It’s that laugh. It’s that laugh still echoing three years on from when it stopped. And a random unexpected picture. He’s sweaty and hot, a pint to hand, drumsticks sitting on the tom. And beaming at the people shyly coming to say how much they enjoyed it, saying his name, telling him where they’ve come from, how often they’ve heard him play and do you know such and such who came with me the last time, that time in Ghent, or Hastings or wherever. Always he is smiling back, nodding, buoying them up with his kindness, his generosity. He might have remembered, but he’s distracted thinking about the beats and patterns. So he laughs with them and they go home happy and excited.
For us the laughter was a soundtrack, along with the jazz, weaving its way into and around our early lives. Laughter and silliness touching all the days, a comfort and a place of safety, reassuring and always telling us that things would be fine. Loose tooth, cat scratch, falling down the stairs, something horrid on the plate in front of us. Laughter fixed all of it; it was his remedy for us and perhaps for himself.
As those few short years passed slowly from laughter to sorrow, the laughter shifted to sighs and patient smiles, glancing looks and long hugs. Tight hard cuddles instead of giggles and then everything changed so fast and he was not there like he used to be. No more late night jam sessions or squeaking stairs in the darkness. No more jokes or teases, just a sullen scowl as the path once lit with joyous gold turned dark and scary. Uncertain, we were stepping through thorns and murky holes, trying to bypass the unexpected decay of wonder. But it didn’t work. Instead were many years of distant and disparate unshared lives, peppered with outreach and lonely calls back into the past. Eventually the future reclaimed all of us and just as unexpectedly what came next brought back the laughter.
Time took all of us along, and we followed in the noisy wake of him, following but never quite catching his riotousness. And still he’s always there in my head, in silence or in the music. Thank you for that and for the laughter, the wisdom, the kindness, the patience and the love. The time. Through all the complications and confusion, the absences and losses, the distractions, the otherliness of life, through everything, he has always been with me even if the plan went its own way. So thank you Daddy for holding us still and for your constancy living on in loving memory.
I can remember George Lewis and how the room smelled of smoke and beer and sweat. Breathing deep I can remember being up so very high and seeing the top of my Dad’s head. I can’t remember why I was on George Lewis’s shoulders when I was two years old, only the persistent rumbling noise; shapes, shadows dancing random across my eyes. Maybe the pictures were real, maybe not.
I can remember later in the street feeding the rag and bone man’s piebald horse. The horse couldn’t see me unless I stood front of him and my mother wouldn’t let me do that. She didn’t understand that the blinkers blocked the view or how the scent and heat of his shining black and white coat embraced me. I stared up not down, breathing deep. I never saw what Dad helped the toothless rag and bone man load up onto his cart. I can remember too the meandering echoes of Billie Holiday and New Orleans jazz.
I can remember much later standing on the corner of Cambridge Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue waiting for you. Looking. Would I know you now that you are old, would you know me now that I am nineteen? And then there you were, I saw you. I watched you looking furtive and anxious and guilty. But for whom the guilt? Maybe for all of us. Then we sat awkward and afraid of each other, no mention of sitting on a man’s shoulders or wanting to look a piebald horse in the eye. It was just uncomfortable words passing as conversation between a lonely daughter and her estranged father. The girl was unacknowledged. The man was unknown. They were anonymous, cloaked a hidden shared yearning, wanted none of this to be true, wanted that none of it had happened.
But it had; it could only keep on happening unless the pattern changed. She wanted it but he didn’t. “It was a long time ago.” Denial, hiding, blocking, rejection. Rejection again, but that wasn’t true either, just the thing he knew he had to do. There were other considerations, other truths, other hearts he must not let break.
The sounds and chaos of emotions grown and slowly settled over many years, over many sad walks around Cambridge Circus, over many times in the 100 Club and the Pizza Express in Soho. The tears in the dark, the heaving gulping sobs, the weeping and slow tears for what was so long gone, were ceased. The laughter came back, the joy of hearing him play, of seeing faces smiling from the past. “It should never have happened” Monty said. And then Dad died. And no it never should have happened but it did and out of destruction he had build much more. He had given something to share, something of love remembered.
A new CD with tracks from 1959. Dad on drums and George Lewis on clarinet. Listen to it? Absolutely. But not just yet. I can’t …
I was reading somewhere that authors like to have a particular playlist running in the background while they are working. I cannot imagine anything more annoying or likely to mess up what I am trying to write. But perhaps it depends on the type of music you like and if you like super samey bland stuff, it probably doesn’t interrupt what you are doing. But if you like music that’s in your face and challenging, it’s likely to get you twitching and fidgeting and that’s not good for the typing or the lexical accuracy.
Musicians are for the most part poets too, so words set to music from the likes of Stormzy or Springsteen are going to knock out any other words in one’s head. Like many people for whom music is an intrinsic and constant part of their lives, I do like to see musical references in a novel. There are quite a few in The Draftsman. It wasn’t part of the plan, they just snuck in.
The playlist for the book, in no particular order runs as follows:
Billie Holiday – Isn’t it a lovely day;
Andrews Sisters – Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree;
Glenn Miller;
Lonnie Donnegan – The Party’s Over;
Richard Thompson;
Elton John – Saturday Night’s Alright;
Gerschwin – Rhapsody in Blue;
Louis Armstrong – West End Blues;
Ma Rainey – Black Cat Hoot Owl Blues;
My Chemical Romance;
Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
Meatloaf – Bat Out of Hell; Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
Chopin – Nocturnes
This is the point in the blog where I should explain in very erudite language the reasons for having musical references in a novel. They are as follows (according to me, that is):
Music in a novel makes it more interesting
Musical references can be used as a narrative device
Music is a means of shifting the plot
Song lyrics can remind people of some shared experience
It’s random, based on what was playing during the writing
All of the above
None of the above
These reasons are all subjective and completely depend on the work you’re writing, the target reader and the selection of references. So it’s all rubbish and none of the above is a hard and fast rule.
But perhaps an explanation of the choices I made for The Draftsman is worth exploring, so here goes. For me there is no musician to compare with Billie Holiday. The breadth of her work and interpretations are still astounding and utterly unmatched. Billie was a warrior and she rarely backed down. A fighter who was alone and under attack, deceived and abused for pretty much her entire life. And yet the work she produced is sublime, beautiful, resonant, tender and joyful. It endures and stays ahead of her and all times. I even heard Billie singing in Tesco’s over Christmas. I was in the bath and shampoo aisle, and she wafted down “I’ve got my love to keep me warm”. Said it all really.
The Andrews Sisters are a different part of the soundtrack to my life. My sister Candy and I used to mime along to the Andrews Sisters, although the details have faded with lack of use. I just know that whenever I hear the Andrews Sisters I can’t help but think of Candy and her gifted mimes, right down to the accents. Glenn Miller is of a piece with the Andrews Sisters in many ways, but mostly I love his work because it takes a catchy tune and breaks all the rules with complicated yet accessible arrangements. Defiant and up and positive. I don’t know if he and Billie ever played together though they had lots of colleagues in common.
My dad Colin Bowden 29:II:1932 – 01:VIII:2021 Thank you for all that wonderful noise.
Lonnie Donnegan was once, a very long time ago, a part of my life and has echoed over the years for diverse reasons. The song referenced in The Draftsman, played at the protagonist’s father’s funeral, is not one that Donnegan was very famous for. But my dad once told me what it was about and, since it is about the end of an affair, I find it deeply poignant and tender. And I don’t know whether Uncle Tony had lots of affairs (probably) but if he did, the song adds another dimension to the man. It also reminds me that my own affair with a married man might have ended very differently, and not in our very happy marriage.
I could not overlook Richard Thompson in this book, not least because he’s up there with the poets, and also writes clever tunes and snazzy arrangements. Although we are both English, it took an American, my first husband Todd, to get me to listen Mr Thompson’s music. There were lots of girls at school keen on Fairport Convention et al but I became too obsessed with Elton John, Billie Holiday and Gerschwin to notice much else.
And Elton John’s was the first non-Jazz gig I ever went to. I was newly arrived back in London following a few silent years at a school in Brooklyn, and Jacqui Smith asked me if I would like to go to see Elton John play at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon. I was 14, intensely lonely and still wallowing in the ugly facts of the previous five years. And I had no idea who Elton John was. I said yes straightaway and loved every moment of the gig. I even got to see Marc Bolan who came on at the end. I only noticed because Jacqui screamed so very loud and dragged me to the stage. I’d never heard of Marc Bolan either, and he just looked like all the others on the stage. Maybe bigger hair. Now the memory brings back the colours and the noise, the stink of sweaty men and an audience who knew the words to all the songs. In Croydon.
If you can do the dots, you’ll love the sound of this in your head.
At that time I was still more interested in jazz but was trying to be more grown up, to pull forwards. I don’t know where I first heard Gerschwin’s Rhapsody in Blue but I fell in love with it and still it’s one of my favourite things to listen to. It brought me closer to Alison Taylor at school. Alison was a classical violin and piano player extraordinaire, bent on defying her parents ambitions for her by embracing jazz. Gerschwin was as close as it got. Gerschwin and then my dad because her boyfriend Billy liked him. Billy was aware of my dad before he was aware of me which Alison thought dusted my dad with glitter. I rather liked that. Nowadays I rarely listen to Gerschwin because Alison always jumps up to sing along with me. Ba ba ba baa ba baba baaa baaa. She died some years ago, but I still can hear her. All of us who knew and loved her can still hear her.
No one with an interest in jazz can overlook Louis Armstrong, a man whose presence in my life has recently become much more vivid. You won’t hear a more inventive bit of horn playing anywhere than Armstrong’s introduction to West End Blues. Our friend Winfried in Berlin, one of my dad’s oldest and most loyal fans has a Louis archive from 1963. He’s bequeathed it to the Louis Armstrong museum in Queens and it’s fantastic to browse. Winfried calls him St Louis Armstark.
I don’t know what made me reference Ma Rainey and Black Cat Hoot Owl Blues but I think it was probably the fact that her real name is Gertrude Pridgett and I have always loved that. She also sings in a moany sort of way that has echoes in the vocals of Bessie Smith and of course the sainted Billie.
When it comes to My Chemical Romance this is not a band I have ever much listened to. I think the reference weaselled its way into The Draftsman because my daughter Hannah was a big fan. I remember collecting her and a friend, Christian, I think he was called, from a gig in Brighton. They had explained to me that I wouldn’t need to park, always a struggle in Brighton, and that I would be able to find them because they dressed so distinctly. “We’ll stand out, so you’ll find us”. I think they were about 15. I got to the venue and tried to spot them, superbly camouflaged amongst hundreds of other teenagers in black jeans, white shirts, all black eyed and scowling. Hannah’s white blonde hair was fortunately unique amongst the throng.
Don’t you just love Meatloaf? He’s so loud and tender, in your face with his gentleness and the whole of the Bat Out of Hell album is unrelenting brilliance. It’s Meatloaf’s first album and I have never understood how work that is so melodic and poetic could be called Heavy Metal. Its honesty and poesy are probably why it’s one of the best-selling albums of all time.
And what book would be complete without a reference to Queen? I had a very wealthy boyfriend who was ten years older than me whenBohemian Rhapsody came out. Another nine minutes plus long song. He gave me the album for Christmas and I wasn’t particularly thrilled (Elton still ruling). But I still have the album and as Elton faded into blah blah, Queen just kept on getting better and better and I was hooked. No so on the boyfriend, despite the Rolls Royce and the Jensen Healy. They couldn’t begin to make up for a total absence of personality.
Towards the end of the novel when The Draftsman is hiding up in the woods from friends and family, he hears music drifting up to his secret place. I don’t know why it had to be a Chopin Nocturne: they were all down there at a barbeque and you really would have thought something a little more upbeat would have been playing. Except as the draftsman’s torn and twisted psyche was fighting to right itself, Chopin would have been high on his agenda as he put together the party’s playlist.
Martin Cox’s musical interests are actually a lot denser than I realised in writing the book. Just another part of the man that I only started to understand as the book went on. He’s stayed hidden for most of his life, so I suppose I should be glad that he clambered into my head to share himself on the page, even if only a little bit.
