Gunn's Rock

 Larkin's Jazz is a 4-CD set of the early sort of trad that the jazz section of the Larkin Society compiled to represent his favourite music. There was also an article in About Larkin magazine in which Trevor Tolley essayed a guess at which records might have comprised the poet's collection.

It's interesting to know for some, no doubt, and would make for a lively evening's listening but beyond illustrating why Sidney Bechet was his very favourite and wrote a poem in tribute to him, it might not inform the poetry very much.

I'd be the first to accept that I don't belong in the same paragraph, or even chapter, as Larkin or Thom Gunn but I can't think how any of my favourite pop music, which is many and various, has anything to do with any poems I ever wrote. Doris Day's Move Over Darling was probably my favourite record aged about 4 and provided the title for a nostalgic poem a few years ago. There was a forgettable poem called I Don't Want to Talk About It that stole from Uncle Rod. I can't think that 4-CD's, which I'd love to compile, would have any intersection with my poems.

Classical music would do better. Some Mozart opera and a minuet would have meeting places, as would Buxtehude and Bach and a piece called Farewell to Philosophy by Gavin Bryars which I adapted to a 1990's poem called Farewell to Poetry. But the point is that music is music, poems are poems and they have a close relationship but not necessarily the specific music a poet listens to or likes best and the poems they write.

However, the Thom Gunn letters are going down smoothly and quickly with a review likely here by the weekend, perhaps. One is forcibly reminded that the 1960's did certainly happen as advertised to those who were best-placed to take part. No, not the bowler-hatted London business types interviewed by TV reporters about Lady Chatterley. But it was definitely happening in San Francisco among Gunn and his friends. 

One can do the same sort of job that Prof. Tolley did for Larkin's music for Gunn's by noting which contemporary records he sees fit to mention in letters. It doesn't bring many surprises. Pop music in the 1960's hadn't quite fragmented into quite the bewildering range of genres that it did later even if it seems to have become homogenized since (to those of us who have stopped caring). Gunn's listening looks canonical, mainstream and 'of its time' to us by now but must have seemed innovative and exciting then. In fact it now simply looks wrong, having no mention that I've seen yet of Motown, Otis Redding, Aretha or any other black artist apart from Jimi Hendrix but it's not wrong on racist grounds or any other multi-cultural agenda, it's wrong because Motown, Stax and all those records re-discovered by the Northern Soul discos of the 70's were the best pop music.

Without attempting the full discography, Thom Gunn's record collection which, for all I know, might be meticulously catalogued in an American university archive next to Hart Crane's cutlery and Laura Riding's recipe books, it could have included-

Bill Haley & the Comets, Rock Around the Clock,

Elvis Presley, the Sun Sessions, Jailhouse Rock (I guess at some of the tracks)

The Beatles, everything up to and including Rubber Soul and Revolver; Strawberry Fields Forever.

The Rolling Stones, everything up to Their Satanic Majesties Request

The Small Faces, Itchycoo Park

Bob Dylan, Lay, Lady, Lay; The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

Joan Baez, The Grateful Dead, Country Joe & the Fish, Soft Machine, The Band, Janis Joplin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the one I'd not heard of, Blue Cheer, a San Francisco psychedelia band named after a brand of LSD.

John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band,

Clapton gets a mention as do the Bee Gees but unless there's more to come that isn't in the index, it goes as far as Bruce Springsteen who is credited with being,

the best new singer since - who shall we say? Elton John maybe.

 

A poster of Sid Vicious is mentioned but not the music. There is a dark poem, The Victim, about Sid and Nancy but how much he admired the music is hard to say. Many of us did.

One might have thought Madonna or Chic or all that came out of the New York gay disco scene might get a mention but it hasn't yet. I'll come back and correct this if it does but I suspect his night life was more about leather bars and cruising than being there for the dancing.

It's grim to think that some of those above get listed but the Mamas & the Papas don't but if pop music was a thing worth falling out about, few of us would have many friends. In the same way that one can't imagine how exciting it must have been to be there for the premier performance of the new Bach, Beethoven or Mozart, it must have been good to be there at the time. As it was when Marc Bolan was on TOTP, we first heard Hunky Dory or saw - who shall we say? The Clash maybe.

There might be a book of Poet's Music that somebody could do. I could start it here by asking a few but I'm not going to do it now. I'll give it some thought.