|
THE SONGWRITER AS POET:
IAN MCCULLOCH AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRADITION
Kristin F. Smith
Previous Table of Contents Next
PART FOUR: MCCULLOCH AS PRE-RAPHAELITE
Chapter 17: Ian McCulloch As a Pre-Raphaelite; And What Became of the Originals
Ian McCulloch shows strong Pre-Raphaelitic tendencies in his writing, but the lyric makes up only one component of a song. The music gets equal (and sometimes greater) billing. We award extra points for such intangibles as 'style' and 'attitude' [Note 12]. None of the Pre-Raphaelites were musicians, so we have no model by which to judge the 'Pre-Raphaelitism' of McCulloch's and the Bunnymen's songs as a whole. But the 'tenets' of Pre-Raphaelitism laid out at the beginning of this paper will serve:
· Honesty and Feeling: McCulloch is lyrically honest, as we may note in such songs as Never [1995], Proud to Fall [1989], and Forgiven [1997]. He does not concoct pat solutions or happy endings. But it is the genuineness of his work as a whole which pushes it into the realm of the Pre-Raphaelitic. "Magic mirror thou hast none", Rossetti counsels would-be poets, "Except thy manifest heart" [DGR; The Song-Throe; 1880]. McCulloch understands this. At his best, his songs vibrate with a passionate, emotive quality which bypasses the intellect and burrows straight into the soul. There is no need to explicate the lyrics of A Promise [1981]; the meaning lies in the voice and in the music. The Killing Moon [1984], whatever meanings we may attach to it, 'works' primarily on an instinctual level. Buried Alive [2001] unites lyric, voice and music into something which tears at the heart.
· Love of Beauty: Like the Pre-Raphaelites, McCulloch and the Bunnymen seek out beauty in all its guises. "An ugly beauty was my own invention", McCulloch sings in The Game [IM; ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN; 1987]. Indeed, songs such as the dark, sinister and painful Land of the Dying Sun [1995] or the quirkily majestic The Yo-Yo Man [1984] are not 'beautiful' in the conventional sense. But they draw us in, and we recognize in them something beyond the ordinary. Rossetti listed the guardians of the shrine of Beauty as "love and death/Terror and mystery" [DGR; Soul's Beauty; 1866]. McCulloch might add a fifth member to the pantheon: oddity. Atmosphere and mood give McCulloch's work its true, Pre-Raphaelite beauty. The poignant, melancholy loveliness of Burn for Me [2001], like Millais' Autumn Leaves [1856], hints of darker meanings. Empire State Halo [1997] conjures a lushly evocative romanticism as fragile and ephemeral as a remembered dream. And Vibor Blue [1992], like snowdrops and butterflies, needs no justification for being.
· Detail and Complexity: In The White Hotel [1989], McCulloch presents us with the lake, the "white capped mountain peak", the train station, the "letters of persecution" and the indomitable "ringing all the bells" spirit: the essence of the novel on which the song is based. The Holy Grail [1995] lays on details like paint on canvas - and fills in more of the picture than is McCulloch's usual wont. The Pre-Raphaelites opened little windows onto worlds of their own devising, leaving much hidden or unexplained. McCulloch sets out pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; just enough to give us the ambiance of the place, and a handful of relevant details. We must figure the rest out for ourselves. Multiple meanings are probable [Note 13]. Musically, he and the Bunnymen serve up dense, richly textured song landscapes, which yield new details with repeated listening: the sudden, sharp clatter of a metal triangle on All I Want [1981]; the Spanish interlude in Ship of Fools [1987]; a hint of a flute in Hide and Seek [2001]. We might even use the term 'Pre-Raphaelite detail'.
· A General Preference For Significant Themes: McCulloch has never hesitated to tackle subjects of Dantean (or perhaps we should say 'Boschian') proportions in his lyrics. The Cutter; The Holy Grail; Ocean Rain; The Killing Moon; Nothing Lasts Forever; An Eternity Turns -- all are 'big' songs with 'big' themes. Songs of less epic scope - The Flickering Wall; Stars Are Stars; Get in the Car; Bed of Nails; In My Time -- are written with intelligence and sensibility. Similarly, McCulloch/Bunnymen music is never just a pleasant background noise. It asserts itself; takes off in unexpected directions; blends (figuratively speaking) different colors, shapes and textures. It is fearless. The opening songs on OCEAN RAIN [1984] pit the band against an entire orchestral string section. The orchestra, like some gigantic and powerful beast, strains at its harness. Excitement and tension build. The Bunnymen hold their own.
· 'Truth to Nature': Synthetic strings would not do. McCulloch and the Bunnymen insisted on a real orchestra. Holman Hunt would have approved.
The Pre-Raphaelites sought to marry literature and painting in their works. McCulloch and the Bunnymen are doing the same with lyric and music. The lyrics and the music reinforce one another. In King of Kings [2001], the melody takes off and swoops and soars along with the song's winged protagonist. Hurricane [1997], a microcosm of worlds within worlds, brings in snatches of an adrenalized music box melody reminiscent of a snow globe. And the epic Over the Wall [1981], as meandering, powerful and inexorable as the Mississippi River, gains its force from the synergy of elements.
McCulloch is the only lyricist, but he shares songwriting credits on the five original Bunnymen albums with guitarist Will Sergeant, bassist Les Pattinson and drummer Pete de Freitas. The participation of these three strong musicians should not be ignored. Sergeant has co-written every McCulloch album except CANDLELAND and MYSTERIO, and his contributions to the musical side of things are particularly worthy of further study.
"Rossetti," said John Millais' mother disapprovingly, "provokes the common sense of the world" [Hunt]. Sometimes, of course, it is the artist's plain duty to do exactly that. When the Pre-Raphaelites stormed the Academic barricades in those heady days of 1848, they stood alone. They took on the Royal Academy, the ghost of Sir Joshua ("Sir Sloshua") Reynolds and anyone else who stood in the way of their artistic vision. They understood:
"Guts and passion
---------------------------
All those things you think might count
You can't ever set them down
Don't ever set them down" [IM; Show of Strength; HEAVEN UP HERE; 1981]
McCulloch has never been averse to provoking the conventional wisdom either. With a conviction worthy of Hunt and Rossetti, he proclaimed: "I refuse to need your approval" [IM; The Game; ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN; 1987]. "We've got a lot in common with The Velvet Underground or The Beatles," McCulloch said of the Bunnymen, "because we do it for real. That's why we could never go massive, which isn't to say that we couldn't now, but things have changed. In the 80's there were rules you either followed or you didn't" [Walsh]. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, McCulloch and the Bunnymen have followed their own course. And whatever this may have cost them in the short term, as artists, they are probably much the better for it.
What of the original Pre-Raphaelites? Holman Hunt stayed true. To the end of his days, he kept steadfastly to the doctrines of 'Truth to Nature' and high moral purpose he laid out for himself in 1848. Today, his approach seems narrow and flawed, and we little note his works. But his best-known painting, The Light of the World ("Christ at the Door") [1853], remains beloved of Sunday school children all over the world.
John Millais, that facile prodigy who could paint anything in what we now call 'Pre-Raphaelite detail', threw it all away for John Ruskin's wife and the letters PRA after his name. Bubbles [1886], his painting of an adorable young lad blowing soap bubbles, won fame on both sides of the Atlantic as a Pear's Soap advertisement [Note 14]
Edward Burne-Jones, painter of dreamy visions and acolyte of Beauty, would have felt right at home in Candleland. He said that if he could live a thousand years, he would spend it all painting, and that would not be time enough. He died in 1898.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was broken beneath the waves. Events surrounding the publication of his 1870 volume, POEMS, led him to a mental breakdown, complete with hallucinations and a suicide attempt. But he fought his way back, facing stoically what may have been the greatest sorrow of his life:
"You are the noblest and dearest thing that the world has had to show me; and if no lesser loss than the loss of you could have brought me so much bitterness, I would still rather have had this to endure than have missed the fullness of wonder and worship which nothing else could have made known to me." [DGR; letter to Jane Morris; 1870]
Though both activities became increasingly difficult for him, he continued painting and writing to the end, and produced some of his finest work in the last decade of his life. He died on Easter Sunday, 1882, believing that he had failed in both his arts [Note 15]. But he never lost his Pre-Raphaelite spirit or his faith in Love. He still dreamed of eternal union with his Beloved:
"The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
This test for love:--in every kiss sealed fast
To feel the first kiss and forebode the last." [DGR; True Woman: Her Heaven; 1881]
Ian McCulloch, as of this writing, is running like a horse on the backstretch. 2001 saw the release of the latest Bunnymen album, FLOWERS, as well as their retrospective box set, CRYSTAL DAYS. The band toured extensively, and made a live album and DVD of their two nights at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. McCulloch currently has a solo album in the works, and another Bunnymen album is on the horizon.
His writing skills have become stronger, more consistent with the years. Maturity serves him well. But unlike many artists, whose best work falls within a particular period of their lives, McCulloch's finest songs go all the way back to The Pictures On My Wall [1979] and are fairly evenly distributed over his career. He is a complex writer, his works yielding more detail and meaning upon further contemplation. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, he remains undervalued by the public - but of what value is public opinion when it ranks Bubbles above Beata Beatrix, the latest canned love song above Ocean Rain? More than any other quality, McCulloch and the Pre-Raphaelites share the gift of the true artist: the ability to know beauty - and to show it to others.
--0--
This paper is offered respectfully as a tribute to two artists whose works have enriched my life.
Kristin F. Smith
August 7th, 2002
Note 12: This has long been the case. Prime examples from the 19th Century are Franz Liszt and Lord Byron (whom Lady Caroline Lamb famously described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know".) Back to text
Note 13: Empire State Halo for me conjures images of Mark Helprin's wonderful WINTER'S TALE: old-time New York blanketed in winter snow; angels flying around the Empire State building; romance and magic and mystery in the air. This is probably not the scenario McCulloch had in mind, but I like this vision, and I am going to keep it. Back to text
Note 14: Pear's bought the rights to the picture without Millais' permission, and he did strongly protest the ad. But apparently Bubbles was just what the soap company wanted. Back to text
Note 15: One need only glance over the complete lists of Rossetti's paintings, drawings, poems, prose works and translations to realize the tragic absurdity of this notion: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:2020/archive.html
Back to text
Previous Table of Contents Next
An Annotated Discography: Works by Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Electrafixion and Glide (off-site link)
Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion: Album Reviews (off-site link)
The Bunnymen Concert Log: A comprehensive, annotated listing of concert dates, venues and set lists for Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion (off-site link)
Bunnymen.info - The (Unofficial) News Source (off-site link, run by Charles Pham)
Aldems' Political Quotations: Apt and Otherwise
BlindFool and Scruffy Dog: Dilettantes-at-Large
Back to the top of the page
|
|
