Cooper’s Column

Had you ever wondered where all of those magnificent suspended chords had come from? Well, so had I. On reflection, I really shouldn’t, as I share Townshend’s predilection for Purcell’s music — but that’s not the point of this column. What is, is what Townshend had to say about how he had become familiar with classical music in the first place: at grammar school in London, where music lessons often consisted of being sat in a room while a gramophone played some Beethoven or Bach or, in the case of this particular love affair, Purcell.

He went on to pay tribute to the Who’s manager, Kit Lambert, for having encouraged this affinity, urging the young Townshend to develop far beyond the three-chord tricks that still constituted most pop music of the time. I’m sure Jedwards’ manager does much the same — and it isn’t difficult to imagine Simon Cowell’s wrestling with the role of Palestrina in Renaissance polyphony, is it? Either way, the germ of Townshend’s unique abilities — beyond those with which he was born, of course — was, as he acknowledged, those record sessions at school. It isn’t quite like that today, as far as I can make out. Interviewing a manufacturer of soundcards recently, I was told how schools are buying them by the truck load — which might be OK, save for the fact that, as far as I can see, the prime use for this particular product is to make plinky-plonk noises for dance music tracks.

“Old fart hates dance music — shock horror!” I don’t, actually — but I do hate dumbing down. The fact that Townshend (and Entwistle too, don’t forget — they were at school together and it has never been quite clear to me which was the greater musician, even if the former easily won the composer award) was pretty intimate with classical music didn’t prevent the Who from being the most violent, iconoclastic band of their era. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, after all: the Parisian crowd booed Bizet as they did Stravinksy.

Meanwhile, another manufacturer tells me he is worried because fewer schools are buying recorders today, instead preferring drums and percussion because they are ‘more accessible’ (also, I secretly suspect, because they don’t get covered in spit). Others tell me that it is now possible to leave school with a qualification in music without actually being able to play a note and without even a nodding acquaintance with the classics.

Daily Mail stuff? I disagree. The knowledge that there was more to what you could do with the guitar than play ‘Peggy Sue’ led Townshend to write ‘Magic Bus’ and ‘I Can See For Miles’ — hardly the cue for a tea dance, either of them. So who’s inspiring the next Who? And with what? Suddenly, Radio One seems chillingly explicable.  0