One of the greatest quotes known to man is “”The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” It is so profound, it might be even more profound than the author of said quote, it is the first line of “The Go-Between “ by L. P. Hartley, thought it was, and it is a truth that haunts more the older you get. It is a strange present day, a minute ago was a foreign country to an hour ago; the rules of conduct change.
This is at the heart of nostalgia, nostalgia is tapping into, and re-awakening, the foreign ways we did things (daydreams do the same thing with memories we weren’t a party to) and playing by rules that no longer exist. It is particularly true of a lost love, as you try to revive the rules of a romance long since broken.
This goes for music as well and perhaps, with the death of Phil Everly last year, it can be heard most clearly on the Everly Brother’s Greatest Hits And More. 50 songs from rockabilly, country, folk, rock and roll, but all close harmony beauties by the fighting duo. The Every Brothers influence over rock is so pervasive I don’t even want to write about, is it enough to mention “Bye Bye Love” covered by Simon And Garfunkel and “So How Come (No One Loves Me)” covered by the Beatles.
But listening to Greatest Hits, the songs sound less innocent and more elsewhere in time: from 1956’s “Bye Bye Love” through 1965’s “The Price Of Love’, the heartache and hope zigzags through the heart of rock and roll. It is a teenage romanticism that would seem to have no entrance in 2014. Today’s pop music is too congealed to be so straightforwardly devastating.
The first seven songs on this album are astounding on their own, in quick succession you get “When Will I Be Loved” (covered by Linda Ronstadt to great effect), “Cathy’s Clown” and “All I Have To Do Is Dream” –three incredible slices of self-abasement: it is hard, indeed it simply isn’t possible, to imagine, Justin Timberlake or One Direction, laying it down like this. Two voices baring their soul and getting nothing in return.
For pop music, this nakedness just isn’t done. We live in a post feminism age, but men more than ever can’t show their feelings. When was the bride stripped bare last? 808s And Heartbreaks maybe, as a rule of thumb male sexuality and romance is all false bravado. The Everly Brothers, as rockers, came out of the country folk of Buddy Holly even when they covered the swaggered up sensuality of a Presley: another great truth of life, you might lose but don’t quit. Hip hop has made pop a world of winners but a world of winners is fantasy land, at the very least you are born to lose the battle with life. It isn’t true, and it isn’t true to people’s experience of life. All you can do is your best, secure in the absolute knowledge that even if you get the girl, death will eventually break you up (hi “Ebony Eyes”). In the late 1950s, early 1960s, male virility was morphed by James Dean, by “Rebel Without A Cause”. The Everly Brothers were the sound of the teenage depressive, the teenager as so in touch with his feelings he went beyond insecurity and right to the root of all horror: what if nobody, not my parents, not my girl, not any one loved me? In 2015, the question is, what if nobody paid me?
The tenderness of the Everly Brothers, a song like the gentle river flowing “Devoted To You” or the birth of romantic love “Till I Kissed You”, the eternal love song “Let It Be Me” is from a foreign country. Our music isn’t this gentle any more, melodies don’t dig so deep. It’s foreign to us.