Scientifically, music consists of a combination of sound waves, vibrations and silences which are arranged in such a manner that they make some logical sense to the human ear. Well, that’s the dispassionate way of looking at it. But the following piece is not a study in science. That’d be really boring, and I’m not a scientist anyway. What on Earth is it about these combinations of sound waves, vibrations and silences that touches our hearts in so many different and often profound ways? That’s what I’m asking here, looking at it from different perspectives of my own personal experience – as a lifelong listener and music fan, and as a musician.
Music in its own right is (at least in contemporary society) a form of entertainment. We consume it and we use it in all manner of situations. We hear it on the radio at work, we put it on in the background when we’re doing the housework or perhaps when we have friends over, we hear it in shopping malls, pubs and restaurants, and if you are so inclined to visit such places, we hear it at night clubs or discos. So, it can help to pass the time during our everyday lives or it can provide atmosphere in a social setting. But this is looking at it on a merely superficial level. Music has the power to do far more than simply entertain us.
I’m sure we are all well aware of the impact The Beatles had. They were beyond immensely successful. These four regular guys from Liverpool – Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – quite literally changed the world. I won’t attempt to fathom exactly how they achieved what they did, because this article will go on forever. There was just something different about them that set them apart. The combination of their talents and their personalities fed into the music that they created together, which made for something that vast swathes of people found immensely exciting. As time went on and their success accumulated, they began experimenting and pushing forward creatively. There was an aura about them that no other band or artist had at the time or has achieved since. Such is the power of their music that it is imprinted on our psyche, and has stood the test of time through multiple generations. People will most likely still be listening to and playing their songs a hundred years from now.
I was not born in the 1960s. But I do consider myself fortunate to at least be living within the same time frame as Sir Paul McCartney, who of course was one half of the Beatles’ principle songwriting partnership with John Lennon. Paul became a hero of mine at a very early stage, by which time he was well into his solo career. The phenomenon that The Beatles became allowed Paul to have quite a vibrant career beyond the break-up of the band which endures to this day – over fifty years later. When he tours, he plays huge venues all over the world bringing tens of thousands of people together in the same place. And that brings me to an important point I want to make here – never underestimate the capacity of music to bring people together. As I said earlier, the music Paul has been involved in writing and performing over the decades is firmly embedded in our psyche and, having been fortunate enough to see Paul live myself (with a guest appearance by Ringo Starr no less, which brought the house down), I can attest to the experience of 20,000 people, young, old, tall, short, fat and thin all rocking out and singing along to those songs. All is right with the world during these precious moments in time. It doesn’t matter what background you have, where you come from or what your political persuasion might be, music is a universal language that speaks to every one of us and there is no better demonstration of that than the shared experience of people coming together to celebrate it at a live performance.
Speaking of Paul McCartney brings me to my next point. Can you remember the first album you listened to all the way through? Mine was Dad’s copy of Paul’s All the Best, which was a compilation containing all his most widely recognised songs recorded over the course of his post-Beatles career. I don’t know how old I was when I first heard it but I must have been very small. Perhaps three or four. Obviously I would not have been old enough to fully appreciate his artistry at this point, but I must have recognised that Paul’s music had a special quality about it. All of the classics on that album including the likes of ‘Band On the Run’, ‘Jet’, ‘C Moon’, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, ‘Pipes of Peace’, ‘Let ‘Em In’, ‘Mull of Kintyre’ et al. firmly embedded themselves on my consciousness. Hearing them now always takes me back to being a small boy, just beginning my voyage of musical discovery.
Just a few more years down the road, I discovered Sting’s music. Which, once again, was all Dad’s fault. We had just bought our first CD player, and one of the first CDs he brought into the house was Sting’s Fields of Gold compilation. I well remember us making a copy of the first half of that album onto a cassette which we played in the car. Of course, the song that lends its name to this compilation is deservedly one of Sting’s biggest hits and remains one of the first songs people are likely to think of when considering his solo work. It is a beautiful song with an utterly timeless quality, as is the case with other songs from this period of Sting’s career such as ’When We Dance’, which was a brand new song at the time. To this day, hearing these songs instantly transports me right back the mid-1990s. Every aspect of the arrangements, down to minuscule inflections within Sting’s vocal performances, somehow resurrects the feelings I had when I first heard them all those years ago and brings back memories of simpler times, sitting in the back seat of our car on holidays, looking out at the view while enjoying the music coming out of the speakers. I get similar feelings when listening to certain songs by Enya, another artist we used to listen to a lot back then. A song may have been one thing when the original artist wrote and recorded it, but when it goes out into the world and other people listen to it, that song can become a ‘marker’ in time that evokes memories of where they were in life at the point in time when they first heard it. There are many songs, and indeed whole albums that particularly stand out for me and never fail to take me back to certain events or periods throughout my life both as a young person and an adult whenever I hear them. And I’m sure, dear reader, it’ll be a similar case for you.
Those of you who know me or follow me on social media will most likely be aware that I am the world’s biggest Mark Knopfler fan. I cannot complete this article without mentioning him. I listen to lots of different artists across numerous genres, but Mark’s music has a special place in my heart. His technical ability and unique style as a guitarist is of course renowned. His touch and quality of tone is second to none. He will always be recognised primarily as the voice and guitar of Dire Straits – a band that, from rather humble beginnings, went on to become essentially the biggest band on the planet with the release of the Brothers in Arms album in 1985. But what attracts me most to Mark’s work is his incredible talent as a songwriter. Into his solo career, he has become more prolific a writer than ever and as brilliant as his achievements with Dire Straits may have been, the quality of the music he has produced over the course of his ten solo albums (and counting) has been quite extraordinary.
Mark’s songs are unerringly thoughtful and insightful, and in numerous cases exquisitely beautiful. So much so that in some cases, I find myself becoming emotional when listening to them. Pathetic as that may seem to some, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Sometimes it’s down to the sheer beauty of the music or the sentiment of the song in question. The crewman reuniting with his daughter in ‘Dream of the Drowned Submariner’ for instance. Or in ‘Remembrance Day’, the names of the village cricket team that become a roll call of fallen soldiers during the First World War. Other times it is because I find I can relate to the imagery or the wonderful characters that he writes about in his lyrics. The man in ‘Silver Eagle’ for instance, riding through his old flame’s home town late at night, wondering if she’s thinking of him. Or the two friends in ‘Wherever I Go’, whose bond remains unbreakable no matter how far apart they may be or how long it may have been since they last saw one another. The power of a song can be quite profound. As listeners, we can attach our own significances and interpretations to songs and relate them to our own lives. And the music can also be a great comfort to us when times are hard, either in our personal lives or because of external factors. I have certainly found myself gravitating to Mark’s music when I’ve been down. It may not cure the problem, but it can certainly make things seem easier.
As a musician and a songwriter of sorts myself, I have learned a great deal from Mark amongst other musical heroes of mine. One of the most important things I have learned is that there is nothing you cannot write a song about. If you allow yourself to be receptive to whatever might be happening in the world around you, inspiration can strike anywhere at any time and from any source. Whether it’s something you’ve read in a book or a newspaper, something you’ve seen on TV or even an overheard conversation, literally anything is fair game. If the subject in question resonates with you in one way or another, there’s potential for a song there. Mark saw a sign advertising shoes at a market one day and out popped a charming little song entitled ‘Quality Shoe’. Sting wrote a song in which he has a highly intellectual conversation with his dog about such diverse subjects as politics and nuclear fission. As for me, I saw a lady simply stepping off a bus with her shopping bags one evening as I was driving home from a day out. That was all I needed. I wondered what her day had been like before it coincided with my drive home, and out popped a little folk waltz entitled ‘Ordinary Day’. Poor woman. Her life probably isn’t anything like how I have depicted it in the song.
Inspiration also comes from within. If you are a creative person, there is no getting away from the fact that something of you will invariably find its way into your art, whatever form it may take. Sometimes it’ll be quite subtle, and sometimes it can be very much at the forefront of what you are writing. To recount from my own experience of a few years ago, I had a friend who had come to mean a great deal to me, but to cut a long story short, I only realised just how much she meant to me when she announced she was leaving town. I knew I would probably never see her again. So there I was sat in my room with my trusty old acoustic guitar just aimlessly picking away and all of a sudden, I hit upon a set of chords and a hook. Obviously the music was quite melancholy in nature and reflective of the way I was feeling at that point in time. Lyrics followed shortly thereafter and the song came together remarkably quickly by my standards. I was operating very much on autopilot – my feelings were somehow manifesting themselves before me in the form of words and music. It remains possibly the most cohesive song I have ever written. There is a perceived irony that the best art results from trauma and personal angst. I’m not sure I’m entirely prepared to believe that. I have no desire to spend the rest of my life angst ridden for the sake of creativity. You can be happy and write songs. But perhaps there is at least some level truth in it. And it does go to show that a guitar or whatever instrument you play can often be your closest confidante.
So, what can we conclude from my inane meanderings above? What, indeed, is it about those sound waves, vibrations and silences that means so much to us? The truth is that I don’t actually have a precise answer. Nobody does. I have completely wasted your time and mine trying to answer this question. But as humans, we are fortunate enough to possess an ability to have a perception of pitch, tone and sonic texture. When that is associated with our memories, our feelings and all the things that mean the most to us, it finds a place in our hearts. And there is one thing I can say for certain. However you might use music, on whatever level, be it as a listener or a musician, it will always be your best friend through thick and thin.
Mike's Musical Musings 