New Statesmen & Society: Music Oct 2, 1992
Something in the air
Pop has gone in search of a non-aggressive Englishness, as Andrew James Smith
reports
Our parents had a vision of Englishness. ... To the children of the sixties and
seventies, however, who grew up through the petrol crisis, seemingly endless
slumps and recessions and ever-diminishing economic status, this version of
England's place in the world has always seemed as anachronistic as it was
chauvinistic and misplaced.
In pop music we found some respite from the grim realities. The later Beatles
and Stone, David Bowie, Roxie Music and Punk all harked back to a tradition of
non-conformity that still meant something. This, we told ourselves, could only
have happened here. Even so, by the end of the 1980s, pop's spirit seemed to
have been broken. We had experienced the Falklands war and the miners' strike,
Thatcher had effortlessly won a third term and alternatives seemed out of the
question. British rock, having lost confidence in itself, looked across the
water for inspiration.
Apathy was disguised as psychedelia, as a new generation of "shoegazing" bands
like the Stone Roses, Ride and The Charlatans hid behind Ray-Ban shades and
fringes, aping sixties American groups such as Velvet Underground and The Doors
in colorless, escapist droves. For the past two years, American acts such as
Seattle's Nirvana (currently one of the top acts worldwide) have made all the
running. English pop's loss of identity echoed the abdications of Thatcherism.
Even Morrissey, the flamboyant former Smiths singer and champion of all things
English, has fallen foul of this general shift in attitudes. In his Smiths
heyday (roughly 1983-6), Morrissey's England was a quaint place, pierced
together from George Form by films, music-hall camp, lumpy plastic hearing
aids and NHS specs. Your grandmother would have recognized it easily. By the
time Big Band in the City came around, this comfortable picture seemed little
more than an absurd dream.
In quest for an alternative to the prevailing mores of hopeless cultural
philistinism and technocracy, Morrissey then settled on a newer and more
controversial idea of Englishness: the football hooligan and brutish
nationalism. Things came to a head on this year's Your Arsenal LP. One song is
called "The National Front Disco". Another,"We'll Let You Know," suggests these
are "the last truly British people you will ever know."
The degree of irony in Morrissey's music is often underestimated, but "Disco",
with its jolly "I'm in love with the girl at the Virgin Megastore check-out
desk" vibe, is at best ambiguous. When the fellow wrapped himself in a Union
Jack at a festival in London this summer, New Musical Express was quick to
accuse him, in a five-page cover story, of fanning the flames of rascism.
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