A Splendid Time is Guaranteed For All

I seem to have lived through several fashion cycles of Which Is Considered The Greatest Beatles Album. When I was a teenager, it was generally thought to be Sgt Pepper. Then Abbey Road came to the fore. Then The White Album was the cognoscenti's choice. Currently Revolver seems to be the one. I think Rubber Soul had its moment in the sun a while ago. As is the way with the strange zero-sum games around the Beatles (to like Lennon you must denigrate McCartney), to think that Revolver is supreme sometimes involves picking holes in other records. And I've read a number of people dismissing Sgt Pepper for its whimsy, the supposed weakness of the songs, the paucity of its claim to be a concept album, its lack of rock'n'roll muscle, and no doubt other things I have forgotten.

But Sgt Pepper is my favourite Beatles album. In fact it may be my favourite album; I certainly can't think of another record that gives me such complete and pure joy from beginning to end. It's a funny, uplifting, moving, beautiful record, just so full of wit and invention and originality and generosity and love. It is remarkable how the opening song ('Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band'), while being essentially a fairly throwaway song, is funny (the moment when the audience laugh at something we can't see is perfect), it really fucking rocks (it's McCartney doing those fiercely electric guitar stings as the song opens and Ringo's drums are thunderous), it creates the sense of this strange imaginary band with great economy (electric guitar and a wind band), and even has time for a little hinted melancholy ('Sgt Pepper's lonely / Sgt Pepper's lonely'). And then the way it clears the way for 'Billy Shears' to sing 'With a Little Help From My Friends' is glorious and that song is sweet, cryptic, subversive, life-affirming and joyful.

I realised recently that my sense of the different Beatles albums is very much led by the covers. Even though I think Rubber Soul and Revolver are sonically quite similar, I always hear the first as warm and colourful while the latter is monochrome and 'electric'. I hear a restrained adult sheen on Abbey Road that is in part because of the foursquare photograph, while there's a dark tension in Let It Be that comes from the cover, not from - actually - a band working rather well together. And Sgt Pepper, well, I cannot help just see this as all the colours of the rainbow. The music, especially on side 1, just feels like the palette has been exploded. The songs are bursts of primary colour.

It may be true that there are better songs on other albums (except 'A Day in the Life' which may be their supreme moment), and, sure, if you take 'Fixing a Hole' in isolation, maybe it doesn't seem like The Beatles at their most profound. But that's the point: you don't take these songs in isolation. They work together so well. It's a brilliantly sequenced album. On CD or MP3, we miss the great theatrical device of the interval as we turn the LP over and go from the carnivalesque first-half closer of 'Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite' (which throws everything at us, dazzlingly) to the mysterious second-half opener of 'Within You Without You', which deepens the mystery of the record, complicates the identity of the band, and then, just when we might be adjusting to it, we get the slightly mocking laughter and then the glorious pisstaking pastiche of 'When I'm Sixty Four'. It's a record that moves too fast for us.

It's all context. No it's not a concept album like The Wall or Tommy (thank goodness), but it's a concept album in creating a 'fictional narrator' (the fictional band of the title) and creates the conceit that this is a single show and does so with a consistency and exuberance of style that allows for dramatic stylistic shifts (not just 'Within You Without You' to 'When I'm Sixty Four' but what about 'She's Leaving Home' to 'Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite', which is a cruelly brilliant transition). It's a record that completely hangs together, that is more pleasurable to listen to all the way through that to pick out individual songs.

But I think that way about the Beatles too. The thing that is so extraordinary about them is that journey. From 'Love Me Do' to 'The Long and Winding Road'... in seven years. I'm not sure I know a more extraordinary artistic journey than that of The Beatles. Who else was so productive, so restlessly challenging of themselves, managed to keep a vast popular audience while absolutely transforming the music they made and taking everyone else with them? They rarely put a foot wrong - their 'mistakes' (Magical Mystery Tour, the Yellow Submarine LP, Twickenham Studios) are a bit overblown and contain moments of genius. And what I love about Sgt Pepper is that it is The Beatles at their most ferociously experimental and their most popular. It is The Beatles in their imperial phase, hitting that sweet spot where everything they tried, however weird, turned out to be everything we wanted. Yes, maybe there are better individual songs elsewhere, but there's no better album.

I'm thinking of it again because of the astonishing new box set that gathers together a new remastering of the original album by Giles Martin (George's son) and a wealth of studio sessions. Sometimes these things can be a little mediocre but for this record these versions are fascinating and gorgeous. If you get a chance, listen to the way 'Strawberry Fields Forever' developed in the studio from the sweetly psychedelic folk of the first studio version to the bizarre, sweet, menacing, jagged thrill of the final version. These outtakes give a fascinating insight into the differences between Lennon's and McCartney's work. For McCartney, the song seems to be almost fully formed in his head and his relentless experimentation in the studio is about perfecting that, crafting the song, adding and riches upon riches; for McCartney, the studio is an endlessly thrilling resource for layering and building a song (you can hear 'Penny Lane' being built up in this way on the set). But with 'Strawberry Fields', Lennon does something quite different. The song structure is chopped around and reordered. Each take (on this collection anyway) is entirely different, with Lennon wholly reinventing the song each time. Take 7 is otherworldly and pastoral while Take 26 is bombastic and brassy. And then, famously, Lennon decided he liked the beginning of 7 and the end of 26, despite them being in different keys, leading to one half being slowed down and the other speeded up, just deepening the psychedelic challenge of this extraordinary song.

Alexis Petridis's perceptive review of the new record notes that in amongst the exuberant multicoloured joy of the record are some sharp notes of anomie and disquiet, from Lennon's sardonic observations of suburbia in 'Good Morning, Good Morning' to the casual domestic violence in 'Getting Better'. And this is true, in part, I think, because unlike most other Beatles records, this populates a vivid and complete world. There are the 'characters' of the record (the guy who blew his mind out in a car, Lucy in the Sky, Henry the Horse, Lovely Rita, and so on) but also a huge range of attitudes and moods. 'She's Leaving Home' is probably the most heartfelt and moving song they recorded ('Daddy, our baby's gone'), 'Mr Kite' is one of the funniest, and 'A Day in the Life' is just one of the strangest and grandest and most astonishingly confident moment in British cultural history.

Giles Martin's new mix of the album is great and worth buying on its own. The Beatles remasters in 2009 were and are a glorious revelation. The great discovery for me was the fluidity and invention of Paul McCartney's bass playing; in dozens of the songs it was now easy to focus on what his bass is doing and there were whole countermelodies going on, absurdly brilliant little curlicues going right up the fret, entirely counterintuitive dips and slides that turned melodically quite ordinary songs into things rich and strange. On this remix, I'd say it's Ringo's turn to shine. Yes, this is the album he learned to play chess, but his drums just seem thunderous on 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band'. He drives us peremptorily into the chorus of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. There's a wit to the staccato and cymbals in 'Getting Better' and some glorious fairground pastiche in 'Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite'. And, clearer than ever before, his wildly inventive and yet completely sympathetic percussion on 'A Day in the Life' both propel the song forward and up into the ether.

If you've not listened to Sgt Pepper for a long time or if - is this even possible? - you've never listened to it all the way through, now is the time. It will seem as fresh to you now as it felt fifty years ago today, when Sgt Pepper taught the band to play.

The Curious Incident of the Arts in the Nighttime

Colonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion's ability, but I saw by the inspector's face that his attention had been keenly aroused.
'You consider that to be important?' he asked.
'Exceedingly so.'
'Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?'
'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'
'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'
'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan-Doyle The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893)

The dog that hasn't barked in this election is arts policy. But of course, some will say: the only thing that matters in this election is Brexit. And that's exactly how we got into this mess, with the atomisation of politics, meaning that people think you can vote for something like Brexit in isolation. In fact, as mature human beings, we should be able to care about several things at once. And the arts have been an important part of government policy since the 1940s, so it's not just the lack of imagination in the major parties' arts policy that is upsetting, it's the sheer lack of attention to the arts.

Neither the Green Party nor Plaid Cymru mention the arts at all. UKIP say nothing except that they're going to 'raise funding for new arts and heritage facilities in coastal towns', which is weird. As far as I can see, the SNP haven't issued a new manifesto for this election (but I'm happy to be corrected on this).

The three main English parties have a bit of a policy vacuum on the arts. Look at what the Lib Dem Manifesto promises:

• Maintain free access to national museums and galleries.

• Move towards introducing ‘safe standing’ at football clubs, requiring the Sports Grounds Safety Authority to prepare guidance for implementing this change.

• Protect the independence of the BBC and set up a BBC Licence Fee Commission, maintain Channel 4 in public ownership and protect the funding and editorial independence of Welsh language broadcasters.

• Protect sports and arts funding via the National Lottery.

• Maintain current standards of intellectual property (IP) protection with continuing co-operation on enforcement of IP generated in the UK and working within the EU to ensure the continuation of territorial licensing of rights.

• Create creative enterprise zones to grow and regenerate the cultural output of areas across the UK.

• Examine the available funding and planning rules for live music venues and the grassroots music sector, protecting venues from further closures. (pp. 65-66)

Of these seven pledges, five of them are just to keep things the way they are. The other two is to reintroduce some standing at football grounds (which is weirdly specific) and the creative enterprise zones across the country (which is weirdly vague).

The Conservative Manifesto doesn't have a section on arts policy, but under the clumsily-titled 'Stronger Communities from a Stronger Economy' section, there's a bit on 'Prosperous towns and cities across Britain' in which we find this:

Our towns and cities excel when they have vibrant cultural life. Britain’s arts and culture are world-beating and are at the heart of the regeneration of much of modern Britain. We will continue our strong support for the arts, and ensure more of that support is based outside London. We will maintain free entry to the permanent collections of our major national museums and galleries. We will introduce a new cultural development fund to use cultural investment to turn around communities. We will hold a Great Exhibition of the North in 2018, to celebrate amazing achievements in innovation, the arts and engineering. We will support a UK city in making a bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games. And in this 70th Anniversary Year of the Edinburgh Festival we will support the development of the new Edinburgh Concert Hall, reaffirming Edinburgh as the UK’s leading festival city and a cultural beacon around the globe. (p. 25)

Again, a lot of this is a pledge to keep things as they are (continue support for the arts - ha ha ha - and, like the Lib Dems, keep museums free) or reannouncing things that we already know (new Edinburgh Concert Hall). The rest is warm words ('vibrant cultural life') and pledges without detail (the Great Exhibition of the North, supporting a bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and the new cultural development fund). Like the Lib Dems they want to ensure that culture is spread throughout the regions, though they have little idea how to do that (they mention elsewhere that Channel 4 will relocate outside London, though they'd already announced that before they called the election, so it's hardly new). Not a lot of thought has gone into this.

And then there's Labour. One of the most interesting developments of this election is that the Labour Manifesto has been on the whole much bolder and more impressive than the Tories, even though it was the Tories who chose to hold a snap election. It has a section entitled 'Culture for All' under the section of 'Leading Richer Lives'. It's two pages, so I will summarise the policies:

1. A £1bn Cultural Capital Fund administered by Arts Council England to upgrade the cultural and creative infrastructure, along the lines of enterprise zones.
2. Maintain free museum entry & use the CCF to raise museum visibility.
3. End Local Authority cuts which will help libraries and museums.
4. Continue to mark the centenary of World War One.
5. £160m per year to support arts in schools.
6. Work to raise pay and employment standards for arts performers.
7. Work to increase diversity in radio, film and tv.
8. Work to improve the financial viability of digital arts work.
9. Expand business rate relief to small music venues.
10. Work to make internet companies remove dangerous material more quickly. (pp. 95-96)

Well at least there are some specific ideas. 1, 5 and 9 are clear and straightforward, though £1bn over five years is not a huge amount of money, especially if you're talking about infrastructure (and if it's administered by the Arts Council, does this mean Scotland is excluded?). They are also maintaining free museum entry, which makes me wonder - if no one is planning to reintroduce entry fees, why is this even a policy (like 'we make a solemn pledge not to murder zoo keepers')? It's not clear if 3 means reversing (restoring) the cuts or just freezing them. 6, 7, 8 and 10 are worthy aspirations but without much detail about how this will be done. And I'm not sure why 4 is in this section.

It's the Cultural Capital Fund that is the headline policy and this clearly shared the aspiration of the Lib Dems and Tories to spread cultural provision across the country (it is currently concentrated to an astonishing extent in London). It is welcome to see some flesh on the bones, unlike in the other manifestoes. But actually the policy is very top-down; it has nothing to say about how exactly more engagement in the arts will be fostered. How will people who never go to a concert, or a gallery, or a theatre be encouraged to go? Why, really, should they? How might national culture be rethought to appeal to the whole country? It is good that the arts will be supported in schools (and Labour and the Lib Dems have pledged to protect arts in the eBacc curriculum which is very welcome), but what about the primary curriculum too? This was a major growth area until Osborne's austerity cuts started to bite. So often, the arts are the first to go.

The Cultural Capital Fund is part of Labour's £250bn National Transformation Fund, a investment-for-growth fund. To that extent, it is embedded in their wider policy; for the Tories, culture is plainly an afterthought. The Liberal Democrats' reference to protecting IP looks small-scale and technical, but at least it shows that they are thinking about the arts in the context of Brexit. If we slip out of the EU without any deal on protecting intellectual property rights systematically across Europe, we will be isolating ourselves from that continent just at the time when, in theatre, we seem finally to be in a two-way cultural exchange and dialogue (not just sending our plays over there). It would be good to see more sense of the arts policy being integrated into all thinking across the parties.

On the whole, I think all of these manifestoes are rather unambitious, rather unimaginative, pretty disappointing. There's way too much keeping things as they are when, if there's one good thing that Brexit might do for us it's to challenge us to think differently about everything we do. Our political parties are not ready to think about the arts that way.

Tactical Voting

Theresa May, despite months of promising that she wouldn't, has called a General Election. She's called it for entirely cynical reasons. Oh, sure, she tells us that she wants to strengthen her hand in negotiations (why would it?) and that she wants to be able to stop people sabotaging Brexit (no one has), but the real reason is that she's ahead in the polls and British political history is littered with unelected Prime Ministers who failed to seize the moment to win a popular mandate and went on to be forced into an Election they lost (Callaghan 1978; Brown 2007). The Tories are riding high in the polls and Labour do appear to be in some disarray; May's hardline Brexit stance has seen off UKIP; the Lib Dems are on the mend but may still be haunted by their role in the Coalition; and in Scotland, the SNP are defending an almost impossibly strong performance in the last election against a mildly resurgent Tory group. So May thinks she can win and win soundly.

The last thing we need is a huge Tory majority. May - urged on by a coalition of far-right backbenchers, newspapers and partoes - has already shown her contempt for democratic process and given the sheer delusional stupidity of her Brexit stance ('I believe in Britain' she says, as if that means anything at all), the Tories need to be held to account more than ever.

So within an hour of hearing that May was calling an election, in a spirit of casting around for something to do, I bought the domain tactical2017.com (and .org and .net, for the sense of completion). I started trying to put together a website that would explain who to vote for if you wanted to oppose the Tories. Fortunately, because I'm not a web designer, this attracted the attention of some web-savvy people and, most crucially, I connected with Becky Snowden who had put together a smart spreadsheet, based on the 2010 and 2015 General Elections, that provided some strong evidence for who had the best shot against the Tories. This escalated and within a few days, we had a great, clear, eye-catching website, a logo, and a ton of newspaper coverage.

No one should vote tactically in an ideal world; all things being equal, you should just vote for who you believe in. But this is not an ideal world and all things are not equal. Our ridiculous First Past the Post system is useless, unjust, and produces absurd distortions of the popular will. It is fundamentally undemocratic - and it lies behind the grotesque spectacle of Theresa May believing that a Government should be defended from the impertinence of Parliament.

So, if you want to keep Theresa May accountable to parliament, you have to vote tactically. Realistically (in England, Scotland and Wales) that means voting Labour, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid Cymru or, in a couple of places, Green. That's what our site helps you do - and we're continuing to update it we process the impact of the local elections, where the Tories significantly underperformed in terms of vote share but (because except in Scotland, the local elections are also run on a First Past the Post basis) overperformed in terms of seats.

Will Theresa May lose the election? I doubt it. But it will be no good for democracy or the future of the country if she gets a 100-seat majority (on what will certainly be less than half of the votes and probably more like a third of those eligible to vote). So please, wherever you are, check our website and vote whatever it takes to keep the Tories out.

I'm a Labour supporter and pretty much always have been. I haven't always voted Labour though; I voted Green once, for an Independent once, and Lib Dem once (in a seat where Labour didn't stand a chance).

After Article 50

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Government cannot trigger Article 50 without consulting Parliament. This is good news - not because it will stop Article 50 being triggered - I think that's vanishingly unlikely - but because it confirms the supremacy of parliament in deciding the future of our country. Parliament decided that the Referendum result was not binding, that it should come back to Parliament, and it would be extraordinary if the Government could unilaterally flout the law. I also think it is good that a vote must be taken, because it means there will have to be a debate about Article 50. In a context where the country is so divided, where the referendum campaign was so poisoned by lies and even murder, structured debate can only be a good thing.

But this isn't the most interesting or important legal judgment on Brexit. Jolyon Maugham QC is launching an appeal through the Irish High Court that will ask the European Court of Justice to deliver a ruling on whether, once triggered, Article 50 can be un-triggered. That is, is there a way back? Or is it a one-way street?

This is really important.

If we trigger Article 50 and there's no going back then Brexit will, of course, happen - however disastrous the consequences for us. If the EU decided to play hardball and give us a dramatically worse deal than we have at the moment - and, let's be honest, why wouldn't they? - then we have to accept it or we are thrown on the mercy of the default WTO rules; and nobody seriously believes that will be anything other than hugely damaging for our economy. It means that neither parliament nor the people have any say again. A parliamentary vote or a referendum on the deal is between whatever David Davis et al. come back with (however rotten it is) or WTO rules. It's no real choice at all.

But if we trigger Article 50 and it can be rescinded, the situation is very different. The choice then becomes between accepting the EU deal, WTO rules, or rescinding Article 50. And note: this doesn't mean stopping Brexit; it means not having to accept a Brexit to the EU's timetable. If we don't like the deal, we can rescind Article 50, go back to the EU, negotiate another deal. It hugely improves our negotiating hand: if we can rescind Article 50, we can potentially keep the Brexit process going on for ages, which the EU certainly don't want, so it would offer a real incentive to offer us a better deal.

But we have a problem. It looks unlikely that we will get a ruling on Jolyon Maugham's question for months, possibly not even for a year. And Theresa May has said she wants to issue the Article 50 Bill in the next few days. This means MPs will be voting on triggering Article 50 without having the slightest idea what triggering it actually means. Is it the first stage of a negotiating process? Or a one-way ticket to who-knows-where?

Of course, we know why the Brexiteers are so keen to press ahead. The longer this process goes on, the more apparent are the deep problems that we will face outside the EU. They want us to leap before we look. But this is why the Supreme Court ruling today is good news. Parliamentary debate is part of the system of scrutiny, part of the checks and balances that should allow a nation reasonably to assess the decisions it wants to make. We should look before we leap.

The Remain camp has an advantage over the Leavers. The Remain group are broadly in agreement that the EU isn't perfect but we are better in and sitting round the table than out and without a voice.

The Leavers do not agree on very much. The Ukippers (Nigel Farage et al.)just don't like immigrants and they think getting us out of the EU will be the beginning of being able to stop foreigners coming into our country. The free-marketeers (Dan Hannan et al.) don't like the regulations and harmonisation of workers' rights across the EU, but would like to stay in the single market or customs union without it. The ultra-free-marketeers (John Redwood et al.) think outside the EU we will become a buccaneering, entrepreneurial low-tax, low-regulation freebooting international tax haven, nipping nimbly around the world making bilateral trade deals with the world's grateful nations. The Lexiteers (seemingly Jeremy Corbyn et al.) like the workers rights, but don't want the single market. I guess there are some constitutionalists like Michael Gove who think Britain should not be subordinated to the European Parliament. And there are some tabloid readers for whom the EU is a bunch of bureaucrats who want to straighten our bananas and who think leaving will make very little difference.

These visions of a Britain outside the EU are incompatible and the Leave group will start to fragment (it's already clear that Farage is detested by all the other wings and indeed 100% of his parliamentary party). At that point, the pell-mell race to dive over the Brexit cliff will lose the patina of majority. It will be clear that this is less the will of the people and more the will of Farage.

It's why we must insist on parliamentary scrutiny. Not because it will stop Brexit, but it will stop Brexit-at-any-cost. It may even get us a better Brexit.

Tired Beasts

I've been working on Maeterlinck, the poet, playwright, and cod-philosopher. Maeterlinck was a massive deal in the 1890s, probably the most talked about writer in Europe. He got the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 and his early experimental plays were perhaps the greatest dramatic achievement of the Symbolist movement. But after the first world war his reputation went into decline to the point that at his death in 1949 few people realised he was still alive. He more or less stopped writing poetry and plays after the mid-twenties (and what plays he did write didn't get produced) and instead concentrated on a series of mystical works addressing metaphysical themes (death, god, the afterlife, fate) but from a broadly agnostic position. These were taken tremendously seriously for a while but as the Second World War approached, his airy mysticism seemed dated and ill-suited to the urgencies of the time.

But his early plays are wonderful and hugely influential. Of the longer plays, Pelléas and Mélisande survives particularly in the Debussy opera (to which, initially, Maeterlinck was bitterly opposed, less because of aesthetic differences than Debussy's refusal to cast Maeterlinck's lover, Georgette Leblanc, in the lead) and The Blue Bird is a charming fairy story, still revived. But it's the shorter one-act plays that are so astonishing. The Blind, Interior, Intruder, The Death of Tintagiles, The Seven Princesses use the simplest of language and setting to create experiences of intense otherworldliness, of dread and anxiety, of metaphysical anguish and terror. His influence is there in Chekhov, in Jarry, in Pinter and Beckett. He opened up space for silence and stillness as fully dramatic devices and is one of the giants of early Modernist theatre.

What I'd never properly read before are his poems. There's not many of them, several chansons and one substantial collection, which was actually the first book he published, a sequence of 33 poems called Serres Chaudes [Hothouses] which first appeared in a limited private edition in May 1889. I've been reading them recently and I am surprised to find how great they are. They are suffused with a listless melancholy; Maeterlinck (or perhaps the implied speaker) talks of his soul as a kind of hothouse, unhealthily humid, producing distorted overgrown plants that stifle his happiness and desire, looking longingly out of the glass, longing for rain. Odd images pulse through the poems, ships passing on canals, hospital windows, soldiers not at their posts, the mortally ill struggling with the elements, desire stifled and impotent, action and engagement with the world frustrated. Some of the poems are traditionally formal, rhymed, organised in regular stanzas. Others show the influence of Jules Laforgue and Gustave Kahn in their long lines of free-verse, their inward-looking intensity, their sense of the nausea of everyday life.

The wonderful poet Richard Howard has produced a lovely set of translations published by Princeton University Press (though, note, it has some annoying typos). I've translated one of the poems here:

Tired Beasts
    
On the narrow paths of my passions,
With howls and sighs.
Sick and with shuttered eyes,
Over fallen leaves:

The yellow dogs of my sin,
The dark jackals of my hate,
And on the pale flat plains
The crouching lions of love.

In the impotence of dream
Lazed beneath a lazy sky
A dismal drab sky
They dully see

The lambs of my temptations
Wander singly from the meadow, leaving
Beneath the unmoving moon
My unmoved wants.

Fauves Las

Ô les passions en allées,
Et les rires et les sanglots!
Malades et les yeux mi-clos
Parmi les feuilles effeuillées,

Les chiens jaunes de mes péchés,
Les hyènes louches de mes haines,
Et sur l'ennui pâle des plaines
Les lions de l'amour couchés!

En l'impuissance de leur rêve
Et languides sous la langueur
De leur ciel morne et sans couleur,
Elles regarderont sans trève

Les brebis des tentations
S'éloigner lentes, une à une,
En l'immobile clair de lune,
Mes immobiles passions.