It's so hard to talk about art and music and the creative impulse without sounding insufferably pretentious. But I was always fascinated by the idea that really great artists often can't do anything *but* create. They have to do it; they're literally compelled to create, to paint, to write, to make music, whatever it is they do. And when they're on form, and their heart is in what they're doing, these truly first-rate artists, they seem to achieve groundbreaking results at a speed the rest of us can only imagine.
Dennis Hopper, I think it was, said something like 'you're not an artist unless you would literally die if you weren't doing your art'. That sounds preposterous by itself - but the thing is, I can actually imagine Brian Wilson being like that in his most productive periods. You get that sense of desperation and obsession, almost, in the tale of him trying to get these evanescent song ideas out of his imagination and recorded before they disappeared. Running off a street into a brothel in Amsterdam just because they had a piano, and he had an idea he had to work out — and not, it seems, for any other, more prosaic reason. Running off with Al Jardine's idea and sketchy re-arrangement for re-recording 'The Wreck of the John B' and coming back in less than 24 hours not only with a really incredible, groundbreaking arrangement, but a fully recorded backing track. Nagging away, over months, at an idea that wasn't quite right, that was, in fact, so *wrong* to his way of thinking, that he was going to give it to another artist, *worrying* away at little pieces of it with different players and arrangements and studios and then editing, and mixing, re-editing, mixing again — until one day in Autumn 1966, there was Good Vibrations, in mono, finished — a great example of what Ian MacDonald, writing about some other lasting music created in the same year, called 'imperishable popular art of its time'. That's creativity working at full tilt, right there — an example of Brian Wilson moving, as David Anderle said, "like a tank through wheat", simultaneously unsure of exactly what to do, but also determined to get to his artistic goal, and moving so fast, and in directions so unexpected by anyone around him, that it seemed as though, for a while, no-one would ever catch him up. It explains the commercial and artistic left turn that is Pet Sounds and even what SMiLE might have been — as Mike and Capitol Records kept trying to tell him, they really weren't the most commercial ideas around, compared with what The Beach Boys had been doing — but they were what Brian felt he just had to do artistically at the time. And when he stopped feeling so certain about what he was creating and where he was going artistically... well, that's when it all started to fall apart.
I thought David Marks hit it absolutely square on when he said in an early 80s interview that the early albums were so successful because, as honest and naive as it sounded, Brian really believed in the stuff he was creating. His heart was really in it. There's something in that, that runs right through from the gauche but insanely catchy absurdity of Cuckoo Clock and Chug-A-Lug to The Lonely Sea, Catch A Wave, and In My Room, to Wouldn't It Be Nice, You Still Believe In Me, Caroline No, Our Prayer, Cabinessence, This Whole World, Surf's Up, and 'Til I Die. The irresistible urge, an obsession to create, coupled to belief in what he was creating. It's something indefinable that those songs have that is missing in his weaker material. Later, when he had lost that momentum, when it was less about creating for creation's sake, and more about just giving the Beach Boys another album with some tracks on it, because, well, their contract said they had to do that... the music often seems so... shrunken by comparison, so reduced.
I rarely encounter musicians or music that I feel has that unbridled, almost helplessly passionate quality about it, like the people who made it just had to get it out of themselves somehow, and were almost swept along themselves in the undertow of creating it. Tony Wilson once said, of one evening in Manchester in the late 70s when he sat and watched a battle of the bands competition, that he saw an endless procession of people that were only on stage because they wanted to be rich and famous, and then he saw one band that were there because they had NO CHOICE but to be there, creating — and they were the only ones he was interested in. Now, whether you like the band he signed on the basis of that evening or not, there's no denying that they sounded quite unlike anyone else at the time, and that they pushed music forward. I had that feeling from their music when I first listened to it, anyway. And then I had it again with Amy Winehouse's second album. The first one left me absolutely cold, but when I heard 'Rehab', I knew I wanted to hear more. Right away. And the rest of that album… well, you know the rest.
That kind of stuff seems to come along so very rarely. So often, especially today, new music is powerfully marketed to us, but I hardly ever hear that quality in it, the thing that makes your heart leap up, like the opening riff to Surfin USA, the handclaps in I Get Around, the cello and Tannerin in Good Vibrations, so that within seconds, you want to leap in the air and shout "What's this? WHAT IS THIS? I MUST HEAR MORE!!!"
Well, I had that experience today. I was introduced to a track by a 19-year-old Norwegian singer-songwriter called Aurora. If you're in the UK, you'll probably know something she did last year, which got a lot of exposure nationally here, but my goodness, that thing she did then — which showcased her to the nation as a very capable and pleasant-sounding singer, but didn't really tell you much more — just doesn't begin to represent what she's capable of. In so far as I was aware of her at all before, I was very indifferent — after all, there are a lot of people with nice voices around — but after hearing one of her own tracks, I did something I very rarely do. I found as much of her music as I could on-line and listened to it. She, and it, seem to me to have that artistic quality that Brian's best stuff does. It doesn't sound like the Beach Boys at all, really (well, there are interesting harmonies here and there… that's about it, though) but I get that same sense, as on Pet Sounds, of the artist being completely, quietly confident of what they're doing, however strange it might seem at first, and also of their being compelled to do it like this, to make this music, as though it's not actually their choice — and creating something that goes far beyond what everyone else is doing in the process. She even sounds a bit like Brian did when talking about music in the mid-60s, in the latter part of the beautifully filmed promotional video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AbrDWIwBO4. I think during that time, he had feelings about creating music in the studio that are very similar to the ones she expresses there.
Ah, who knows, perhaps it's just me. When I listened to the first couple of songs, I initially thought 'Mmm, yeah. Not bad. A bit like a rather better version of Lana Del Rey. A stronger voice, but a bit arty, breathy and weird'. And *then* it hit me full force. So perhaps others will disagree, or get stuck at the Lana Del Rey comparison. Or even think she's worse than that. And regarding marketing… well, there's no doubt that a lot of money is being spent moving Aurora around the planet so she can perform to people right now — in the last few months, she's played gigs in the States and all over Europe. And that beautifully filmed promotional video didn't just create itself on someone's iPhone without a lot of hard work and money being spent, that's for sure. So perhaps I'm fooling myself. But then I listen to the music again… and all of my concerns drop away. Did you ever, you know, put on Surfin' USA or Fun Fun Fun, or Prayer or H&V or Surf's Up (the track, not the album)… and just HAVE to play it again, as soon as it had finished, because it seemed so DAMN good? That's what I'm talking about, right there.
I don't work for Aurora, I don't have an agenda to push. I'm just a chap with an Internet connection, a computer keyboard, some headphones and some ears. But when I heard this music, it made me think of the best music I know, and I just had to write the above.
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