Plunging itself into a state of instability from the seventies onwards, Britain found itself drowning in crisis. Thatcher, conflict, youth unemployment; some drastic change was inevitable- necessary, in fact. Thankfully, in such times of constant change, music has helped to express just what it means to be British. Take a seat as Alice Beard walks you through the making of modern Britain through class culture and popular music.
“music has proved itself vital in its ability to manifest and articulate the experience of a nation”
Britain’s musical heritage is long established and diverse. It is quintessential and by its nature, it speaks to the spirit of the people. Whether consciously or unconsciously, artists find themselves flying the flag for the nation's cultural identity. Class, in Britain especially, has always been a largely cultural issue. We see these reflections of class woven indiscreetly within clothing, attitudes and subcultures. These subcultures have a deeply intrinsic link with music. Genres such as Punk and Ska are often seen as being birthed from the roots of the working-class, for the working-class to enjoy. With the state of Britain in seemingly rapid decline, the seventies and eighties brought forth a host of subcultures as a direct expression of working-class resentment. Repression from above paved the way for regrowth from below. We witnessed Mods in the sixties looking to reinvent the affluent worker style. Skinheads later emerged from the 'hard mods', leaning into the punk aesthetic. Sharply turned out in their Dr Martens, braces and Ben Sherman shirts, they marched forth with their staunch proletarian and anti-establishment values. The development of the punk subculture was a vital expression of the frustrations of working- class youth in the most simple and forthright terms. The New Wave contingency dripped through too, largely carrying the same values but simply making them more palatable for consumption. Some might say they were the ‘progressive and professional’ version of punk. More acceptable and more easily assimilated. They made issues more digestible until the mainstream found themselves beaten into submission and forced to listen. So far, music has proved itself vital in its ability to manifest and articulate the experience of a nation. Here are a few tracks to get you started…
Ghost Town- The Specials
The Specials are one of those bands which defined a generation. I could talk about the wave of stylistic expression brought forth by Ska all day, but for now the important thing to note is that the subculture sought to bring light to issues more urgent than ever, particularly in a post-industrial Britain. The Specials were such a band who were not afraid to bring attention to these problems.
Ghost Town wasn’t The Specials’ first political song, nor would it be their last. With Nite Klub we saw the band reflecting on wage slaves frittering away their pay packet on beer, meanwhile Too Much Too Young provided some insight into lost youth and premature motherhood. This track is pure and personal in its attack. The political timing of this song was crucial, its three weeks at number one coinciding with the eruption of bloody riots across Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry. In terms of this release, the political and social urgency could not be more obvious, the lyrics of 'can't go on no more' and 'people gettin' angry' ringing more and more true. Laying our scene in the band’s hometown, we find ourselves in the shadows of a former industrial heartland. Post- war regrowth saw Coventry, like many of its neighbours, repainted with hoards of grey, soul- sucking monoliths. These towns became faceless and drained, wall-to-wall concrete jungles offering up nothing but slabs of gloom. Such places became markers for the displaced and the unemployed. With its release in 1981, Ghost Town painted a brutal portrait of deindustrialisation and the state of Thatcher’s Great Britain. In the lyrics there are whispers of the joys of the good old days, abruptly cut short by the present Britain left in tatters by a Conservative regime of neglect. It takes a bittersweet nostalgic look at the past. Whilst music previously might’ve ‘played inna de boomtown’, before long Coventry was left desolate, an idle playground of factories and boarded up nightclubs. Even the whistling wind both at the start and end of this track stands as a bleak reminder of such emptiness and isolation. The horror and charm contained within is something which resonates even now.
Town Called Malice- The Jam
Mods resurrected quite middle- class sensibilities in their style and in a similar way, in their values they were just as clear and meticulous. Paul Weller and the Jam played a vital role in representing the Mod 'anti- rock ethos'. Weller, a man who had spent his earliest years in a council house in Woking with no hot water and no indoor bathroom, found himself unafraid to tackle taboos when it came to the subject matter of his songs. ‘The public gets what the public wants, but I want nothing this society’s got’, Weller exclaims in Going Underground in a direct call to arms against the Conservative government and their failings. I could roll through a whole heap of tracks in which a similar sentiment resides, but it’s their 1982 hit Town Called Malice which unravels the most glaring hatred and despair for the country. The song sounds almost joyous until you stop and listen to the lyrics, Weller recounting tales of ‘rows and rows of disused milk floats' which 'stand dying in the dairy yard’ and the daily decision of whether to ‘cut down on beer or the kids new gear’. The hopeless desperation is never-ending, ‘struggle after struggle, year after year’. This track is yet another desperate plea for change, an expression of pure disdain at the decline of the nation. The growing resentment felt across the country is all but too obvious through music such as this, an unapologetic reflection of Britain’s cultural history.
(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais - The Clash
Punk sort of developed as a sociology of its own, the most visible examples of this being The Clash and the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols were implicit and more explicit, whilst The Clash seemed warmer and more of the people. They might not have been a working- class band, but their many calls to arms for harmony and racial unity unsurprisingly seemed to outweigh this minor hitch. (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais was one such track which attempted to express the ‘punky- reggae’ style to really hit the hearts of the many. In his lyrics Strummer is unchallenged, loosely distributing hits of sarcasm wherever necessary. With repeated charges at the disaffected youth, he encourages real and effective action for change through a rather sarky filter: ‘Why not phone up Robin Hood and ask him for some wealth distribution’. The snipes don’t stop there though, with Strummer soon targeting the political climate of the era: ‘If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway’. The song is bleak in its reflections on the morals of society, but such a hard swing was perhaps more necessary than ever at the time.
Up The Junction- Squeeze
Up The Junction is a hearty folk psychodrama turned New Wave, with a plaintive urban tinge. It’s a cautionary tale of pregnancy, doomed romance and poverty in the heart of London. Despite the track’s unconventional structure (given the lack of a chorus), it forms a vivid and stark portrayal of little English domestic fears. It follows the protagonist putting in his all to provide for his family: ‘I worked all through the winter, the weather brass and bitter’, yet soon the trappings of lost love and alcohol shroud this character in darkness and frustration as he finds himself carried ‘from bar to street to bookie’. It’s a remarkable track, a deeply troubling yet equally beautiful tale standing even now as a poignant piece of musical and cultural history.
Country House- Blur
Even by the time we hit the nineties, the cultural disdain was still being pushed through in healthy servings of stoic humour. We had Sheffield art school boy Jarvis Cocker singing along with the Common People, and most notably a battle of identities between North and South with Oasis and Blur. Blur were seen as the middle- class posh boys who might have been a little too out of touch. Perhaps people had a point, but in many cases perhaps people were taking them a bit too seriously.
When Damon Albarn wasn’t talking about girls who are boys who like boys to be girls, he was talking about men who know a suspicious amount about the finer things in life. In 1994, Country House’s release coincided with the release of Oasis’ Roll With It. It was a tongue- in-cheek track which took jibes at a ‘city dweller/ successful fella’. Set to a bouncing rhythm and down in one digestible melody, it is the perfect kitchen sink melodrama in a song. All in all, a flawless bit of songwriting. Eventually beating Oasis to the number one spot, it became a track which ignited a long running battle which became messily intertwined by an underlying presence of class division.
Grim up North
Music did not even have to be overt in its reflections of cultural change. A general feeling of abandonment and decay due to loss of industry was one felt by many across Britain in the period. This was perhaps an even stronger sentiment across the North of England. George Orwell once identified a ‘curious cult of Northerness’ in England, with many assuming a hard- line view of Northerners as the ‘real’ representation of working- class vitality. Many of the bands born out of this post-industrial landscape never grappled with the social and cultural consequences of their environment head on, yet the music produced was a glaring enough reflection in itself. The visuals and overarching aesthetic provided more than enough insight into the conditions of the time by no better means than the instrumentation itself.
Take for example, Joy Division and perhaps their most popular song, Love Will Tear Us Apart. It would be difficult to argue that, lyrically, this is a song that engages with class or deindustrialisation directly. The subject matter, estranged love, has remained a staple of popular music throughout the ages. And yet, there is an underlying atmosphere of blunted hope and repressed aggression that appears to reflect an urban environment that, to phrase this carefully, had seen better days.
To sum it up in the most direct fashion, Jon Savage wrote in the foreword to his novel Touching From a Distance: ‘Joy Division were not punk but they were directly inspired by its energy. Like punk, they used pop music as the means to dive into the collective unconscious, only this was not Dickensian London, but De Quincey’s Manchester: an environment systematically degraded by industrial revolution, confined by lowering moors, with oblivion as the only escape. Manchester is a closed city’
Even in their other tracks such as Leaders of Men, Wilderness or Interzone, to name a few, there are no overtly political sentiments. Regardless, given that the band hail from the South of Manchester, it is unsurprising that there is such a feeling of dereliction and obliqueness in their music. They display no expressions of the bands despair at unemployment rates, nor do they contain attacks on the government, but the feelings of loss and emptiness seem informed by the general conditions in Manchester brought on by its decline. There is something grey and distant within the tracks. Stephen Morris’ driving rhythms feel mechanic, a haunting echo of factories now passed. Curtis’ lyrics are bleak and desolate. It all feels very eerie, like something unsaid is lurking beneath- just like that unsaid political despondency.
In a similar manner The Fall found themselves tainted by the landscape which they called home. Within their self- professed ‘Northern white crap that talks back’, the band produced music which, like the Mancunian air which surrounded them, felt polluted and grim. Mark E Smith is surly and unashamed to tell it how it really is. In many ways this sort of backward charm feels like a nod to the city’s industrial heyday. Fiery Jack, The Fall’s fourth single tells the tale of a worn- down multi- generation industrial son drowning life’s shortcomings in beer. In The NWRA we see a sour narrator negotiating his way through England’s council estates, whilst English Scheme takes digs at the country in a slightly more light- hearted, floral disguise. What truly makes this band is the nature of their music. It is stubborn and incorrigible, like a machine that just won’t stop turning.
There is so much more which could be said about music in Britain and the shadow which remains over the country’s political and cultural history, but for now this will have to do. As it stands, music has proved itself and will continue to prove itself an unbeatable force in the national cultural identity. Don’t let that change.
Alice Beard
Edited by Alice Beard
Images courtesy of The Specials, Joy Division and The Fall on Facebook, videos courtesy of The Specials, The Jam, The Clash, Squeeze and Blur on Youtube
Comments