do songwriters' personal lives matter?

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 01:11 PM

I will...I'm knackered.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter? or comp
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 01:00 PM

Back in the 1990s I heard plausible rumours that a young singer songwriter folkie I knew,
a right cocky little shite with a reputation for bedding women,
had sexually assaulted/raped a student.

There was no proof or complaints to police,
and on the surface our social circle continued as usual...

He wasn't a young bloke I was particularly fond of anyway,
and on the occasions I met him at gigs I tried to avoid more contact than necessary.
I couldn't know if the rumours were true, but it worsened my opinion of him...

Some weeks later we heard he and the girl had started going out as a couple.

So I just had to shrug it off and try to let go of my suspicions of him...

I daresay this sort of situation was not that uncommon in the music scene
of the last half century or more...?????

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 12:37 PM

One aspect of performers' personal lives that matters to at least some of their audience, and as far as I can tell just about never does with songwriters or composers: their drug habits.

Alcoholic performers are usually rather disgusting, and when they take the line that drunkenness is a praiseworthy part of the show and we should all cheer them on for it (as Hamish Imlach did) the result is stomach-churning. I made damn sure i never went near Martin Boland once I realized he didn't give a shit about blowing smoke or vape fumes in people's faces (he spent most of his life in a cloud of nicotine and terminally kippered his heart in his mid-50s). And almost all stimulant abusers substitute aggression for imagination when they perform.

But one step removed, I can't see how that would matter.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 12:34 PM

"for reasons of clarity and honesty why don't you do 2 thing for us all"
Because I have attempted to stop this thread being used as a hate platform against fellow members and have no intentions of joining in with that unsavory activity
I have not suggested it should be closed, just that it will be if things continue as they have been
It's an interesting subject; those not interested shouldn't be here

"Dearest Jimmy"
I post under my own name, Jim Carroll, and prefer to be addressed by one of those (preferably the former)- the only people who address me as "Jimmy" are friends or family - I very much doubt if you fall into either category
Here, only those who wish to talk down to me using false familiarity do so, they tend to prove that they are not in a position to talk to anybody (without standing on a very tall step-ladder)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: GUEST,KennyB(inactive)
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 12:21 PM

Dearest Jimmy
Re Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 11:36 AM

It seems some people won't rest until they close this thread
Shame
Jim Carroll

for reasons of clarity and honesty why don't you do 2 thing for us all
! name names
2 Give your cogent reasons why the thread should be closed.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 11:36 AM

It seems some people won't rest until they close this thread
Shame
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 10:55 AM

Similarly, well meaning mods can delete a few posts here and there to salvage the reputation of well known mudcatters
when they occasionally lose the plot in anger...

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 10:55 AM

Vile personality singers/song writers/performers/poets/artists/etc..
can be helped to maintain spotless repuations after death
in cases where family and influential friends & admirers
literally burnt any letters, writings, diaries, anything else incriminating,
that revealed the darker side of who the artist really was...

Sometimes they went too far and burnt archives of genuine artistic and historic interest...

Well at least this kind of cover up is not so easy now in the internet era.....

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Iains
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 09:57 AM

It is called thread drift. Quite common here!

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jeri
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 09:45 AM

...and somehow, this shifted from "songwriters" to "performers". I suppose they're often the same.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jeri
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 09:43 AM

It's SeegEr. (Rhetorical: why is that so hard?)

Nobody will ever stop performers from mixing in politics. It's not about the performers; it's not about "should" and "shouldn't". It's about whether you want to listen to them or not. Most of the time, if you don't want to, someone else will.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 09:28 AM

Nice try, McCarthy, but no Seegar...

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 09:25 AM

Well if I go to a Dick Gaughan gig I'm going to get his politics. When I went to Vin's gigs, which I did often, I knew I was likely to get his anti-abortion song. There are politics in Andy Irvine's and Christy's gigs. Of course, you may not know about them in advance and be surprised. There's no point taking exception to stuff you hear that you don't agree with. As with free speech (which is what we're talking about anyway), you have no right not to be offended. You can grumble and complain and tell your mates when you come out and not go again. Hearing things in songs that you find disagreeable will not deprave and corrupt you. We draw the line at rabid racism and hate speech, I hope. And misogyny. I've just been listening to my Elvis compilation. Now what was that bit about his girl:

"Come on and be my little good luck charm
Uh-huh huh, you sweet delight
I want a good luck charm
A-hanging on my arm
To have, to have, to hold, to hold tonight"

Innocently of its time or what!

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Iains
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 08:54 AM

Freedom of speech is an admirable concept. It often falls apart if the PTB do not like the size of the audience being attracted.
Pete Seegar, in the land of the free, never made it to McCarthy's christmas list, to name but one.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 07:07 AM

If the USSR had taken the approach of Tito's Yugoslavia, they could happily have absorbed every Western popular genre from Megadeth to Boy George and not have endangered themselves in the least. Yugoslavia gave the impression of being more liberal because of that sort of openness, but anyone trying serious political opposition soon found they were actually tougher than Krushchev or his successors when it came to the crunch (I knew someone who did time on Goli Otok for a trivial political offence - not fun at all). A Communist regime that took the trouble to distinguish empty gestures from genuine threats could easily classify them accurately.

So, as what-ifs go, Lennonism never had a prayer of supplanting Leninism.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 06:57 AM

A bit like if someone you have a rather dim view of, say a politician etc appears to share your musical tastes; does it cloud your view of the music you like?

Most psychologists reckon it does, even of you don't admit it even to yourself.

Fascinating..

Any art in antiquity was produced by people with a very different moral compass to us. It is far easier to judge the product rather than factory that made it. Wagner and the Teutonic influence on the Nazi regime is mentioned in this thread. Many may have a dim view of freemasonry so that's Mozart up the spout. Elgar wrote stirring jingoism, so if you have any anti war and anti imperialism threads in your moral code, I doubt his "Glory, Pomp and Circumstance of Glorious War" should have you waving flags at Albert Hall....

On a more general basis, the songwriter may be using their own experience to write the song and might not. If they are, it helps you to understand where they are coming from if you know a bit about them perhaps.

Or it might just be that you like the noise it makes....

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Iains
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 06:09 AM

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/22/israelandthepalestinians.thebeatles

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/how-the-beatles-rocked-the-kremlin-24424


https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2016/08/26/how-one-cold-war-dj-showed-the-creative-power-of-rock-a

"Back in the USSR" McCartney "I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. And "Back in the USA" was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there. I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I'm still conscious of. 'Cause they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not."

If the beatles made an impact from afar,I wonder what Black Sabbath or the Stones could have achieved prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, if allowed to perform?

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: michaelr
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 05:53 AM

I like Roy Harper's music.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 05:26 AM

"How The Beatles Helped Bring Down The Berlin Wall" -
Nice theory, which runs counter to the fact that they appeared in a full page photograph on the front page of British Young Communist League' newspaper, 'Challenge'
JIm Carroll

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 05:16 AM

Interestingly, there was a documentary recently shown on BBC4 - "How The Beatles Helped Bring Down The Berlin Wall" - which purported to show how the popularity of their music helped, in its own way,to undermine the politics of the Eastern bloc. Whether this was all true or not, I can't say, but the banning of the "anodyne" Beatles may have been because their musical power was recognised as subversive - in Communist terms.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Iains
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 04:50 AM

I take exception to the automatic assumption by a few "artists" that their stage persona gives them the right to inflict their political beliefs on us. Bono and Geldof spring to mind. However realistically politics and song has been intermixed since a frog first croaked so perhaps I should correct the above to state politics in the lyrics is a very different beast to the author talking or embracing politics both on and off the stage. Even the anodyne beatles were banned in Eastern Europe.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 04:29 AM

I don't hear any gratuitous ego in Wagner's music. He was committed to telling a story using the most effective means he could find. How is there any more ego in the start of Tristan than there is in the start of Schubert's Unfinished? Both draw you into the start of a long journey. In the folk scene there are singers and storytellers who start every narrative with a gratuitous assertion of personality - the best of them, like Martin Carthy, take Wagner's approach and don't.

And in Wagner's social/political writings, his advocacy of vegetarianism and the rights of animals show a degree of tenderness and concern that Keith never showed towards anything in creation in his posts here, with their unmitigated bullying and hatred. It's obvious which of them came across better in print as someone you'd like to know personally and whose music you'd like to give a hearing.

The classical music scene has always been somewhat forgiving. Gesualdo had no problem getting his music published and reasonably widely known, despite disgusting his contemporaries with his criminality. Nicolas Gombert served a sentence in the galleys for fiddling with choirboys and picked up his very successful career regardless.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 06:39 PM

IF we don't want to

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 06:37 PM

That is all very true, and I return again to my original point, that we all make our own considered decisions, draw our own red lines, or don't even bother to dig deeper for we don't want to, and no-one should think less of us for that. Personally, I put art slightly above food production and delivery. At risk of sounding severely biased, when I listen to Wagner I hear his overblown ego coming through the threadbare superficiality of his "art." Conversely, I hear Beethoven's sheer humanity coming through in his music, as well as his flaws. Art is all about communicating. It must be quite hard to conceal your nastiness in beautiful art, which is surely a product of your soul.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Johnny J
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 06:05 PM

I've no intention of getting involved in this slanging match here but would like to address the original question.

I think personal and private lives are important IF a songwriter or any other person advocates or "preaches"(as is often the case) some other mode of behaviour or is suggesting that the listener takes a certain path.

Of course, a songwriter might also compose a song to illustrate the standpoint or experiences of other people apart from his or herself which is maybe a trickier scenario. However, there is often still a message or moral in there somewhere which is intended to be conveyed to the listener. So, that shouldn't really be at odds with the writer's own behaviour.

As for not listening to songs or music by certain individuals, I agree that if the finished product in itself is good and apparently worthwhile then there's no need for it to be rejected.
After all, we all consume and use products and services on a daily basis where dubious and unsavoury people are often involved in the process or preparation.
e.g.. We don't always know who is working in the kitchen of restaurant, serving behind the counters of shops, delivering food and other mecrchandise to shops and so on. There's any number of examples.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 03:20 PM

I think this thread demonstrates that it is possible to respect a person's public reputation,
and hold their contribution to the arts and culture in high esteem,
whilst finding their personality very problematic, even troubling...

I can also say the same thing about folks I have known and consider friends
in local constituency Labour Party politics...

We are only human and need to maintain patience, tolerance, and a good sense of humour...

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 11:18 AM

"Tezz has as much right to comment as the rest of us."
On the subject in hand
He does not have a right to attack members of this forum in the way he chooses to do here
I ask again that his post is removed - a head-to-head on his accusations is exactly the type of thing that gets threads closed
If he has scores to settle with Mudcatters (among which he is no longer included), I suggest he goes elsewhere to do it
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 10:52 AM

Heydrich was from a family of prominent musicians and apparently was a pretty damn good classical violinist. No doubt people heard his playing and gasped at the sensitivity of his interpretation of Beethoven.

Interestingly the SS uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss. So remember the gas ovens when you sniff that aftershave in your Christmas stocking.

Like I say - a bloody complicated proposition.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 09:26 AM

Concerning Wagner, Steve Shaw obviously knows more about his personal life than I do.

By "low-level," of course, I meant compared to Nazis.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: GUEST,Kenny B Sans Kuki
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 08:20 AM

I think the crux of the matter, well for those of a religious bent or otherwise, in succinct terms is

"Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?"

And for the pedants
Though it is widely attested that Booth used this adage, it originates in the 18th century, being attributed to George Whitefield, in The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, Vol. 49 (June 1773 - January 1774), p. 430; it has also been reported as a remark made by Rowland Hill, when he arranged an Easter hymn to the tune of "Pretty, Pretty Polly Hopkins, in The Rambler, Vol. 9 (1858), p. 191, as well as being attributed to Charles Wesley, and sometimes his brother John.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 08:17 AM

Should have looked like:

I can only speak from my experience - but most musicians I have ever known have been a very dodgy bunch of people...

It was quite relaxing getting back into folk music after all that shite...

Ah, so people who perform folk music aren't musicians. Nice to see my prejudices confirmed. (Only joking!)

I don't think you can ever generalise about any set of people, whether they're musicians, scientists, artists or whatever. Individuals are individuals, and varied in character. Take people as you find them - and remember "mote and beam". Your opinions reflect yourself.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 08:17 AM

I can only speak from my experience - but most musicians I have ever known have been a very dodgy bunch of people...

It was quite relaxing getting back into folk music after all that shite...

Ah, so people who perform folk music aren't musicians. Nice to see my prejudices confirmed. (Only joking!)

I don't think you can ever generalise about any set of people, whether they're musicians, scientists, artists or whatever. Individuals are individuals, and varied in character. Take people as you find them - and remember "mote and beam". Your opinions reflect yourself.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 08:07 AM

I can only speak from my experience - but most musicians I have ever known
have been a very dodgy bunch of people...

Unreliable and untrustworthy.
Some downright ruthless and treacherous.

Blame it on the alcohol and druggie life style...???
Throw in a personality disorders and mental illness...????

When I was a naive teenager in the 1970s I had this odd notion
that people who aspired to a life of music and art were the best and purest hearted of folks.

After 15 years or so working in photography I got completely sick of the ambitious back stabbing bastards
I encountered in studios, galleries, and arts colleges, in London.

Call me disillusioned, but...

It was quite relaxing getting back into folk music after all that shite...

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: GUEST,Teribus
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 08:00 AM

Campin Jack, that last sentence of your post was totally uncalled for. The recently deceased Keith A of Hertford was neither evil or a thug, unlike the cabal on this forum who were permitted to "mob", harass and insult him constantly and mercilessly for a period of over six years, they continued to do so knowing of his illness and how serious his condition was. That he neither buckled nor bent in the face of such bullying is a testament to his character, and shines a light on the pitiful and shoddy nature of the characters of his detractors. He did perform as anyone could glean by referencing posts in his Obituary Thread - all such references were positive and from them I gather he was a very talented singer, well worth listening to. Your loss.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Andy7
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 07:38 AM

Yes, the spitfire was certainly a work of art, with its pleasing lines and dimensions; although of course that wasn't the main consideration of its designers.

Interestingly, if I'd been alive during the war, and at high and constant risk of invasion and occupation from an evil dictatorship, I wouldn't have cared one jot - at the time - how racist, misogynist or otherwise unpleasant any of the spitfire pilots were, as long as they were good at their job!

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 07:28 AM

Ok.. for any mudcatters who think Hitler might be getting an unfair bashing in this thread...

The n@zis were probably the best looking dictatorship in modern history...
What an excellent sense of design and theatricallity...
Terrific designed uniforms, pagentry, and weaponry...!!!
Shows the difference an artist at the head of a conquest for total world domination can make...

Mind you, we at least did have the Spitfire.....

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 07:27 AM

Actually, Jack, Keith was a regular performer of songs and was very well-liked as such in his local area. Joe Offer told me that the chap we know as beardedbruce is, in real life, an amiable and agreeable fellow. We have to be a tad careful as to how we judge people in this rather two-dimensional Mudcat world, in which it's more than possible to set up your persona in a way that might not equate to you in real life.

Whether or not you think those composers' reputations need damaging (I definitely disagree about Mendelssohn but don't know much Meyerbeer), Wagner set out to damage them because they were Jews.. As I was trying to say, too little information can end up with our exonerating people who don't deserve to be exonerated.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 07:01 AM

Those composers' reputations needed damaging, though! Meyerbeer was his main target, and he WAS an overrated mediocrity who had hyped himself into a cult figure.

Dunno what Wagner said about Mendelssohn - he may have been Jewish but his best work is early and pagan in inspiration. He then turned into a Christian prude and churned out hours of stuffy pious mediocrity. His Jewish origins never came into it either way.

You don't have to look far in the folk scene to find real live racists. Griogair Labhruidh is part of the small and ugly racially Anglophobe tendency in Scottish nationalism, as is the piper James Macdonald Reid. There are many worse in the Irish and English scenes. And there are a few posters on Mudcat I'd never consider listening to because of their vicious opinions - the only reason I'd ever want to know who "Keith A of Hertford" really was would be so I could avoid listening to anything that evil thug ever recorded (if in fact he ever performed any music at all, he never referred to it).

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Iains
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 06:44 AM

Instead of Hitler what is wrong with Vlad the impaler or Attila the Hun? What happened to equal rights?

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 06:26 AM

Equally, deficiencies can be understated via too little information. There's a classic example here in this thread, when Wagner was excused somewhat because his antisemitism was "low level." I'm not sure what that means, but a little delving into Wagner's life and personality reveals that his antisemitic and racist ideas, which are in writing in voluminous amounts, set out to damage the reputations of contemporary Jewish composers and, eventually, fed directly into Nazi ideology. We can't blame Wagner for Hitler exactly; equally I can't help feeling that they'd have got on like a house on fire. His views were detestable and were writ large. I don't know how that can be reconciled with "low level."

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 08 Dec 18 - 04:37 AM

Jeri, you are still missing my point and stepping into the same trap again.

1. "Godwin's law" is a satirical notion, applicable to a large field of "rhetorical tricks" and/or fallacies. Calling anyone an "actual nazi" is such an example: "s/he did something in the sense of the NSDAP, therefore s/he is/was an actual nazi, therefore s/he is among the worst villains, guilty of millions of murders". Of course, real villains did and do exist, but to prove it takes more care. Best avoid such words as "nazi" altogether.

2. and 3. I am not "going after people". The thread topic as I understand it is whether works of art can be devalued by moral deficiencies of their authors, and my contribution is that such deficiencies are often diagnosed from too little information.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 10:25 PM

1. Godwin's Law isn't appicable when one is talking about actual nazis.
2. If you thought what I said looked like I was "absolutely sure they [I] know who is a villain", then you can't read.
3. When someone goes after people in a thread instead of discussing the thread topic, most folks call it "trolling". It's an attempt to lure others into an off-topic argument. (Which I guess I fell for, so I'm done with that.)

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 10:15 PM

No.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 09:14 PM

Everybody's life matters...doesn't it?

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 08:57 PM

...and that was a serious point!

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 08:56 PM

It's a good topic is this, and one that has given me a fair amount of angst over the years. Trouble is, I tend to like reading of the lives of composers and musicians and, quite often, my readings throw up some unexpected unsavoury aspects. Schubert and Benjamin Britten certainly liked to hang around with what we'd regard today as, er, under-aged persons. Mozart was obsessed with bare bottoms and turds. We've had more disconcerting info from Jack about Mussorgsky and Debussy. And so on.

Mind you, what's so wrong with bare bottoms anyway...

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: meself
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 07:56 PM

No one's going to stop me listening to my recordings of Nero fiddling!! (The snap, crackle and pop just add to the ambience ... ).

As for Henry VIII, now - I'll have to give another listen .......

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 07:25 PM

Hitler is a useful figure in these discussions because he provides an extreme test case.

Before Hitler, and before the Internet, I believe Caligula and Nero were the usual examples.

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: Andy7
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 07:15 PM

Yes, that so-called 'law' is just one person's strange idea, haha!

Subject: RE: do songwriters' personal lives matter?
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 06:47 PM

ps.. bollocks to Godwin's pompous 'law'...