.
I nabbed this book as soon as I saw it on the shelves of one of my favourite bookstores, the Berkelouw’s store at Rose Bay.
As soon as I got home, and after I had made myself a cup of coffee, I started reading. I knew that the book would be fascinating, reading these authors ‘takes’ on their favourite albums.
I have to admit that the first thing I did was to skim the book to see if any of the writers had chosen artists who I admired
Yes there were, and their responses were fascinating.
David Mitchell chose Joni Mitchell and her landmark album ‘Blue’. His take on the album was that it was, ‘like pages torn from a raw autobiography…You don’t play ‘Blue’ thinking how ‘weak’ Joni is, through the alchemy of art vulnerability is turned to armour’.
Also compelling was his take on the last song on the album, ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’. Mitchell saw it as a ‘debate’ between the exes about love. Richard believed that love was a thing that you grow out of’. Joni, on the other hand, is the perennial romantic.
Writer Linda Grant chose Joni’s album ‘Heijra’, derivative of an Arabic word which means journey. Linda wrote that she very much related to the album and Joni’s restlessness which saw her traveling from town to town, finding ‘refuge on the road’.
I have made no secret of my love for the music of that wild, gruff Irishman Van Morrison. It was good to see the inclusion of Will Self’s essay on Sir Ivan’s ground breaking first album ‘Astral Weeks’. There had been no record like it before and there probably will never be. Simply unique.
Self’s take is an interesting one.
“I wouldn’t exactly say it was my favourite album, but ‘Astral Weeks’ is probably the album that I have listened to most in my life. It is, almost all would acknowledge, a great album, and moreover one that’s constituted by a suite of eight songs, one flowing seamlessly into the next, so as to give the whole the feel of a single through composed piece.”
I had never seen the album that way but I take Self’s point, who wrote that he has listened to the album hundreds if not thousands of times!
David Hepworth chose another favourite Randy Newman’s ‘Sail Away’. His description of Newman’s artistry is worth repeating.
“Over the years I’ve come to suspect it’s this record’s dryness that makes it endure. That and its ruthless lack of sentiment. You simply wouldn’t be allowed to make it today. Randy Newman is the master of the unguarded thought. He had always given his best songs to his most reprehensible characters: the slayer in ‘Sail Away’, the Harvey Weinstein figure in ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’, even the condescending deity in ‘God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind) who only loves humans because they are so needy. The interesting thing about unworthy thoughts is everybody has them.”
The book comprises 50 short essays in all and covers a wide variety of musical states from the Velvet Underground to Bjork to David Bowie to Duke Ellington to P J Harvey to Mozart.
There were quite a few artists whose work I am not familiar with which is great as I now feel the need to explore these works.
Before I finish, one other big things that came out was the alchemy that would sometimes take place between a writer and their favourite album.
Sarah Hall wrote about her love of the Radiohead album ‘Ok Computer’ and how how listening to the album helped create one of her novels, The Electric Michelangelo”.
Many of the writers spoke about how they would write listening to their favourite pieces of music, and how the music would inspire them to write well.
The book was a pleasure to read. LONG PLAYERS : WRITERS ON THE ALBUMS THAT SHAPE THhas been published by Bloomsbury Publishing. First published in Great Britain in 2021. ISBN HB 978-1-5266-2578-6, e; Ebook: 778-1-5266-2577-9.
Featured image : The cantankerous Irish genius Van Morrison