Mug Of Kintyre

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

Mug Of Kintyre

by Simon Frith

January is a rotten month. Music that sounded quite jolly over Christmas emerges, shamefaced, from behind its tinsel and turns out pathetic, like drunken dreams the morning after. No one’s got any money left and so no one releases a record or even goes on tour. The music papers have made their star predictions but, in reality, the new year’s tone is set by the worst of last year’s hits.

ror a while it sounded like that was going to be Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band’s “Floral Dance,” chirpy grandad music for anti-punks of all ages. Bing Crosby was dead, always a bad sign, and UA, ever hip to the eccentricities of British teenage taste, released the soundtrack of Casablanca. The message was plain: back to the oldest wave the moguls could find.

They needn’t have bothered. Biding his moment, split-timing his entrance, was Liverpool’s Own Groaner. Paul McCartney has built-in nostalgia and “Mull of Kintyre” was the biggest record of the year, destined to be a hit every Christmas for the rest of our lives. McCartney, of course, planned it this way. There was a need, he decided, for a sloppy new Scotch ballad, something for the drunks spilling on to Glasgow’s pavements, for the folk gathered at Highland hogmanays. So he wrote it, bagpipes and all and, sure enough, it’s a standard already. Gather two or three maudlin Scots together and they start singing “Mull Of Kintyre,” can’t help themselves, like it’s something they’ve known all their lives. Eat your heart out Rod Stewart, this is the song they’re going to keep for their football celebrations.

You’ve got to hand it to old Paul. While Rod is puking his way around the airways and Mick is running off with Bryan Ferry’s missus and David Bowie is kidnapping his own son and Elton John is speculating in hair, McCartney is working quietly and efficiently at being the People’s Beatle. But then he always has done—clean, decent, charming, melodic; every mother’s son, every uncle’s nephew, every TV producer’s star guest. Nothing at all like Sid Vicious.

Which is what’s wrong with the common British argument that in a couple of years time the fuss’ll seem ridiculous—as the Pistols, the Clash and the rest line up for th^ir talk show memories apd royal receptions. There’s no way Sid Vicious will ever be like Paul McCartney. For a start (a finish too) he’s nowhere near as pretty. Looks like a lavatory brush, as someone said, though even that is more appealing. No wonder none of the new wave seem very taken with sex—difficult to get much going with such ugly mugs. Even skinheads had a certain hobnailed appeal—punks only touch while pogoing and that’s to knock each other down.

The thing that most interests me about Wings has always been Linda McCartney—she was the most inexplicable visual image of any public person I can think of, a sort of feminist earth mother. Punk is intriguing in the same way: it is sexless, the most sexless teenage movement ever, pipping even disco (which is an adult fad anyway). The immediate effects of punk asexuality have been admirable. More women have got into bands than usual and whatever else punk performances may be, they aren’t usually sublimated forms of chick-pulling, Robert Plant style. In the words of Alternative TV’s punk classic: “love lies limp.”

This disinterest is good for gays too. Punks lack both the bristling British sensibility of an ELP, rushing to refute any hint of sexual deviance, and the glitter bands’ use of Anita Bryant’s offensive notion that gay sex is somehow deliciously decadent. At a gig last night, I was surprised to see men dancing tenderly together while both teds and punks wondered around them without a mutter. If Tom Robinson can get hall-fulls of regular rock guys to chant “Glad To Be Gay,” then I guess anything is possible and when the local lesbians came in, I suddenly realised where I’d seen punk girl fashions before.

That evening was loose and fun but it did lack teenybop appeal. And even Paul McCartney, like Sid Vicious, doesn’t shave enough. And so, in 1978’s final tribute to 1977, the readers of Record Mirror, our nearest equivalent to 16, voted all their annual awards to Marc Bolan, the only punk with sex appeal. There must be good bopping in heaven tonight but you didn’t expect to faney Sid Vicious, did you?