Issue #3 : Los Angeles (part two)

This issue’s featured piece of music is:
Symphony #4  by Charles Ives
And the featured recording is by:
The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and Christoph von Dohnanyi
Recorded in: 1992

Well, the last issue ended on a tense cliffhanger: my friend Owen and I wandering forlornly along Santa Monica pier wearing giant cowboy hats and bemoaning the intrinsic anti-American bias of classical music. A least I was bemoaning this, deeply and seriously, in my own mind, while Owen ogled chicks and I absolutely did not.

Soon however, we had to ‘hurry’ back to the Dr Who convention in the basement of the Marriott Airport Hotel in order to catch an interview with the actor who played the sixth Dr Who, Colin Baker (the convention’s special Star Guest). Having to do this – even passively – was a deeply humiliating experience. Speeding, Speed-like through the downtown LA traffic in order to sit in a big room listening to whatever’s the plural of dufus grilling a fellow, fat thesp dufus about Zylons (yes spods, I know) was probably the closest my life has thus far come to skidding along what I think’s known as ‘rock bottom’. And much as I would like to segue handily into our car radio playing Charles Ives’ Symphony #4 throughout this hectic journey, it sadly didn’t happen - every radio station had instead been contracted to play the Killers; or rather Bruce Springsteen for under 25s only without the trampolinist. (We made the Colin Baker interview with barely minutes to spare. He pontificated, grossly self-satisfied, for three hours non-stop. Afterwards the room smelled faintly of bleach.)

That night we took a taxi across the city to hang out on Sunset Strip – something I’ve been secretly (also not so secretly) wanting to do since I was 17. The Whisky a Go Go was quarter-full; of children. Owen and I stood at the back, with their parents. The \'soul\' band playing were also made up of children. We sipped at our drinks and couldn’t see Slash anywhere. Next we tried the Roxy, but it was closed. We couldn’t find the Viper Room, so we ate burgers in the Rainbow Bar & Grill and nearly got in two fights. What a brilliant evening. Living the dream. And then at 2.30am, just as we were about to head home, we spotted Lemmy at the end of the bar, and Owen became very excitable, since Lemmy is his all-time number one hero. As we unsteadily approached him for a conversation Lemmy was undoubtedly going to relish, I had an unexpected Proustian flashback.

Lemmy is directly responsible for an image that tormented my youth and young adulthood. When I was a raw and impressionable heavy metal fan, I once saw, in a French heavy metal magazine (you had to get it wherever you could), a photograph of Lemmy gleefully holding up a Polaroid of, well, I find it difficult to confront this, even 20 years down the line. The Polaroid was of an elephant having sex with a woman.

Although the haunting image of the elephant and the woman was all I could think of, I didn’t bring it up straight away. Instead, as we sidled up to the great man, I said: ‘Lemmy, I’ve been having trouble listening to classical music here in Los Angeles. The two just don’t seem to fit (except for occasional blasts of Thomas Tallis; see previous issue). Do you have any advice? What do you listen to when relentlessly samey overdriven rock ‘n’ roll just ain’t pushing your buttons?’
Lemmy looked at me. He was old, and ugly. He put his glass of cola down on the bar, sighed deeply and said two words:
‘Charles Ives.’
‘A child’s eyes? What?’
‘Charles Ives. The first great Mystic of Americana. Worked in insurance.’
‘I’ve heard of Charles Ives, but not his music. I don’t know why but I always thought his music would sound cheesy and vapid – all showtunes and razzamatazz, and...’
‘The opposite,’ interrupted Lemmy rudely. ‘That was all there was before Ives came along. Ives somehow managed to fuse together the sounds of the emerging modern American consciousness, into a kind of all-embracing, musical ‘dream logic’. This radical approach reached its apotheosis in Ives’ incredible Fourth Symphony, in which, through four wildly – insanely – different movements (think of them almost as time zones), he was somehow able to evoke the essence – the fundamental bright-eyed and blackened post-pioneer spirit – of the New World; of America at the beginning of the 20th century. It truly has to be heard to be believed,’ said Lemmy. ‘It hardly sounds like classical music as you and me know it at all.’ A crowd of rockers had gathered around us. A few were taking notes on the back of beermats.
‘But you say he worked in insurance, Lemmy?’
Lemmy belched. ‘Excuse me. Yeah. His music was way too off-kilter and radical for the myopic squares of the era (the early 1900s). His genius only became apparent after he died; somewhat like mine probably will.’
‘I agree,’ said Owen.
‘And the Fourth wasn’t even performed until the poor bloke had been dead for ten years. His is a tale of the grossest neglect. Much like the public’s response to the last ten or eleven Motorhead albums. The Fourth’s four movements; they’ll blow you away; there’s so much there; you could spend your entire life inside em and not get (all that) bored.’
‘Jeepers.’
‘You’ve got trains in there; church hymns; ragged horns; diaphanous strings; harps; bubbling joannas; creepy fairground music; spooked-out choirs; blistering dissonance; the works. It’s less a traditional symphony; more a twisted, visionary sonic patchwork of straightahead U.S of A. weirdness.’
Many of the previous, notes-taking rockers were now strangely absent.

‘Would you like me to tell you more interesting stuff about Charles Ives? Because there’s loads more of it, and it’s all completely fascinating.’
‘Well personally yeah, I’d love you to, but in all honesty Lemmy, I don’t think my readers will really be in the mood for any more. In fact, this is probably too much already. They’ve probably skipped all this stuff.’
‘What ungrateful peasants!’
‘I know!’
‘Hang on, this means they might well enjoy the latest Motorhead album. It’s entitled Kiss of Death, and features twelve great new-ish tracks.’
‘That’s right,’ said Owen. ‘It’s a hackneyed tour de force. And it got to number four in the German charts (their highest-ever Teutonic chart position).’
Lemmy raised a triumphant eyebrow. There was silence for a while.
‘Before we go, may I ask you one final question?’
‘Fire away.’
‘Do you still have that Polaroid of the elephant having sex with the woman?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘In that French heavy metal magazine. You must remember. You held up this awful photograph; and it was of an eleph…’
‘An elephant, I heard. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away and leave me alone. I’m trying to have a quiet glass of cola by myself here, and don’t appreciate being hassled by drunken British tourists.’
‘OK sorry, goodbye then. Goodbye probably… forever.’
We stood there, and it was poignant.
‘Unless you’re playing the Southampton Mayflower this Autumn. I mean, if you are, then I might come down again. It depends.’
‘I think we’re there in November; night or two after the Ipswich Gaumont. But yes until then, possibly, goodbye.’
‘Please don’t play so many new songs though. No-one wants to lis…’
‘Just leave.’
‘Alright.’

Next issue: no more Dr Who; maybe a little less Lemmy.

download the Fourth Movement of Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony for free here