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DAI GRIFFITHS

Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

I hold that a long song does not exist. I maintain that the phrase a long song is simply aflat contradiction in terms. The degree of excitement which would entitle a song to be so called at

all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. There are, no doubt, manywho have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that progressive rock is to be devoutlyadmired throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, while listening, the amountof enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand.

You may have guessed that those are not my own words, but a cover version of EdgarAllen Poes The Poetic Principle, published in 1848, the original of which1 substituted poem forsong, and for progressive rock Miltons Paradise Lost, and was part of a complex debate incritical theory, contriving to bring together questions of duration with the role of the artist in society.These issues are durable ones, and can be found in the song, as a particular musical form, at theperiod which this conference examined. Indeed, during a piece which Ill examine in more detaillater, Robert Wyatt, then with the Soft Machine, drew attention to similar concerns, by singingthese words:

Just before we go on to the next part of our songLet's all make sure we've got the timeMusic-making still performs the normal functions -background noise for people scheming, seducing, revolting and teachingThat's all right by me, don't think that I'm complainingAfter all, it's only leisure time, isn't it?2

In their history of critical theory, the heartland of 1950s New Criticism, W.K. Wimsatt andCleanth Brooks explain that:

Poetic theory had passed in the course of the centuries from a classic or Aristotelian focus ondrama, through a heroic focus on epic (and then a hidden or implicit focus on satire and burlesque)to the romantic focus on lyric, the songlike personal expression, the feeling centred in the image.(Wimsatt-Brooks, 1970: 433)

Indeed, an equally peremptory version had already appeared some thirty years beforePoes article, during the central, fourteenth chapter of Coleridges Biographia Literaria (1817): apoem of any length neither can be, or ought to be, all poetry. (Bate, 1970: 378) As Poes examplefrom Paradise Lostsuggested, the problem was how to identify the genuinely poetic in a piece ofgreat length and the likelihood, in such a circumstance, of having to disentangle poetry from prose,possibly via some intermediaries such as poetic prose or prosaic poetry. In turn, as John Stuart Millemphasised, these arguments were bound up in the issue of who was allowed to identify

themselves as a poet, and judgement over what constituted poetry (Wimsatt-Brooks, 1970: 434-5).Length became a suspect device, since, as Wimsatt and Brooks put it:

One conceives [too] that an art formed on the principle of a vast assemblage of diverselyinteresting parts will tend to promote a certain looseness of relationship among such parts, and inthe parts themselves a certain extravagance of local coloring. (Wimsatt-Brooks, 1970: 433)

As musicians we may be reminded by this of Nietzsches famously backhanded commenton Wagner:

1I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase a long poem is simply a flat contradiction in terms. The degree of

excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. Thereare, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the critical dictum that the Paradise Lostis to be devoutly admiredthroughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum woulddemand. (Poe 1848). In Bate (1970), p. 352.2Moon in June, Soft Machine Third(1970).


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D. GRIFFITHS - Memorable music, forgettable words? Dilemmas of song in British progressive rock, c. 1972

Wagner is admirable and gracious only in the invention of what is smallest, in spinning out thedetails. Here one is entirely justified in proclaiming him a master of the first rank, as our greatestminiaturist in music who crowds into the smallest space an infinity of sense and sweetness.(Nietszche, 1888: 627)

To cut abruptly to the issues Im discussing in this paper, all this seems to me true, and that

its truth is bad enough, for song, period, and for popular song, even worse. The adjectivepopular works in many and mysterious ways,3 and I want strongly to assert that one of its keyinsistences lies in the temporal domain. Popular songs are part of a bunch of shorter forms linedup against any idea that music can be genuinely or honestly listened to for any long period of time.As I wrote with reference to Radiohead, a band sometimes presented as latter-day heirs to theprogressive legacy:4

I tend to see this as to a large extent a matter of the occupation of time, so that songs forman alliance in brevity with some other musical forms: Beethovens bagatelle, the character piece,the modernist Stck, the miniature, the compressed version of operas found in their overtures orpreludes. There arent really so many forms of music that are intrinsically lengthy: in classical-romantic music the sonata-form movement, with its tonal opposition, extensive harmonic andmotivic development, became a formal template that could consciously be expanded by acomposer such as Brahms; the continuous stream of consciousness of the Wagnerian opera;composed pieces of musical modernism that, rightly or wrongly, assume listener concentration. Forthe latter, Joyce is the literary equivalent (with Wagner somewhere in his background, too),describing famously in Finnegans Wake an ideal reader suffering an ideal insomnia.5

But against this view, Edward Macans assertion:

Effectively tying together twenty or thirty minutes of music on both a musical and conceptual basisis a genuine compositional achievement, and a well-constructed multi-movement suite is able toimpart a sense of monumentality and grandeur, to convey the sweep of experience, in a manner

that a three- or four-minute song simply cannot. (Macan, 1997: 49-50)

America

How did progressive bands musically derive the durational length Macan considers to be sovirtuous? A way into this question is offered by comparing the original 1968 recording of PaulSimons songAmerica, from Simon and Garfunkels 1968 album Bookends, with the cover versionby Yes, recorded in 1972 by the line-up ofFragile and Close to the Edge (including Rick Wakeman

and Bill Bruford).A way into this question is offered by comparing the original 1968 recording ofPaul Simons song America, from Simon and Garfunkels 1968 album Bookends, with the coverversion in 1972 by the line-up ofFragile and Close to the Edge (including Rick Wakeman and BillBruford). Paul Simons song is a good example, andpace Macan, of what sometimes happens in

the short story, a relatively short time period (335) evoking something of the great Americannovel, an epic theme conveyed through the listing of tiny localized details: Mrs Wagners pies, thenamed towns of Saginaw and Pittsburgh, a Greyhound bus and the New Jersey turnpike. The linesof song seem to invite being considered as lines of poetry, for instance, the simple rectitude,reminiscent of Robert Frost, of the line:

the moon rose over an open field,

the inner musicality of a line such as:

3 Not a day too soon, the journal Popular Music has begun to question its existence. See 24/1, 2005.4

See Q Classic: Pink Floyd and the story of Prog Rock, Emap, 2005.5

Griffiths (2004), pp. 26-7. When Schoenberg was bothered by the fact that his pieces were short and always needed theinstantaneous setting of texts to get finished, in the pop song view of the world, he was doing fine. What happened next was the issue.Griffths (1999), p. 425-ff.


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Composition and Experimentation in British rock, 1966-1976

Michigan seems like a dream to me now,

and, ultimately pops great easy trick, the packing of meaning into a throwaway phrase:

all come to look for America

Little of what wed find to celebrate in Paul Simons song applies to the cover version by

Yes. The original Yes version lasts 1033, this version rendered faithfully on Keys to Ascension(1996) at 1028. However, of all things, in the US a 45-rpm single version was issued, cutdrastically down to 412, and this is the version Ive attended to. Diagram 1 shows Paul Simonssong compared with the Yes single edit version, while Diagram 2 provides further detail of the Yesrecording. The Yes version has four distinct sections, the first containing Simons first two verses,the second a slow movement corresponding to the contrasting bridge of the Simon song, the thirda rock/boogie scherzo corresponding to Simons last verse, and a final quick coda with no words.Even as a single edit, the Yes version is a strong appropriation of the original rather than a faithfulrendition. (Griffiths, 2002: 52) Once underway, the relation between the original and cover is fairlyclose for the first three verses, apart from small extensions and elisions put in for musical interest.(The long version includes non-verbal references to America from Bernsteins West Side Story!)Its at Paul Simons final verse, starting Kathy Im lost that the cover really does get lost, orforget its direction. There seems little reason for the scherzo section to be a rock-boogie work-out: it breaks up the restrained continuity of the lyric and becomes, as we might say, mere text formusical presentation. Indeed, in the original long version, the verse is repeated, again with littlejustification. I might even describe this as a poorcover version, although that does assume thatquestions of judgement are salient; however, such a judgement points towards my title: memorablemusic, forgettable words.

Robert Christgau 1967: song words and modern poetry

Poor old Yes tend to get it from both historical directions: from the perspective of punk aswell as from the perspective of British psychedelia. Tales from the Topographic Oceans (1974)

feels like a nadir separating the pop-rock peaks of Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd (Astronomy Domine(1967)) and the Sex Pistols (Anarchy in the UK (1976)). According to the staple history of pop,rock, and soul, Yes, and Wakemans solo projects, are prime representatives of bloated rockexcess which punk blew away; theyre pretty much written out of the script of canon-formers suchas Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh, Chuck Eddy, and Jim Miller. But theres also a pre-history whichsees the brief period of British psychedelia or experiment also being let down by Yes. Chris Cutlersuggested that:

UK progressive music declined into groups like Yes, Genesis, ELP and Gentle Giant. (Cutler,1983: 121)

Picking up directly on Cutlers article, Jon Savage, punks great historian, also casts the

music before prog rock as a moment of promise:

1968 was the year when everything started to go wrong. Commitment took the place of innerexploration. There was a division in pop, between singles and albums, between bubblegum andprogressive. (Savage, 1994: 351)

Im homing in on 1972, with an eye to comings and goings: ELP gathered together in 1970,Yes: Wakemans arrival in 1971 and Brufords departure in 1972, Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyattleaving Soft Machine in 1969 and 1971 and, rather later, Peter Gabriel leaving Genesis in 1975.These shifts surely circled around musical commitment versus commercial pressure, a familiarnegotiation between underground and mainstream; although the sociologist might also point to thescale, ambition even, of visual presentation giving raise to logistical problems which demanded

greater economic investment.How the issues of relating words and music, encapsulated by our cover version

comparison, appeared at the time is indicated by an article first published rather earlier, in 1967.


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That year, Robert Christgau wrote an article for Cheetah, reprinted and slightly extended a yearlater for inclusion in the first volume ofThe Age of Rock. The article was entitled Rock Lyrics arePoetry (Maybe) and, with an assiduousness which must have been new at the time but was tobecome characteristic, Christgau drew attention to several important points. Gravitating towards adiscussion of Bob Dylan, naturally as it would have seemed, Christgau asserts that Dylan is asongwriter, not a poet. The next passage is worth quoting in its entirety:

Such a rash judgement [of Dylan] assumes that modern poets know what theyre doing. Itrespects the tradition that runs from Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams down to CharlesOlson, Robert Creeley, and perhaps a dozen others, the tradition that regards Allen Ginsberg as agood poet, perhaps, but a wildman. Dylans work, with its iambics, its clackety-clack rhymes, andits scattergun images, makes Ginsbergs work look like a model of decorous diction. An artadvances through technical innovation. Modern American poetry assumes (and sometimeseliminates) metaphoric ability, concentrating on the use of line and rhythm to approximate (orrefine) speech, the reduction of language to essentials, and tone of voice. Dylans only innovationis that he sings, a good way to control tone of voice, but not enough to revolutionize modernpoetry. He may have started something just as good, but modern poetry is getting along fine,thank you. (Christgau, 1969: 234)6

Discussing Dylans influence, Christgau arrives at the first two Procol Harum singles from1967 (Whiter Shade of Pale and Homburg) as examples of the kind of vague, extravagant imageryand inane philosophising that ruins so much good music, the nebulousness that passes for depthamong so many lovers of rock poetry. (Christgau, 1969: 235-6). Christgau then sets out what wasto become a standard view: rock diction became imbecilically colloquial, nonsense syllablesproliferated, and singers slurred because nobody cared. (Christgau, 1969, p. 240) Reaching theBeatles, Christgau takes the story positively forward: Lennon and McCartney are the only rocksongwriters who combine high literacy with an eye for concision (as high as Dylans or Simons)and a truly contemporary sense of what fits. (Christgau, 1969: 241) Lennons line, Myindependence seems to vanish in the haze is singled out. Christgau concludes by returning to thedistinction between songs and poems:

Maybe I am being too strict. Modern poetry is doing very well, thank you, on its own terms, but interms of what it is doing for us, and even for the speech from which it derives, it looksa bit pallid.Never take the categories too seriously. It my be that the new songwriters (not poets, please) lapseartistically, indulge their little infatuations with language and ideas, and come up with a product thatcould be much better if handled with a little less energy and a little more caution. But energy iswhere its at. And songs even if they are only songs my soon be more important than poems,no matter that they are easier too. (Christgau, 1969: 242)

Indeed by the end of the article, Christgau confesses to being less impressed by the poetRobert Creeley (Christgau, 1969: 243), finding more of language-related interest in songs even ifthey are only songs.

When we put in that qualifier, even if they are only songs, it may be worth being clear

what we mean. Perhaps issues around song turn around issues of duration, duration being thesimple indication of the time taken by a particular track, but made up of several things: the givenspeed of enunciation in the song, and the shape or form of the track or song. A pop fan could claimthat a songs limit is about three minutes and that a longer song is actually becoming somethingdifferent, a dramatic scene perhaps, a stream of consciousness or fantasy, merely slow, or merelymulti-versed. That three-minute limit may in turn owe something to pop musics realist assumption,that the words are enunciated according to the speed of ordinary speech. Christgaus examplefrom the Beatles Help, My independence seems to vanish in the haze, is sung closely to howquickly one would ordinarily pronounce it as speech. In this sense, an exact antithesis of thisaspect of progressive rock may be found in the pop principles set out in Cauty and DrummondsThe Manual how to have a number one hit the easy way, two of whose four golden rules statethat:

6My italics. Christgau alludes to an article by Paul Nelson which claimed that Dylan had revolutionized modern poetry (as well as the

whole of modern-day thought). Also found at: http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/lyrics-che.php


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Secondly, It must be no longer than three minutes and thirty seconds (just under three minutesand twenty seconds is preferable). [] Fourthly, lyrics. You will need some, but not many. (Cauty Drummond, 1998: 53)

In turning to three case studies, I want to emphasize that song, on the one hand, andmusic and words, on the other, may refer to different things, or at least to things which carrydifferent connotations.

Three examples

In these three examples, Im less concerned with the meaning of the words, more with theway words occupy the musical space of the song, although any attempt to keep those two thingsentirely separate is ultimately futile. As Ian MacDonald memorably said of musical minimalism:Theres no escaping it. Those damned word things will mean something, however purposelesslyyou play with them. (MacDonald, 2003: 179). The examples are chosen to cover three bases, arange which might be found in other repertories, in post-punk, for instance. Robert Wyatt is there torepresent a more modernist position, Greg Lake the traditional lyricist, Genesis the pop-musiccompromise. The last example is my favourite, though in all three cases the journey is asinteresting as the destination.

I. Anti-lyric: Robert Wyatt

But I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really. A lot of the rockthing came out of people who'd started out doing covers of versions of the English scene and theAmerican scene, the Beatles and Dylan and so on, and then got more and more involved ininstrumental virtuosity and esoteric ideas. I was really going the other way. I was brought up withesoteric ideas and modern European music and Stockhausen, Webern, avant-garde poets, and allthe kind of avant-garde thing in the Fifities, before pop music--the beat poets, the avant-gardepainters at the time, and so on. To me, the amazing thing was to discover the absolute beauty of

Ray Charles singing a country and western song or something like that. So my actual journey ofdiscovery was I discovered the beauty of simple, popular music. And it was much more elusive,really, than people who put it down realize. Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try tomake a pop single and find out that it isn't.7

When we were all more nave, it was fine to gasp at their long solos and 11/8 riffs; but todaysomething more is required, and when Roberts voice and Kevins songs are missing, the reallimitations begin to show. (Williams, 1972: 16)

Building on examples of cross-disciplinary discussion such as Christgaus chapter, Iveargued elsewhere that a simple way into the position of words in pop songs may be to see them,not automatically as being similar to poetry which tends to be how the words get represented on

the page but as tending either towards being like poetry or tending towards being like prose.(Griffiths, 2003, p.42) In the chapter in which this argument is set out, the key crossover position isoccupied by Patti Smith, a published poet who metamorphosed into rock singer. Its possible to seea track like Piss Factory(1974) bearing elements of the breathed line which had characterized acertain tendency of modernist American poetry from Ezra Pound through William Carlos Williamsand Charles Olson to Allen Ginsberg. In turn, Patti Smith is influential directly on songwriters likeMichael Stipe and Morrissey. In anti-lyric the words are brought to the music, and whatdistinguishes one song-writer from another is the internal consistency of the pool of words. Thisdiffers from the traditional lyric, a compromise between words and music characterized by degreesof rectitude: words give way to musics formal demands and play to their musicality, while musicholds back its expressive capacity.

Its possible to hearMoon in June from Soft Machines Thirdas the most radical solution to

the word-music experiments presented on their previous two records. Like the other tracks on

7Robert Wyatt, interview with Richie Unterberger, 1996, accessed from internet: http://www.furious.com/perfect/wyatt.html


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Third, this one is notable for its duration, taking up one side of the vinyl double album, althoughstrictly only about nine of its nineteen minutes brings together words and music in song. Of thosenine minutes, three sections suggest themselves as relatively stable song sections, two of whichwere re-workings of earlier songs (Thats how much I need you now and You dont remember),leaving only the extended New Yorksong as new for the purpose. If as Ive suggested, once songsgo beyond a built-in time limitation then theyre on the way to becoming something different, itstempting to see Moon in June as a sequence of three recitatives and arias. The recitative sections

draw attention to themselves for their transitional, prose-like nature, and its these I want to focuson.

First, these sections are characterized musically by a particular type of theme, which seemsto belong to the generation of Wagner and Debussy. Three examples: Theme A: 038, Theme F:317, Theme L: 641.

Secondly, the words of the song are occasionally characterized by seeming randomness ofsubject matter, something Robert Wyatt has acknowledged as an aim:

I got fed up with songs where the main accents would just make you emphasize the words in away you wouldn't if you were saying them, and I got interested in the technique of writing songswhere the melody line fits the way you'd say the words if you were just talking. ... And that meantsinging about things that were true as far as I understood it. And if you're muddled, the only thingsyou're certain are true, are that there's a tea machine in the corridor and it works or it doesn't. Thisis true, it's not wishy-washy bullshit. It may be low profile, but it's true. (King, 1994)8

However, such an approach makes an example such as the 1969 BBC Top Gear version acurio, the details of which require explanation for understanding:

Not forgetting the extra facilitiesSuch as the tea machine, just along the corridorSo to all our mates like Kevin,Caravan, the old Pink FloydAllow me to recommend Top Gear

Despite its extraordinary nameYes, playing, playing now is lovelyHere in the BBCWe're free to play almost as long and as loudAs the foreign language classes... and the John Cage interview...and the jazz groups... and the orchestras on Radio 3

Indeed, this version is followed by a direct quote from Dylans All Along the Watchtower(Pop stars drink each others wine/plough each others earth), also found in the 1969 demo, andknown at the time from the 1968 cover by Jimi Hendrix. Another modernist element may reside inthe tracks self-reflexivity, Wyatt reflecting on the materiality of songs while being in the action ofmaking one up, which I alluded to at the opening of this paper. There are some down sides. The

freedom of modern art may also have been equated with non-sense, such as the lines, Youre thething I are, I knew and I wanted you more than ever now. We might also wish to draw a discreetveil over some of the pre-feminist nature of some of Wyatts sentiments.But I think the third and most clinching point about Wyatts claim to a modernist anti-lyric lies morepossibly in his voice than in the words themselves, and a certain and apparent disjunction betweenvoice and song. Wyatts voice has at least two distinct ranges and, as with many singers, the upperrange is going to express whichever words are enunciated. (Griffiths, 2004: 51) This is particularlyso in the last section, the section derived from You Dont Remember, where I confess to hearingWyatts vocal commitment being overly emotional for the situation being described. A happiersolution occurs at the very start of the recording on Thirdwhere, until the first aria arrives after

8Also at http://www.lunakafe.com/moon8/en8x.php


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126, the ear is unsettled and de-centred: my diagram includes all of four sections in this shortperiod. (Diagram 3)9

II. Lyric: Greg Lake

Greg Lakes words to The Endless Enigma, the opening track of ELPs 1972 album Trilogy,can function as an example of standard lyric-writing, where the words are closely tailored to theimplications of the music. In the same chapter which presented the lyric/anti-lyric dichotomy, I alsosuggested that one way into the judgement of rhyming terms was offered by W.K. Wimsatt whosuggested, from a study of Pope, that grammatical dissonance between rhyming terms helped arhyme, and helped structure its couplet. Rhyming cat with sat, a noun with a verb in pastparticiple, is inherently more interesting, more dynamic than rhyming cat with mat, two nouns. Iused this as a way of reflecting on a sense I had that a passage of rhyme in Elvis Costello seemedto me less interesting than a passage in Rickie Lee Jones. (Griffiths, 2003: 52-53)

We can approach The Endless Enigma with this claim in mind. Many of the rhymes aresimilar in syllabic count and grammatical type: this might point towards their being uninterestingbut, as I said in the article, this is not to say that the words are perfectly apposite for this particular

song or track, or for what Emerson Lake and Palmer were generally trying to achieve.Nevertheless, this would I think push us towards the idea of progressive rocks being, at times, thecombination of memorable music and forgettable words and, now, also, in that order: The EndlessEnigma has lots of sections of challenging music physically challenging, virtuosic whichoccasionally give way to sections which include the words. Indeed, The Endless Enigma is dividedinto two parts by an intervening, classics-rocking Fugue. In that sense, the words are perfectlyappropriate, and a different set of words might indeed get in the way. I confess to some lingeringdifficulties: the addressee, the unidentified you, which seems to me to lack the definite ambiguityof the you of gospel music (big y, little y). In turn, that sense of uncontrolled ambiguity, borderingon vagueness, carries into the rhymes themselves.10 Memorable music, no doubt, with somethingof the organ loft about its singability, not to mention the re-harmonization of the last verse. Here isthe second part: memorable music and forgettable words, working well together.

III. Diversity: Genesis

I always thought we were closer to those seventies groups who made what I would callimaginative pop: Queen, 10cc.11

I know what I like (in your wardrobe) finds Genesis12 in 1973 poised between art andcommerce, underground and mainstream. The song was based on Betty Swanwicks painting usedas the cover of Selling England by the Pound. Tony Banks category of imaginative pop couldinclude examples like 10ccs The Dean and I or Queens Killer Queen while, in the relation ofwords and music, a similar point could be reached via a songwriter such as Paul Simon in Reneand Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war, or the Richard Thompson of 1952 VincentBlack Lightning. In all of these, the key starting-point is an attention to detail little details are

going to count, and subsequent listening can bring a delightful realization of their precision.The second verse is a crucial point in terms of the compromise a songs words have to

make with musical form. The second verse ofI know what I like is a variation on or embellishmentof its first verse, and I want to use that observation as a way in to analysing the song as a whole. Ifwe examine only those verses in comparison, we see immediately that theres no obvious rhymecorrespondence at the end of lines, though there are a few internal rhymes along the way.(Jacob/wake up; cuckoo to you; Mister Lewis). So the verses could be rendered, as in my first

9Ive also referred to the demo version, issued on Backwards (2002), the BBC version, issued on BBC Radio 1967-71 (2003), and the

two tracks included on Jet-Propelled Photographs (2003).10

Compare Robert Christgau (1969): vague, extravagant imagery and inane philosophising that ruins so much good music,nebulousness that passes for depth among so many lovers of rock poetry, above.11

Tony Banks, in David Buckley, Genesis article, Q Classic, op. cit., p.90.12

I assume the words belong largely to Peter Gabriel, with no evidence, but the band always presented the songs as collaborations.


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diagram of the song (diagram 5), as prose passages: perhaps a Joycean stream of consciousness,or an Alan Bennett monologue, told from the perspective of one of the characters in the painting.13

The song uses something of an unreliable narrator or, more precisely, an unsettled orconstantly shifting narrator. In a second diagram (Diagram 6) the words are arranged as a drama,and its for a listener to deduce, much as one does watching a play or film, whether one hearseither the characters themselves or Peter Gabriel as a sort of master ventriloquist. There appearsto be a difference between the narrator who belongs to the story and the one identified as the first

person singular, and Ive made that distinction clear. Lying slightly outside the drama is the chorusitself, which could belong to any of the characters, or not:

I know what I like, and I like what I knowGetting better in your wardrobeStepping one beyond your show

We note the full rhyme know/show and half rhyme know/wardrobe (sung as ward-robe). I confess that I find the last line (Stepping one beyond your show) mystifying, deliberatelyobscure, and Id explain the lines structurally (diagram 7):

I know what I like I like what I know

This is a sort of palindrome, or chiasmus. And then:

Getting better in your wardrobe

Stepping one beyond your show

Note too, as a structural trick, that the line:

When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hear them talk

both concludes the introduction and commences the conclusion, the second to a full rhyme: youcan tell me by the way I walk. Keep them mowing blades sharp! also acts as a binding phrase,repeated at the end of both verses. Note too that the second verse phrases the music-wordrelation slightly differently, organized hyper-metrically (Diagram 8):

Verse one: (4+4+4) + (4+4+4) + (4+4) + (4)

Verse two: (4+4+4+4) + (4) + (4+4) + 4)

In fact, even though the second verse, at eight bars, lasts a shorter time than the first, ninebars, it contains a bigger syllable count: 67 as opposed to 56 for the first verse (bar-syllableaverages of 6.2 for the first verse compared with 8.37 for the second). A final diagram (Diagram 9)

offers a closer comparison between the verses, and I hope they bring out the suppleness of theword-music relationship. Numbers indicate the verbal space of each line (Griffiths, 2003: 43-48),with scores for syllabic density also showing diversity. The remainder of the song other than itswordy sections leave us with three passages of instrumental music: the very opening, fading in,the ending, with a flute solo, and the terrific link between first and second verse (120 140): therich organ followed possibly, by a foreshadowing of Gabriels world-music concerns.

The live version of the song, from the Rainbow Theatre in 1973 (included in GenesisArchive 1967-75), is close to the studio version, despite timings indicating 409 studio comparedwith 536 live. In fact, its the framing and non-verbal outer sections that expand, the song itselfshowing a difference of only one second:

Intro Song Outro

13Ive rendered Mister Lewis as dear Mister Lewis, while the CDs word sheet indicates then Mister Lewis. I preferdear Mister Lewis,

and hearit on the studio version, but hear the official version in the live performance!


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Studio 34 155 60

Live 69 154 92

It is evident that, in live performance, Gabriel was emphasizing the dramatic, multi-vocalaspects of the song.

By way of conclusion: some sociological guesswork

I know what I like reached number 18 in the British singles chart for 4 May 1974, concludinga four-week stint, holding its artful own in a line-up which firmly put the pop in popular music. (ReesD. - Lazell B - Osborne R.,1992 and Gray M. - Lazell B.- Osborne R., 1993) Abbas Waterloo, atnumber one, was the winner of that years Eurovision song contest, Gary Glitter and the GlitterBand, not one single but two, Mud, Slade, Wizzard, Mungo Jerry, the Bay City Rollers, and noveltyacts galore: child star Jimmy Osmond of the Osmond Family, the Wombles, based on a childrenstelly programme, and Paper Lace and Peters and Lee, not one but two products of a televisiontalent show, Opportunity Knocks. The album chart was of course a much more serious affair, andSelling England by the Poundhad been quietly sitting in the top thirty since its entry during the

week of 13 October 1973, peaking at number six on 3 November, and dropping out just beforeXmas. It then re-entered, alongside the single, on 27 April to peak at 17 on the week it disappearedfor good, 1 June; a total of ten weeks first time, six second. During its peak week as a single, 4May, the album chart included a surprising amount of pop music Carpenters at number one,Elton John, Wings, Slade, Peters and Lee, Millican and Nesbit, New Seekers, some singer-songwriters Elton again, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel and some progrecords: Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd (no prizes for naming the albums), Queen 2 (with SevenSeas of Rhye), Deep Purples Burn and Tangerine Dreams Phaedra. What the charts at leastsuggest is not so much Allan Moores profusion of styles under the rock umbrella, but somethingof a battle between pop and rock.

Although a musicologist, Im always interested in raising sociological questions; RichardPetersons Why 1955? is a good demonstration of the claim that music can be explained entirely

in terms of social conditions. (Peterson, 1990: 97-116) Clearly, the emergent domination of 12vinyl albums is important for the additional durations which Ive been looking at. However, a moregermane question for the sociologist is the nature of the word-carrier in the bands: what set offpeople like Peter Gabriel, Greg Lake, Robert Wyatt, Jon Anderson, from the others in theirrespective bands? (King Crimsons Peter Sinfield is comparable to the Grateful Deads RobertHunter in being a word-provider essentially outside the musical producers.) Part of the backgroundof anti-lyric is that a clear role of word-carrier emerges over time: where the Beatles or RollingStones or the Who might have been united as music-lovers first, word-carriers second and later,by the time Morrissey, if not Johnny Marr, was taken to court by others in the Smiths, he could intheory have claimed that without his words, there really was little of distinction about his group; andits said that REM albums have to await Michael Stipes words. Again, these questions of who getsto be a poet, who gets to be a musician, are interesting, especially in cases such as these where

musical virtuosity may be a salient issue. Answers to the kind of question which Paul Zollo oftenand usefully asks of song-writers, concerning the processes of song-writing, would be enlightening.(Zollo, 1997)

Songs last by being sung, records last by being played: if neither of these happens a songis, to all intent and purpose, dead. The great alternative to such survival is the academy, and herethings may look better for progressive rock, as these compositions become studied bymusicologists and - a tip for the future - performed by young musicians in a search for musicalhealth and efficiency: imagine the possibility of progressive records being set as test pieces forensemble performance. Grateful as I am to the conference organizers for having invited me torevisit and, in many cases, discover the riches of the repertory under discussion, my conclusion iswhat I vaguely thought at the time, and have thought since: that British progressive rock becamemore, not less, interesting the more it became like pop music and less like modern art. Around1972 there was a river to cross, between art-based commitment, and selling out to commercialdemands, my ears and mind tell me to trust the ones, like Yes, Genesis and ELP, who recognized


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and negotiated that tension. The word tension is borrowed from that theorist of popular culture, anddevotee of jazz, the English poet Philip Larkin, writing in 1970, and with whom Ill end:

I am sure that there are books in which the genesis of modernism is set out in full. My own theoryis that it relates to an imbalance between the two tensions from which art springs: the tensionbetween the artist and his material, and between the artist and his audience, and that in the lastseventy-five years or so the second of these has slackened or even perished. I dislike such things

not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique incontradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whetherperpetrated by Parker, Pound or Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. (Larkin, 1985:27)

Tracks referred to:

Simon and Garfunkel,America, Bookends (1968). Song by Paul Simon.

Yes,America (1972), long version reissued with Fragile (2003), single edit with Close to the Edge(2003). Live version: Keys to Ascension (1996)

Soft Machine, Moon in June, Third(1970). Song by Robert Wyatt.

Soft Machine, Backwards (2002), BBC Radio 1967-71 (2003), Jet-Propelled Photographs (2003).

Emerson Lake and Palmer, The Endless Enigma, Trilogy(1972). Song by Keith Emerson andGreg Lake.

Genesis, I Know what I like (in your wardrobe), Selling England by the Pound(1974). Live version(1973):Archive 1967-75(1998).

Bibliography

Bate, Walter J.1970 Criticism: the Major Texts, New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Cauty, Jimmy - Drummond Bill1998 The Manual: how to have a number one hit the easy way, KLF Publications, London.

Christgau, Robert1969 Rock Lyrics are Poetry (Maybe), in Jonathan Eisen (ed.), The Age of Rock: Sounds of the

American Cultural Revolution, New York, Random House, p. 230-243.

Cutler, Chris1983 File Under Popular, New York, Autonomedia.

Gray, Michael - Lazell, Barry Osborne, Roger1993 30 Years of NME Album Charts, London, Boxtree

Griffiths, Dai1999 The High Analysis of Low Music, "Music Analysis", 18/3, p. 389-4352002 Cover Versions and the Sound of Identity in Motion, in Hesmondhalgh D. - Negus K.,

Popular Music Studies, London, Arnold, pp. 51-64.

2003 From Lyric to Anti-lyric: analysing the words in pop song, in Allan F. Moore,AnalyzingPopular Music, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 39-59.2004 Radiohead OK Computer, New York, Continuum, 2004.


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King, Michael1994 Wrong Movements. A Robert Wyatt History, London, SAF Publishing.

Larkin, Philip1985 All what Jazz: a Record Diary 1961-71, revised edition, London, Faber and Faber.

Macan, Edward

1997 Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Music and the Counterculture, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press.

MacDonald, Ian2003 The Peoples Music, London, Plimco.

Nietzsche, Friedrich1968 The Case of Wagner, 1st ed. 1888, in Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Basic Writings of Nietzsche,

New York, Modern Library, 1968.

Peterson, Richard

1990 Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music, Popular Music, 9, pp.96-116.

Poe, Edgar A.1848 The Poetic Principle.

Rees, Dafydd Lazell, Barry Osborne, Roger1992 40 Years of NME Charts, London, Boxtree.

Savage, Jon1994 Time Travel, Chatto & Windus, London.

Williams, Richard

1972 review of Soft Machine Five, "Melody Maker", 29.4.72, p.16.

Wimsatt, William K. Jr. Brooks, Cleanth1957 Literary Criticism: a Short History, New York, Vintage.

Zollo, Paul1997 Songwriters on Songwriting, Cincinnati OH, DaCapo Press.


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Diagram 1:America: Paul Simon song Yes record

Paul Simon Yes

Verse 1 A Let us be lovers A

Verse 2 A Kathy I said A2

Verse 3 B Laughing on the bus B (slow movement)

Verse 4 A Toss me a cigarette (not included)

Verse 5 A Kathy Im lost C (scherzo)

D (wordless coda)


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Diagram 2: Yes,America, 1972: single edit. Song: Paul Simon, 1968

Section A

6 beatsFirst verse2x4 beats Let us be lovers well marry our fortunes together

4x4 beats3x2 beats 2x4 beats Ive got some real estate here in my bag4x4 beats So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs Wagners pies3x4 beats And walked off, walked off, walked off to4+6 beats look for America,Link: 8x4 beats

Second verse:2x4 beats Kathy I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh4x4 beats3x2 beats 2x4 beats Michigan seems like a dream to me now2x4 beats It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw4 + (2+4) + 4 beats All come to look for America4 + (2+4) + 4 beats All come to look for AmericaLink: 8 beats

Section B (134) all beats

Third verse8 8 8 8 8 8 Laughing on the busHis bow-tie is really a camera

Section C (2) all beats

Fourth verse8 8 8 78 8 8 88 8 8 8 Kathy Im lost I said although I knew she was sleeping8 4x3 4 Im empty and aching and I dont know why.8 8 Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike3x4 4x4 Theyve all come to look for America3x4 4x4 All come to look for America3x4 4x4 All come to look for America

Section D (314)

4x4 4, 4 4, 4 4,6x4 (to fade) 356 to 407


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Diagram 3: Soft Machine, Moon in June, Third(1970)

Recitative 1

On a dilemma between what I need and what I just want section ABetween your thighs I feel a sensationHow long can I resist the temptation?

I've got my bird, you've got your man section B 0.17So who else do we need, really?

Now I'm here, I may as well put my other hand in yours section C 0.39While we decide how far to go and if we've got time to do it nowAnd if it's half as good for you as it is for meThen you won't mind

If we lie down for a while, just for a while section D 0.57

Till all the thing I want is needYoure the thing I are, I knew

Aria 1 section E

Verse 1: bass solo 1.26

I wanted you more than ever now Verse 2 2.03We're on the floor, and you want more, and I feel almost sureThat cause now we've agreed, that weve got what we needThen all the thing us needs is wanting

I realized when I saw you last Verse 3 2.39We've been together now and thenFrom time to time - just here and thereNow I know how it feels from my hair to my heelsTo have you haunt the horns of my dilemma- Oh! Wait a minute!

Recitative 2 3.17 4.16 section F

Over - Up - Over - Up - ... DownDown - Over - Up - Over - ... Up

3.38 organ solo with vocal interjections section G

Aria 2 section H

Living can be lovely, here in New York State Verse 1 4.16Ah, but I wish that I were homeAnd I wish I were home again - back home again, home again

There are places and people that I'm so glad to have seen Verse 2 4.44Ah, but I miss the trees, and I wish that I were home again

Back home again


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The sun shines here all summer Verse 3 5.10Its nice cause you can get quite brownAh, but I miss the rain - ticky tacky tickyAnd I wish that I were home again - home again, home again...

Living is easy here in New York State Verse 4 5.36Ah, but I wish that I were home again

Dissolve to 6.05 sections I and J

Recitative 3 6.25 - section K

Just before we go on to the next part of our songLet's all make sure we've got the time

6.41 section L

Music-making still performs the normal functions -

background noise for people scheming, seducing, revolting and teachingThat's all right by me, don't think that I'm complainingAfter all, it's only leisure time, isn't it?

Aria 3 section M

Now I love your eyes - see how the time flies Verse 1 7.00She's learning to hate, but it's just too late for meIt was the same with her loveIt just wasn't enough for meBut before this feeling dies Refrain 7.35 - NRemember how distance can tell lies!

Melisma 7.53 section O

You can almost see her eyes, is it me she despises or you? Verse 2 8.09You're awfully nice to me and I'm sure you can see what her game isShe sees you in her place, just as if it's a raceAnd you're winning, and you're winningShe just can't understand that for me everything's just beginningUntil I get more homesickSo before this feeling dies, remember how distance tells us lies... Refrain 8.44 8.58

9.02: instrumental section


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Diagram 4: Emerson, Lake and Palmer, The Endless Enigma, Trilogy, 1972.

Why do you stareDo you think that I care? one-syllable, verb/verbYou've been misledBy the thoughts in yourheadYour words waste and decay

Nothing you say verb/verbReaches my ears anywayYou never spoke a word of truth

Why do you thinkI believe what you saidFew of your wordsEver enter my head one-syllableI'm tired of hypocrite freaksWith tongues in theircheeks one-syllable, noun-nounTurning their eyes as they speakThey make me sick and tired

Are you confusedTo the point in yourmindThough you're blind one-syllableCan't you see you're wrong? blind and see?Won't you refuseTo be used verb/verbEven though you may knowI can see you're wrong?Please, please, please open theireyesPlease, please, please don't give me lies one-syllable, noun-noun

Ive ruled all of the earthWitnessed my birth one-syllable, noun-nounCried at the sight of a manAnd still I don't know who I am

(repeat Are you confuseddont give me lies)I've seen paupers as kingsPuppets on strings one-syllable, noun-nounDance for the children who stareYou must have seen them everywhere(Part Two)Each part was played

Though the play was not shownEveryone cameBut they all sat aloneThe dawn opened theplayWaking the dayCausing a silent hoorayThe dawn will break anotherday one/two-syllable, noun/nounNow that it's doneIve begun to see the reason why I'm here


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Diagram 5: Genesis, I know what I like (in your wardrobe), Selling England by the Pound(1973)

Verses one and two rendered as prose:

There's always been Ethel. Jacob, wake up, you've got to tidy your room now! And dear MisterLewis, isn't it time that he was out on his own? Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds: cuckoo toyou! Keep them mowing blades sharp! Sunday night, Mister Farmer called, said, Listen son, you're

wasting time; there's a future for you in the fire escape trade. Come up to town! But I remembereda voice from the past: gambling only pays when you're winning. I had to thank old Miss Mort forschooling a failure. Keep them mowing blades sharp!


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Diagram 7: I know what I like (in your wardrobe), chorus

I know what I like I like what I know

Getting better in your wardrobe

Stepping one beyond your show


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Diagram 8: I know what I like (in your wardrobe), verse one and two, hyper-metre

Verse one: (4+4+4) + (4+4+4) + (4+4) + (4)

Verse two: (4+4+4+4) + (4) + (4+4) + 4)


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Diagram 6: I know what I like (in your wardrobe) rendered as one-act drama

Dramatis personae: story-based narrator, first-person narrator, Ethel, Jacob, Mr Lewis, Mr Farmer,Voice from the Past, Miss Mort, Lawnmower, two little lovebirds (optional)

Peter Gabriel (optional)

Action

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: It's one o'clock and time for lunch. Dum de dum de dum.

FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR: When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hearthem talk.

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: Theres always been Ethel.

ETHEL: Jacob, wake up! You've got to tidy your room now.[And dear Mister Lewis, isn't it time that he was out on his own?]

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: [And dear Mister Lewis, isn't it time that he was out on his own?]Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds. Cuckoo to you!

[or MISTER LEWIS: Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds. Cuckoo to you!]

[or TWO LITTLE LOVEBIRDS: Cuckoo to you!]

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: (to Lawnmower) Keep them mowing blades sharp!

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: Sunday night, Mister Farmer called, said,

MR FARMER: (to Narrator) Listen son, you're wasting time; there's a future for you in the fireescape trade. Come up to town.

FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR: But I remembered a voice from the past.

VOICE FROM THE PAST: Gambling only pays when you're winning.

FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR: I had to thank old Miss Mort for schooling a failure.

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: (to Lawnmower) Keep them mowing blades sharp!

STORY-BASED NARRATOR: When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hear

them talk.

LAWNMOWER: Me, I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk.


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Diagram 9: I know what I like (in your wardrobe), complete transcription indicating relation of verseone and two as verbal space

VERSE ONE

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

There's always been Ethel: Jacob, wake up! You've got to tidy your room nowIR (Jacob/wake up)SD 6 SD 10 SD 2

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

And dear MisterLewis: Isn't it time that he was out on his own?IR (Mister/Lewis)

SD 6 SD 10 SD 1

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Over the garden wall two little lovebirds cuckoo to you!IR (cuckoo/to you)

SD 6 SD 9

1 2 3 4Keep them mowing blades sharp

SD 6

VERSE TWO

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4Sunday night, MisterFarmer called, said: Listen son, you're wasting time there's a future for you in the fire escape trade

SD 9 SD 9 SD 10

1 2 3 4

Come up totown!SD 4

1 2 3 4But I remembered a voice from the past

SD 9

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4Gambling only pays when you're winning I had to thank old Miss Mort forschooling aSD 9 SD 11

1 2 3 4failure Keep them mowing blades sharp

SD 6

Legend: SD = syllabic density, IR = internal rhyme, Bold = line emphasisTotal syllable count: first verse: 56, second verse: 67, bar count: first verse, 9, second verse, 8

griffith seng

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