among musicians. In 1977, the nascent Human League,
then confidently known as the Future, sent their computer-printed
manifesto to solicit interest from London record companies. No demo
tape was included. Those who responded were treated to a visit from
the band and a chance to hear, well, the Future.
No one took the bait not least because when they turned up in
London with their tape player, the player didn't work but such
boldness was a statement in itself. Similarly, nothing was held back
in the theoretical discussions held by the committed young Gramscians
Scritti Politti in their Camden Town squat and their principles
found their way to record sleeves, where their desire to make the
music business as transparent as possible saw them itemise every
expenditure that went into getting the record into the shops.
During the 80s, a thousand manifestos were drawn up: if you had a
band, that meant you had an idea, which meant you had to write
something down, even before getting round to creating anything as
abstract and mysterious as music. John Robb, the veteran musician,
writer and pop-cultural historian, recently covered the underground
sounds of the post-punk era in his book Death to Trad Rock. He
remembers it fondly. "I've always liked the idea of bands standing
and falling on their manifestos," he says. "They weren't always
overtly political look at Adam and the Ants." Adam's successful
pirate look and double drummer set-up was devised, for a fee, by one
Malcolm McLaren, who then nicked his Ants, renamed them Bow Wow Wow
and watched as his jilted client implemented his strategy better than
Bow Wow Wow could manage.
Some acts applied greater rigour to their strategies than others.
"Big Flame wrote theirs before they got the band together, agreeing
they'd last for a certain length of time and release only seven-inch
singles," says Robb of the barely remembered Marxist punk-funk band,
who were so in love with manifestos they called one of their EPs
Cubist Pop Manifesto. "Imagine! People taking record formats more
seriously than the state of the nation," he says fondly. The frenetic
Mancunian trio, two architecture students and a musician based in the
city's now demolished Hulme flats, took their name from an offbeat
70s leftwing group that believed something should be done, but that
they weren't necessarily the people to do it. The Manic Street
Preachers, another band fond of the statement, have often cited them
as an influence.
Arguably the first point at which pop groups and political manifestos
came together was in the 1968 10-point programme of the White Panther
party, co-founded by John Sinclair, who was also manager of the MC5
who duly became the Panthers' house band. Sinclair declared in his
introduction to the programme: "We have developed organic high-energy
guerrilla bands who are infiltrating the popular culture and
destroying millions of minds in the process. With our music and our
economic genius we plunder the unsuspecting straight world for money
and the means to carry out our programme, and revolutionise its
children at the same time." But the programme itself was just as
memorable. Point No 2 "Total assault on the culture by any means
necessary, including rock'n'roll, dope and fucking in the streets"
is the most famous; No 5 "Free access to information media free
the technology from the greed creeps!" is the most
contemporary-sounding. It's less dry than Tony Blair's five pledges, certainly.
But not many pop manifestos have eschewed politics. When producer
Trevor Horn, businesswoman Jill Sinclair and journalist Paul Morley
founded a record label in 1983, they took its name from the futurist
Marinetti's sound-poem Zang Tumb Tuum, a wildly original account of
warfare. The poem inspired Luigi Russolo's 1913 manifesto Art of
Noises. To Russolo, noise, like machines, was a modern invention.
Seventy years later, it came full circle when Morley and Horn helped
to assemble a group to release records on ZTT that group being
called Art of Noise.
Morley had been instrumental in the promotion in the early 80s of
"the New Pop", a key fixture of which had been ABC's album The
Lexicon of Love. It was during the making of that album that the key
players of ZTT came together, and New Pop's love of the gesture
reached its ultimate expression with Morley's work at ZTT. As he
wrote in an essay that accompanied a ZTT box set: "Oh, and when we
launched the label, I ordered up full-page ads in the music papers,
some in full colour, that announced that Zaanng Tomb Tooom, just
beginning a five-year plan, which involved plans to explore space,
was a 'radiant obstacle in the path of the obvious'."
The common thread between artistic and political manifestos is that
they are publicity stunts, says the author, musician and cultural
prankster Bill Drummond. "That's the aim to make as succinct as
possible their ideas and communicate that to an audience," he says.
Drummond doesn't consider himself a manifesto writer, despite
producing directive works such as The Manual. "I've written one thing
I might consider, that for No Music Day," he concedes. The next day,
though, he emails a reminder of his own art-defining Open Manifesto,
calling it "something I set up a few years ago but have never done
anything to promote". Contradicting oneself, though, is the artist's
prerogative, and not open to politicians. "Politicians can never be
seen to be playing with the idea. They've got to be seen taking it
entirely seriously, at every level. A whole campaign costing millions
is riding on the back of it," says Drummond. "An art manifesto would
be recognised as an artwork in itself anyway, critiqued by art
critics not political journalists."
By the time Morley reworked Futurist ideals in the 80s, it was hard
to tell just how sincere he was. "Over the decades, irony has crept
in," says Drummond. "It would be almost impossible for someone from
an art background to mean it the way Marinetti meant his Futurist manifesto."
Where are pop's manifesto writers now? Franz Ferdinand's stated aim
was to make music to make girls dance, more of a mission statement
and all the Russian constructivist artwork was just that: artwork. In
fact, borrowing an aesthetic is the simplest way now to fool the
world into thinking you've thought everything through: think of Jack
and Meg White and their De Stijl style.
Wild Beasts, though, are unafraid of the high falutin. Last year,
they adapted Wyndham Lewis's Vorticist manifesto to their
requirements. Singer Hayden Thorpe chooses art over politics any day.
"Both try and convince you of a better reality outside of your own
current existence," he says. "It's just that art creates a beautiful
illusion." And Lunar Youth recently emailed out what they proudly
billed as a manifesto (which we've taken the liberty of styling up
and printing above).
But why don't more current bands write manifestos? "Because they're
impossible to uphold today," Thorpe says. "Musicians don't use them
anymore because you couldn't call yourself a musician if you did.
You'd be a librarian with a passionate but ultimately tragic hobby."
--
Pop and politics
How the music world's firebrands fared against their elected leaders
The Manic Street Preachers and John Major
Although there was a newsletter called Manics Manifesto, and their
pronouncements on matters both musical and political attracted
gleeful press attention, there is no actual written MSP manifesto.
But whether hating harmless shoegazers Slowdive or wishing Michael
Stipe an early death, they left several hostages to fortune, in
particular the claim that they planned to release a debut that would
outsell Guns N'Roses, tour the world's stadiums and then retire (an
early interview caught them "demoing their first and only album").
That debut album emerged in 1992, but two decades later, they're
still with us and soon to be immortalised in a docupic entitled No Manifestos.
"It is all me. Every last word of it is me," said John Major of the
1992 Conservative party manifesto, suggesting he'd imbued it with the
same personal passion that Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards put into
their own sloganeering. Like them, he issued several hostages to
fortune, including a casual commitment to privatising the railways,
the last large state-owned industry, to no great enthusiasm, and a
perky promise to protect the pound. Six months later, the government
was forced to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate
Mechanism after sterling collapsed.
In the long run: Both were once figures of mockery; both are now
considered notable guests at major sporting events.
--
Paul Morley and Margaret Thatcher
Two dogmatic idealists found their time had come as the 70s tipped
over into the 80s. Margaret Thatcher wanted to destroy the old
consensus about the economy. Paul Morley wanted to destroy the old
consensus about pop music and the charts.
Thatcher's economic policy pithily described by AN Wilson as
"sado-monetarism" trebled unemployment and raised interest rates.
But her decison to recapture the Falkland islands after the
Argentinian invasion resulted in an unlikely national feelgood
moment, buying her another election win after which the sale of
council housing and the birth of a shareholding society created a
divided country of haves and have-nots. Morley, meanwhile, proposed a
multifarious concept called new pop. ABC and the Human League stormed
fame's citadel, but their success opened the door for massive hits by
Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, with the single True creating a
divided country of haters and hate-nots.
Thatcher finished on the winning side in the cold war by investing in
weapons production. Morley and Trevor Horn finished on the winning
side in the chart war by investing in Frankie Goes to Hollywood's
production. But just as the Tories came to be regarded with
suspicion, as charlatans, so too did Morley.
In the long run: Both are regarded as totems of that era, still
adored by those who want more privatisation (Thatcher) and more
flamboyant pop (Morley). "Somebody said that of all the millions of
words I've ever written, I'll be remembered possibly for three:
'Frankie Say Relax!'," Morley would later despair.
--
Screaming Lord Sutch and Altern-8
It was 1963, and unconvincing rock'n'roller David "Screaming Lord"
Sutch, at the instigation of his astute manager/electoral agent Reg
Calvert, stood for Stratford, representing the National Teenage
party. He proposed the abolition of selective state education, the
introduction of commercial radio and lowering the voting age to 18
lunatic policies all. Sutch finished fourth out of four, but the
publicity ensured that he would leading his Monster Raving Loony
party to repeated electoral failure but treasured status.
In 1992, Chris Peat of dance act Altern-8 (above), from the VapoRub
school of rave, usually photographed in Hazmat suits and pollution
masks, stood in the band's hometown of Stafford, representing the
Altern-8-ive Hardcore party. Their manifesto, penned by a couple of
music journalists, proposed moving the capital to Stafford, 24-7
Acieeeed! on BBC radio and the appointment of their "stiltdancer"
Roboman as defence minister. Peat came fourth out of five. Another
defeated Stafford candidate was David Cameron.
In the long run: The prescient Sutch was a spur to political parties
realising they had to appeal to young voters, too. And maybe
Cameron's constant name-dropping of bands is the result of proximity
to Peat. Maybe. SJ
.
--
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