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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33 No. 4. 7 April 1970

..You Off

..You Off

It's a fact: the same B—note you hear in Bach, you hear in rock—whatever the complications or combinations. If it doesn't mean anything to you, then you really don't want to listen. It's like anything really—nobody listens. But it's not all serious—this scientific approach to rock'n'roll—this talking of sociological implications is not the way it's to be done. Instant Kharma's going to get us all anyway—what we need is something to cut through the barriers of taste—an equalise. Mick Jagger perhaps; he's got the dubious distinction of being good and bad at the same time. If he talks sense (rare, this) everybody listens and then gapes as profound listens and then gapes as profound words pour from the mouth of this strange-looking man. If he talks nonsense, then he's good for a laugh—he reduces convention to absurdity. Take this interview with him for example:

What about new art forms—has Marianne turned you in ... I mean on . . .

Yes, she turned me into a frog.

I know that you like Shakespeare. Have you ever considered a straight role in a Shakespearian play? Who would you like to play?

Lady Macbeth all Shakespeare's women were originally played by men.

Have you seen a recent play?

Yes, I saw Dame Faithfull in Hamlet.

Very good. Do you think you could make a comeback like Donald Peers?

How old is he?

57.

Hell! Yes, if he can do it so can I.

Why is it that you seem to have so much sympathy—in terms of understanding—with Lennon?

Do I? Yes, I suppose I do. I mean I like him. (Launching into his impression of Joe Public—) But he shouldn't have taken his trowzers orfs'what I reackon. I liked 'em when they were all quick-witted and wore suits and that. I means, all that taking his trowzers orf. I mean he's got a penis. We don't like to think about them—we like to keep 'em covered up.

Jagger's too tough—too self-assured to be really representative of today's youth; but he's representative of a lot in pop music, and this is what confuse a lot of older people. They judge pop music by what they think of Jaggar the man rather than Jaggar the musician. Now he mightn't be the greatest singer in the world, but he's a damn good songwriter. You don't condemn a man's music unless you take time out to listen closley to it.

Pop music today, more than ever before, needs to be listened to closely. There's so much in it, and if you tune off to some of it, you're liable to miss a lot. And if that sounds pretentious—what other musical form is there that can incorporate jazz, blues, country and western, folk and the classics? People think that because this is happening it reduces the level of the particular type of music; in other words, as a jazz musician put it: Jazz is only jazz if it doesn't sell. If it sells it's commercial. What's commercial today is what was uncommercial yesterday; underground music sells today often as much as family-type ballad offerings. Just because Tom Jones and Val Doonican sell thousands it doesn't mean to say that Jethro Tull and Blind Faith don't either. Local radio waves are constipated with commercial singles—progressive albums don't get a showing; they're shoving bread down our throats and occasionally tossing up a cake to keep everyone quiet.

Whatever, pop music's bigger than all of us, and yet it reaches to youth individually. Kids today are confused and wary; if you're going to reduce everything to naivety by regarding it as teenage rebellion, then you're only sticking your head in the mud. The Moody Blues put the dilemma well ... "I think. . . think I am. . . therefore I am I think."

Nik Cohn...You off

Nik Cohn...You off