B
Benton
Guest
The Times, November 26, 2004
And the band played on
Steve Jelbert
Take a defunct group, string their hits together and, hey, it’s a musical
THE announcement that the Smiths will soon receive the greatest accolade the theatrical business currently offers seemed inevitable. A musical, Some Girls are Bigger than Others, is planned to open in the West End in the summer. It’s being bravely touted as the “antithesis” of shows such as the Abba-based tunefest Mamma Mia!, a declaration that any putative investors might not be pleased to hear.
Good luck to those involved, but there have to be serious reservations about its commercial viability. For a start, the music of the Smiths, despite its many virtues, is rarely associated with the sort of communal good times which allow punters to overlook the gaping plot holes and contrived situations of shows such as We Will Rock You, Ben Elton’s salute to the magic of Freddie Mercury and Queen.
This kind of show also needs transatlantic appeal, the lack of which effectively scuppered Our House, the barely remembered Madness musical. (That, and script devices such as: “Anyone seen Dave?” “Try the House of Fun.” Cue said musical number.) Although the Smiths were and remain popular in the United States, the now middle-aged generation who grew up with them presently work 50 weeks a year and thus rarely travel abroad.
Using already familiar songs to drive a plot is problematic, yet even those written specifically for the purpose can prove obscure. Back in the vainglorious days of Rock Opera, it was difficult enough to figure out the meaning of The Who’s Tommy, if there was one.
Tom Waits aside, few rock musicians attempt such a task today. Why should they, when their back catalogue can do the work for them? The hits of Rod Stewart, Queen and, in New York, Billy Joel have entertained punters in their coachloads. Even Germany boasts Falco Meets Amadeus, the local memorial to Eighties excess based around the Euro-smashes of the late Austrian star, remembered here for Rock Me Amadeus. Rejecting lucrative offers for a reunion tour, Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson prefer to stay home and count the cash rolling in from Mamma Mia!’s multinational success. For fans who insist, younger, fitter performers, often Australian, can provide a decent simulacrum of an Abba show.
Only a few years since its emergence, this variation on the traditional stage musical already has a formula. The source artist must be safely retired or even deceased, yet familiar to everybody. Giants such as U2, AC/DC and REM, or even the superannuated likes of Status Quo and Duran Duran, are sacrosanct while they still tour and release new recordings. Led Zeppelin, the biggest-selling act of the Seventies, have yet to be exploited, but their oeuvre might well confound dramatisation, although a painful teenage coming-of-age scene, maybe involving a restless lad tossing and turning in bed and soundtracked by one of Jimmy Page’s longer solos (possibly featuring some work with a violin bow), might work.
Subjects needn’t be restricted to a single artist as long as there’s an element of shared experience. How about a 12-hour production set around Live Aid, including hours of dull teenage conversation interspersed with dull music? Or perhaps Britpop — The Musical, hosted by a currently underemployed Chris Evans and featuring an orchestra pit full of lost Longpigs and Sleeperblokes, enjoying one last brush with showbiz before they’re lost forever to the world of EFL teaching?
Never underestimate the now familiar biographical show. After Buddy and Elvis, who could resist Ozzy? Throw in those self-explanatory hits (Paranoid, Snowblind, Never Say Die, Bark at the Moon), scenes such as the immortal micturating on the Alamo in his wife’s frock, snorting ants with one of Mötley Crüe, biting the head off a bat and confronting a burglar in the nip and evocative dialogue such as, “The nearest Sabbath ever got to black magic was a box of chocolates”, and you’ve got a surefire hit. And Ozzy and Sharon can sit in the royal box on the opening night.
NOW THERE’S AN IDEA...
The Cure present Why Can’t I Be You? The only thing sadder than a Goth is an old Goth, like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, but surely there are enough of them to merit the first ever monochrome stage musical.
Duran Duran present It Happened at the Paris Air Show. The Old Romantics are the perfect soundtrack for the shoulder-padded tale of an aircraft-seat salesman from Birmingham and his hopeless pursuit of a high-priced Eastern European hooker. At an air show. Possibly starring that bra model whose name no one can pronounce.
Siouxsie Sioux presents Watch Your Back. It’s a surprise that nobody has turned Valerie Solanas’s Society for Cutting Up Men manifesto into a musical before. So kudos to Punk Rock’s own Ice (Old) Maiden for taking a wild idea and running with it, on six-inch stiletto heels.
The Libertines present Coo, Look at all them Big Buildings. The touching tale of a Midlands lad who can’t believe he’s in the Big Smoke. It starts impressively but peters out after the interval.
Eminem in Why aren’t I on the $100 bill? The only lyricist alive who reveals more of himself than Morrissey, the man who did for dungarees what Dexy’s Midnight Runners did for, er, dungarees, talks about himself in this one-man show.
And the band played on
Steve Jelbert
Take a defunct group, string their hits together and, hey, it’s a musical
THE announcement that the Smiths will soon receive the greatest accolade the theatrical business currently offers seemed inevitable. A musical, Some Girls are Bigger than Others, is planned to open in the West End in the summer. It’s being bravely touted as the “antithesis” of shows such as the Abba-based tunefest Mamma Mia!, a declaration that any putative investors might not be pleased to hear.
Good luck to those involved, but there have to be serious reservations about its commercial viability. For a start, the music of the Smiths, despite its many virtues, is rarely associated with the sort of communal good times which allow punters to overlook the gaping plot holes and contrived situations of shows such as We Will Rock You, Ben Elton’s salute to the magic of Freddie Mercury and Queen.
This kind of show also needs transatlantic appeal, the lack of which effectively scuppered Our House, the barely remembered Madness musical. (That, and script devices such as: “Anyone seen Dave?” “Try the House of Fun.” Cue said musical number.) Although the Smiths were and remain popular in the United States, the now middle-aged generation who grew up with them presently work 50 weeks a year and thus rarely travel abroad.
Using already familiar songs to drive a plot is problematic, yet even those written specifically for the purpose can prove obscure. Back in the vainglorious days of Rock Opera, it was difficult enough to figure out the meaning of The Who’s Tommy, if there was one.
Tom Waits aside, few rock musicians attempt such a task today. Why should they, when their back catalogue can do the work for them? The hits of Rod Stewart, Queen and, in New York, Billy Joel have entertained punters in their coachloads. Even Germany boasts Falco Meets Amadeus, the local memorial to Eighties excess based around the Euro-smashes of the late Austrian star, remembered here for Rock Me Amadeus. Rejecting lucrative offers for a reunion tour, Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson prefer to stay home and count the cash rolling in from Mamma Mia!’s multinational success. For fans who insist, younger, fitter performers, often Australian, can provide a decent simulacrum of an Abba show.
Only a few years since its emergence, this variation on the traditional stage musical already has a formula. The source artist must be safely retired or even deceased, yet familiar to everybody. Giants such as U2, AC/DC and REM, or even the superannuated likes of Status Quo and Duran Duran, are sacrosanct while they still tour and release new recordings. Led Zeppelin, the biggest-selling act of the Seventies, have yet to be exploited, but their oeuvre might well confound dramatisation, although a painful teenage coming-of-age scene, maybe involving a restless lad tossing and turning in bed and soundtracked by one of Jimmy Page’s longer solos (possibly featuring some work with a violin bow), might work.
Subjects needn’t be restricted to a single artist as long as there’s an element of shared experience. How about a 12-hour production set around Live Aid, including hours of dull teenage conversation interspersed with dull music? Or perhaps Britpop — The Musical, hosted by a currently underemployed Chris Evans and featuring an orchestra pit full of lost Longpigs and Sleeperblokes, enjoying one last brush with showbiz before they’re lost forever to the world of EFL teaching?
Never underestimate the now familiar biographical show. After Buddy and Elvis, who could resist Ozzy? Throw in those self-explanatory hits (Paranoid, Snowblind, Never Say Die, Bark at the Moon), scenes such as the immortal micturating on the Alamo in his wife’s frock, snorting ants with one of Mötley Crüe, biting the head off a bat and confronting a burglar in the nip and evocative dialogue such as, “The nearest Sabbath ever got to black magic was a box of chocolates”, and you’ve got a surefire hit. And Ozzy and Sharon can sit in the royal box on the opening night.
NOW THERE’S AN IDEA...
The Cure present Why Can’t I Be You? The only thing sadder than a Goth is an old Goth, like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, but surely there are enough of them to merit the first ever monochrome stage musical.
Duran Duran present It Happened at the Paris Air Show. The Old Romantics are the perfect soundtrack for the shoulder-padded tale of an aircraft-seat salesman from Birmingham and his hopeless pursuit of a high-priced Eastern European hooker. At an air show. Possibly starring that bra model whose name no one can pronounce.
Siouxsie Sioux presents Watch Your Back. It’s a surprise that nobody has turned Valerie Solanas’s Society for Cutting Up Men manifesto into a musical before. So kudos to Punk Rock’s own Ice (Old) Maiden for taking a wild idea and running with it, on six-inch stiletto heels.
The Libertines present Coo, Look at all them Big Buildings. The touching tale of a Midlands lad who can’t believe he’s in the Big Smoke. It starts impressively but peters out after the interval.
Eminem in Why aren’t I on the $100 bill? The only lyricist alive who reveals more of himself than Morrissey, the man who did for dungarees what Dexy’s Midnight Runners did for, er, dungarees, talks about himself in this one-man show.
