THAT WAS THE DAY, THAT WAS

I thought I might write about the fact that Spain has imposed direct rule upon Catalonia and has, in the process, stripped the region of its autonomous status; but as this is a subject I’ve covered a couple of times of late, I figured it would be wiser to wait till the next development before putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). I’ve a feeling there’s more to come where this particular story is concerned, and whatever I add to what I’ve already written will only needed to be added to again pretty soon after. I suppose I could also bemoan the fact yet another public figure has had to issue yet another public apology for something he said that offended somebody – i.e. Michael Gove’s ‘outrageous’ Weinstein joke; yes, Gove is a twat, but how many more times do we have to endure online outrage before we say enough is enough?

Okay, so sod the day today and dip into weekend nostalgia once more. My choice of Saturday night viewing as the rest of the nation plugged into talent show tripe was the 1973 movie, ‘That’ll Be The Day’, which itself dips into nostalgia for an earlier era. By the date of the film’s production, the pop culture revolution of the 60s had reached the point whereby it paused for breath for the first time and looked back over its shoulder at the remarkable journey it had made in little short of 15 years. In the US, the likes of Todd Rundgren condensed those 15 years into his oeuvre as pop realised it had a past, whilst stage musicals moved from the contemporary concerns of ‘Hair’ and escaped into the safer sentimental refuge of ‘Grease’; simultaneously, on this side of the pond Roxy Music and Wizzard revived the dormant 50s spirit by injecting it with some trashy 70s glamour as they were surrounded in the charts by a string of reissues.

‘That’ll Be The Day’ cast David Essex in the lead role of Jim MacLaine, a composite character of the Lennon/McCartney/Jagger/Richards generation, beginning life as a war-baby whose parents’ marriage is a casualty of conflict and then growing up to reject the novel new grammar school path to higher education courtesy of an imported youthquake that opens a door to alternate possibilities not dependent upon the results of exams. Essex was largely unknown to the general public when he won the role, though had made a mark in the archetypal turn-of-the 70s Rock Opera, ‘Godspell’; within a matter of months of the film’s premiere, he had become a bona-fide pop star, but he shared the spotlight in ‘That’ll Be The Day’ with genuine veterans of the period it recycles.

The likes of Keith Moon and Billy Fury feature in small cameos, though the real coup at the time was securing Ringo Starr as the street-wise Mike, who accompanies Jim on his journey through the rites-of-passage Butlin’s experience and then onto the fairground circuit. Starr had himself been a beneficiary of the holiday camp summer season during his pre-Beatles membership of rival Liverpool band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and the fact the Fab Four remained viable pop currency when the movie was shot undoubtedly aided its box-office success.

A pre-‘Citizen Smith’ Robert Lindsay also features as Jim MacLaine’s best mate at school, the swot who did as he was told when Jim ran away; his college life embraces the Trad Jazz and obligatory beard that serve to sever the friendship when the two old pals reunite a couple of years after Jim escapes the preordained path his mother laid out for him. Jim eventually returns home and belatedly attempts to fit in, marrying the sister of the Robert Lindsay character and impregnating her before the allure of Rock ‘n’ Roll proves too great. By the time we rejoin him in the following year’s sequel, ‘Stardust’, Jim MacLaine is the leader of a Beatles-esque band whose rise to fame and fortune has left his old life behind.

Critics have often labelled the two acts of Jim MacLaine’s fictional life ‘old wine newly bottled’, though the old wine was of a relatively recent vintage when the movie and its sequel were produced. I first saw the pair myself less than ten years after they premiered, when they constituted part of BBC2’s ‘Rock Week’ in the late summer of 1982, an early example of television ‘streaming’, with a series of loosely connected programmes on a theme spread over seven days. Although I didn’t know it at the time, Jim MacLaine’s mother projecting her own thwarted academic ambitions onto her offspring would be mirrored in my own life a couple of years later – something that provoked an instinctive rejection from me that ‘Stardust’ and its document of Jim MacLaine’s career as a pop idol provided an antidote to. For further reading, see the post from a couple of weeks back, ‘Musical Youth’.

In ‘Stardust’, Adam Faith steals most of the scenes he’s in as Jim’s devoted manager, albeit one who’s unable to save his golden egg-laying charge from the characteristic drug-induced exit of the period come the movie’s traumatic ending. Purely by coincidence, Slade’s solitary cinematic outing, ‘Flame’, appeared at a cinema near you at virtually the same time; considering Noddy and the lads had such a happy-go-lucky image, ‘Flame’ unexpectedly portrays the music biz in a similarly dark light as ‘Stardust’, chronicling the rise and fall of another fictional 60s band with equal cynicism. By 1974, the workings of the industry and the creative casualties it had left in its wake as Philistines in suits racked up the royalties had bred a disdain for its practices that helped provoke Punk a couple of years later, even though that generation didn’t fare any financially better than its predecessor.

Whilst it’s true that ‘That’ll Be The Day’ speaks the language of anyone who’s ever asserted their independence and challenged the consensus, whereas ‘Stardust’ documents the dream that used to fire the imaginations of the imaginative and was therefore only reality for a select few, the alternative available when Jim MacLaine walks out on domestic bliss is one that is no longer an option. Richard Ashcroft’s high-street stroll in the promo video for The Verve’s 1997 epic, ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, is now the fate of the outsider who never got away – despondent and defeated, though retaining a healthy contempt for the world about him, bereft as he is of social mobility, pining for the vanished riches of Rock ‘n’ Roll. From Jim MacLaine to Victor Meldrew in half-a-century.

© The Editor