Know Country For Old Men (Part 3)

YOUNG GUNS

"I started this damn country band cos punk rock was too hard too play."  

(Whiskeytown, Faithless Street).

The previous parts of this series have offered a roughly chronological, but highly subjective, guide to country music. This final part brings the overview up to date, after a fashion, concentrating on the alternative country scene of the 90s-00s. Again I would recommend reading the previous posts and 'No Stetson Required' first. The same caveats apply as before - this is just one route down the lost highway... 

10) Uncle Tupelo  - Anodyne (1993)

Although they are often credited as the founding fathers of the 'alt country' scene it's easier to see Uncle Tupelo as part of a lineage or circle passing through Hank and Gram - unfortunately this particular circle couldn't remain unbroken... Like a lot of the best bands Tupelo had a creative tension at their heart, between co-vocalists and songwriters Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. I'm oversimplifying but you could say that Farrar was more of country purist whereas the rockier elements tended to come from Tweedy. Anondyne was their final album and is probably their most consistent (certainly their most accessible and least schizophrenic).  

                                                      Uncle Tupelo's final gig. St Louis, 1994.

Farrar took bass player Mike Heirdorn with him and went on to form Son Volt, while Tweedy formed Wilco with the remainder of the band and has gone on to great success.  It's a shame, in a way, that Farrar has become something of a forgotten man - Son Volt's debut 'Trace' (1996) is brilliant, as good as Tupelo, but sadly he's never recorded an album as strong since.

11) Jayhawks  - Tomorrow The Green Grass  (1994)

Modern-day country-rock at its finest, with co-vocalists Mark Olson and Gary Louris coming on like a latter day Everly Brothers (including the fraternal feuding). Also features Texas' Sharleen Spiteri, whose band's geographically misleading name presumably confused the boys (for there can be no other reason for her presence on this record).

12) Wilco  -   Being There  (1996)

Their second album is a virtual compendium of all that is good and great in American music. A 'Blonde on Blonde' for the slacker generation. 

13) The Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers - The Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers (1997)

Former Jayhawk Mark Olson goes it alone with a little help from his missus, Victoria Williams. While the 'hawks veered off into a more power-poppy territory, Marky boy opts for a downhome, DIY approach on a beautifully simple album which sounds like it was recorded on his porch in the Joshua Tree with only tumbleweeds and crickets for an audience.

14) Richard Buckner - Devotion and Doubt (1997)

His is probably the most obscure name on this list, but I'd probably take 'Devotion and Doubt' as my Desert Island Disc over any album in this guide (I'd probably also forfeit the Bible and Shakespeare's complete works if I could I lay my hands on Buckner's 'The Hill' and 'Dents & Shells' before the ship sinks).

'Devotion and Doubt' is an album of longing, of late nights and dawns.

Buckner's voice is like no other. There is a nod to the tradition, a hint perhaps of Townes Van Zant, and maybe George Jones on the higher notes and vibrato. But, to me, he is unique. His voice is effortless and singing seems as natural as breathing to him. 

I'm not alone in this hero-worship but Buckner remains very much a cult hero, which begs the question, 'Why - if he's so good?'  To which I don't have a good answer. Is the voice a little too country for mainstream tastes? His lyrics might best be described as enigmatic or elliptical, to the impatient they're perhaps impenetrable, stream-of-consciousness even. 

There have been moments of near-commercial success. By the time of 'Devotion & Doubt' (his second album) he was signed to a major label and was backed (on this album, at least) by Calexico, who themselves were on the verge of  a breakthrough. The follow-up album, 'Since' was more polished, and featured more notable guest musicians such as Tortoise's John McEntire and Dave Schramm from Yo La Tengo. But commercial success still eluded him. I guess it didn't help by making the next album, 'The Hill', one 35 minute song, setting Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River poems to music. Still, I bloody love that album.

I had to wait over 15 years before I got the chance to see Buckner live, last December at the wonderful St Pancras Old Church in London.  It was spellbinding. 

One of the many highlights was an unaccompanied version of 'Fater', from 'Devotion & Doubt'. You could have heard the metaphorical pin drop. 

15) Lambchop - What Another Spills  (1998)

Nashville country-soul collective of varying members, but always fronted by the falsetto-favouring Kurt Wagner. Difficult to categorize but almost certainly the best band ever to be named after a children's glove puppet. 

16) Bonnie Prince Billy  - I See A Darkness (1999)

Whether recording in his current guise or under the various nom-de plumes of Palace (Palace Brothers, Palace Music), Will Oldham has recorded some of alt-country's strangest, most beguiling music. Here he presents us with such joyful tunes as 'Black' , 'Death To Everyone', 'Another Day Full of Dread' in an Appalachian howl (think Neil Young at his most wracked) that was dismissed by one critic as 'bad singing on purpose'.

17) Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Cold Roses (2005)

Not to be confused with the acne-scarred Canadian, the ex-Whiskeytown frontman made something of name for himself as a sort of a prolific, post-modern Gram Parsons and the poster-boy of the alt-country scene. Interestingly Whiskeytown's second album 'Stranger's Almanac' contained a song called 'Everything I Do', although, criminally, it didn't spend 16 weeks at number one...

Most fans will point to his solo debut 'Heartbreaker' or the more polished follow-up 'Gold' as favourites but for me 'Cold Roses' gets the nod. As one of three studio albums he released in 2005, 'Cold Roses' sometimes is unfairly overlooked.  The fact that this is co-credited to The Cardinals is significant, this is a band effort and a warmer more coherent album than anything else in his catalogue. 

18) Micah P Hinson  & The Red Empire Orchestra (2008)

While some might argue whether Hinson's idioysncratic music is strictly 'country', he certainly has the credentials, having endured jail, addiction and bankruptcy before he'd barely turned 20. Perhaps, understandably there's an undercurrent of self-loathing and despair to his music.

By the time of this album Micah had met and married his wife Ashley, who appears on his album covers and at most of his shows.   One might be forgiven for detecting a sense of redemption in the music from this point...

Tragically Micah suffered a serious car accident in 2011 that nearly ended his recording career. As he puts it, "when the emergency crews got to us, they were looking at us as if we were dead people."
http://www.outlineonline.co.uk/music/interviews/interview-with-micah-p-hinson

His live shows have always been somewhere between shambolic and spellbinding and I'm pleased to report his spirit and sense of humour remain undimmed. Even when playing in my local record store.

19) Josh T. Pearson - Last of The Country Gentlemen (2011)

Josh T.Pearson first came up on my radar as a member of Lift To Experience in 2001. But swiftly disappeared off it. In truth, I found them a little noisy for my tastes and was rather put off by bass player Josh 'Bear' Browning's unfortunate resemblance to Mungo Jerry's Ray Dorset. 

My loss as they sound pretty good to my ears now. Anyway, a decade after their only release, guitarist/vocalist Josh T. Pearson releases a solo album. It's not for the faint of heart. 7 tracks, four of which are over 10 minutes long, all of which are are played at a funereal pace by just Josh and his guitar.  The reviews on a certain internet retailer's website are mixed, to say the least. The word 'dirge' is mentioned a few times. Many people complain of really wanting to like the album but being unable to find 'a way in.'

Well, for me, 'the way in' was seeing him live. Both times I've seen him perform it's been in crowded, tiny venues and he was captivating. There's no stagecraft. There's a stillness and intensity to his performance. It's almost intimidating. You are compelled to listen and then, slowly, the song's reveal their beauty.

Plus he has the most amazing beard.

20) My Darling Clementine  - The Reconciliation  (2013 )


There's nothing 'alt' about My Darling Clementine. Michael Weston King and Lou Dagleish are a husband and wife team who hark back to the golden age of country music. The age when men were hard-drinking and wore polyester suits and women complained about their men. In song. In big blonde wigs. 

But look, and, more importantly, listen below the surface and you'll see this is no mere pastiche. 

Despite setting themselves up as a modern-day George Jones & Tammy Wynette I sometimes wonder whether the image detracts a little from their superb songcraft. I can honestly say both MDC albums (their debut 'How Do You Plead?' was released in 2011) are better than any of the George & Tammy albums I've heard. And I write that as someone who owns a lot of George Jones LPs.

And so we come to the end of this meander down the lost highway and it seems somehow appropriate to come back to (almost) the very beginning. 

May be the circle be unbroken. And may your hat always be of the ten gallon variety. 

Know Country For Old Men (Part 2)

Mavericks and Missing Links

Part 1 of this very personal guide down the lost highway of country music focused on The Old Guard. Here I present 'Mavericks and Missing Links' - artists who provide the missing link between the old guard and the alt-country scene that emerged in the 1990s.  For context I would suggest reading 'No Stetson Required' first and, of course, the same caveats mentioned in part 1 apply here. 


6) Gram Parsons - 'GP/Grievous Angel' (1973/4)

Cecil Ingram Connor III  first came to wide attention when he joined The Byrds in 1968 and the resultant album,  'Sweetheart of The Rodeo', strongly bears his mark. Sadly America wasn't ready for it's favourite psychedelic-folkies to 'go country'. Ironically, Parsons' brand of country-rock laid the groundwork for America's biggest ever band, The Eagles - who he famously dismissed as 'a plastic dry fuck'... Parsons left The Byrds after just five months, taking Chris Hillman with him, forming The Flying Burrito Brothers. Parsons described their work as Cosmic American Music, which to you and me is spaced-out hippies harmonising like (fallen) angels over a choir of pedal steel guitars. Hot Burrito #1 may well be alt country's finest ever 3 minutes. 

As fleetingly brilliant as his two albums with the Burritos were, the two solo albums that followed, 'GP' and 'Grievous Angel', remain his most consistent albums. Backed by the divine Emmylou Harris, they mine a purer vein of country music and are the cornerstone of his reputation. It would be no exaggeration to say that Parsons may well be the single most important figure, in terms of influence, on the whole alt country scene. If you're still wondering why, I can empathise. His is an extraordinary, but slim, legacy. Of course, dying a rock star death at 26 helps. But let's not forget the boyish, almost feminine good looks, the outrageous Nudie Cohen suits, and above all, the cracked, haunted quality of his voice.

7) Elvis Costello - Almost Blue (1981)

Now, I'm a huge Costello fan. I loved the early stuff with the Attractions and even stuck with him during the weird, beardy years (Mighty Like A Rose and I even liked the album with the Brodsky Quartet) but I must confess I didn't 'get' this album at the time (or indeed until about 20 years after its release). Coming between the brilliant 'Trust' and 'Imperial Bedroom' this album of country covers was, at best, a left field move, at worst career suicide.  The George Jones cover, 'A Good Year For The Roses'  was a surprise top ten hit (his last), and the album charted well on the back of this, but commercially speaking I don't think his career ever recovered from this bold move. 

Costello clearly anticipated this reaction, attaching a warning sticker to the first pressings of the album.   

To put this in context we should remember that the biggest 'country' artists at the time were Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. The pop charts of 1981 were dominated by Adam & The Ants, The Specials, Soft Cell, The Human League; The New Romantic movement reached its zenith.

The cynic in me almost wonders whether 'Almost Blue' was a deliberate act of self-sabotage. This was so far from 'Angry Young Man' of New Wave it enabled him to pretty much record whatever the hell he wanted on the back of it. Having said that, his version of 'How Much I Lied' may well be better than the Gram Parsons' original.

8) Steve Earle - Guitar Town   (1986)

In the mid 80s Steve Earle found himself at the forefront of the short-lived 'new country' or 'new traditionalist' movement. Artists such as Earle, Dwight Yoakam, George Strait and Randy Travis eschewed the pop trappings of contemporary country and interpreted the song stylings of honky tonk and bluegrass in a modern way. In truth Earle was too much of an individual to spearhead any movement. Like Parsons before him he straddled country and rock, and embraced the rock n roll lifestyle... With five marriages, three arrests, one long year 'inside' and a major drug habit behind him, it's fair to say that this one country rebel who walked it like he talked it. Despite his battles with personal demons and addiction, Earle claims to have only ever cancelled one show - a show which I had the misfortune to attend in Leicester in 1991 (enduring what I thought was the worst support act I'd ever seen, at that time - sorry, Will T. Massey). 

Earle's debut, 'Guitar Town' set the tone for the following three decades: raw, heartfelt words set to wistful ballads and bludgeoning hard rock, and all points inbetween. 

At times he taps into the spirit of a disaffected working-class in the manner of Springsteen.  And I think he must have been the first person to rhyme 'asphalt' with 'my fault'.

9) Emmylou Harris- Wrecking Ball (1995)

Despite penning the beautiful 'Bolder to Birmingham' on her debut album,  Emmylou is better known as an interpreter of other people's songs. A peerless one at that. 'Wrecking Ball' is largely a covers album but the choice of material is first rate: showcasing the best of the burgeoning new/alt country movement (Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch) and paying homage to the generation of singer-songwriters that influenced them (Dylan, Neil Young). Only the Daniel Lanois production dates it slightly. 

After Gram Parsons' death, Emmylou became something of a keeper of the flame, performing his songs and in 1999 overseeing a tribute album, 'The Return of The Grievous Angel', which saw some of the cream of the alt country crop pay their respects. 

Know Country For Old Men (Part 1)

The Old Guard (There's gold in them there hills...)

                                            
Following on from my earlier ruminations on country and alt-country, 'No Stetson Required' (which you really ought to read first), I'd like to offer a few signposts to help you on your journey down this lost highway.  Please bear in mind this is in no way a definitive list. It is a very personal guide, there are many alternative routes and diversions. I make no apologies for being a 'cry in your beer' country kind of guy or for recommending actual albums over songs. I've tried to do this in a vaguely chronological way, at least as far as the artists are concerned.

1) Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits (1978)

If not quite the first king of country music (Jimmie Rodgers beat him to that) his was the most enduring reign and unquestionably it's the Hank Williams songbook that represents the crown jewels in the country firmament: Cold Cold Heart, Your Cheating Heart, I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love with you... etc Simple songs of heartbreak, longing and loss that have a timeless appeal. And even if he didn't invent county music, as the original hard-drinking, hard-living hellraiser he was rock n roll before it was invented. You've got to take your ten gallon hat off to the man.

2) Johnny Cash - Live At San Quentin/Live At Folsom Prison (1968/9)

                                        

Not much more needs to be said about the man in black these days thanks to his late career renaissance. These live albums are probably Cash at his peak. When he sings "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die", for all their whooping and a-hollering, you can imagine even this captive audience of hard-nuts shitting their collective pants.

3) Merle Haggard - If Only I Could Fly (2000)

The 20 year old Merle Haggard was once such inmate at Cash's first San Quentin prison concert in 1958 and he often credits this as the turning point in his life. 'The Hag' made much of his outlaw credentials: I'm A Lonesome Fugitive, Branded Man, Mama Tried etc and still refuses to grow old gracefully. His 2000 album 'If Only I Could Fly', opens with "watching while some old friends do a line. Holding back the want in my own addicted mind..."  Oh, and it's better than all of Cash's Rick Rubin produced 'American' albums put together.

4) George Jones - The Grand Tour (1974)

                                     

Aah, 'The Possum'...   Outside of country circles the late George Jones is sadly better known for being Mr Tammy Wynette and if he is known in his own right it's more likely for his boozing rather than his music. Such extreme hell-raising earned him the nickname 'No Show' Jones as he was often too inebriated to make his own gigs. One of the most often quoted GJ stories concerns his second wife Shirley's attempts to prevent him from drinking. Having removed all the liquor in the house and hidden all their car keys Shirley reckoned she'd cracked it, given that they lived miles away from any bar or store. She hadn't banked on George taking the only means of transport available to him, his lawnmower.

George's alcholism meant he had a less than professional attitude to recording also, so the quality of his albums varied wildly. 1980's Double Trouble, a rock n roll duet album with the equally sozzled Johnny Paycheck, marks his nadir. But what George always had was a remarkable voice - a pure tone with impeccable phrasing. Matthew Diebel's scholarly obituary proclaims him to be the greatest of all American 'pop' singers. 

http://www.today.com/entertainment/george-jones-greatest-american-pop-singer-ever-recorded-6C9628922?franchiseSlug=todayentertainmentmain 

His fourth wife, Nancy cleaned him up  and arguably saved his life yet you could argue that it was writer/producer Billy Sherrill that saved his professional life a decade earlier. Under Sherrill's guidance he recorded some of his most consistent work and had huge crossover hits with 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' and 'A Good Year For The Roses.'  Ploughing this furrow George became a self-styled King of misery, perfectly demonstrated on the title track of  'The Grand Tour' - where the listener is invited to gaze around the physical and emotional debris of a broken home. "As you leave you'll see the nursery... she left me without mercy, taking nothing but her baby and my heart." Step right up. Come on in.   

5) Faron Young -  Hello Walls (1961)/Four in The Morning (1972)

He might seem an odd inclusion in this list, alongside such household names as Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, but I don't think the country genre ever produced a better singer than Faron Young.  

Young started out in the 50s as a honky-tonker in the footsteps of Hank Williams but his deep rich tone is perhaps more reminiscent of the crooners of that age. Maybe that's why he appeals so much to me. 

1961's 'Hello Walls', an early Willie Nelson cover, was a huge hit for him and  the album of the same name is perhaps his most consistent recording - although I'd argue that the title track is one of the album's weaker songs compared to his original compositions. 

                                   

Faron's biggest hit came in the 70s with 'Four In The Morning'. If his earlier work had bordered on 'easy-listening' with a country styling, here the transformation to full-blown crooner was complete. Not necessarily a bad thing. That said, 'Four In the Morning', the album, is a terrific country LP with enough honky-tonk to satisfy the purist... 

                                               

                                                   

          

Sadly Faron's career came to something of a halt in the 80s. Deteriorating health and a feeling that Nashville had turned its back on him led to him taking his own life in 1996.

I must confess that my first encounter with the name Faron Young was the Prefab Sprout song of the same name that opens their classic 'Steve McQueen'  album. 

    

                                        

For years I thought 'Faron Young' was the narrator's lover and  the lyric "Forgive me, Faron Young... it's four in the morning"  was a plea to the lover for forgiveness. Today I'm still not 100% sure what the actual lyric, "You give me Faron Young, Four In The Morning", means - is he suggesting that his lover leaves him with that feeling of desolation that the song 'Four In The Morning' encapsulates? 

Is it an argument about the virtues of country music over pop music, "you give me infrared instead of sun, you offer paper spoons and bubble gum"? 

I don't know. 

I do know that Faron Young is one of the all-time great country singers. And there's not many like him left.

NO STETSON REQUIRED

Ok, here goes. I know it's not cool to say this but... 

I love country music. 

There. I've said it.

My embarrassment in making this confession has probably something to do with the public perception of country music. If country music still conjures up images of line-dancing, good dental work, big hats and leopard-skin cat suits then this blog may not be for you. 

Shania Twain. The highest paid lap dancer in Nashville, according to Steve Earle.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'll change your mind. If you're still struggling with that mental image ask yourself, what is country music, in essence? Nicholas Dawidoff describes it as 'simple songs of sincerity and feeling - songs about common people by common people.' (In the Country of Country). Put in another way (and I'm paraphrasing 60s country singer Buck Owens here), if Chuck Berry had been born white he would have been a country singer. Historically speaking then, Country is the white man's (or woman's) blues. Or America's own 'folk' music, if you prefer. 

My own personal interest in country goes back to my childhood. My mum was a huge fan at a time when country was probably at its most unfashionable. Distinctly I recall the strains of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E echoing through our house (prefiguring her own actual D.I.V.O.R.C.E from my dad). 

Some of the good stuff stayed with me, like this...

So I can probably blame these recent purchases on her...

                               
Now, clearly something happened to country music in the 1990s. Put simply it crossed over in a BIG way. Shania Twain's 1997 album Come On Over is the best selling album of all time by a female singer. Garth Brooks has sold more albums than Take That, Robbie Williams, JLS and One Direction have put together.  Things haven't changed greatly. Last year Toby Keith, a kind of Garth Brooks with stubble, earnt more from his Republican rabble-rousing than a certain Justin Beiber with all of his endorsements. And, of course, Taylor Swift earnt more than either of them. But that don't impress me much.

A muppet and some characters from Sesame Street.

For me, it wasn't country. Nor was it for Nicholas Dawidoff, who described Garth Brooks as 'a pop star masquerading as a country singer - a yuppie with a lariat.' Steve Earle was more blunt. "If Garth Brooks is country, then I aint." 


During the 1990s an oppositional movement sprang up, known collectively as 'alternative country' (or, depending on what magazine you read, 'Americana', 'Insurgent Country', 'Hillbilly Noir', 'Rural Contemporary', 'Y'Alternative'...) 

Unusually for such 'movements' a definite starting point can be pointed to, the release of Uncle Tupelo's No Depression  album in 1990.  (I should mention there were a number of highly influential artists ploughing this furrow before the movement took hold, whose importance shouldn't be underestimated: The Long Ryders, Giant Sand,  The Blasters, the whole 'cowpunk' sub-genre and a whole host of others I've probably forgotten).

No Depression's title track is a cover of a 1934 Carter Family song (No Depression in Heaven) yet Uncle Tupelo sprang from the mid-west punk scene. They couldn't decide whether they wanted to be Husker Du or Hank Williams, but ultimately it didn't matter; by interpreting their musical heritage in a thoroughly modern way they changed the landscape forever.  

In 1995 Grant Alden and  Peter Blackstock started the first dedicated 'alt country' magazine of the same name - it now resides online http://www.nodepression.com/

Country music itself hasn't always always translated easily across the Atlantic. And it was just so with country's twisted little cousin - it took a while for this sub-genre to cross over to the UK. 

Uncut magazine, from its inception in 1997, was something of a standard bearer. 

The free cd given away with issue 16 of Uncut, entitled Sounds of the New West, might well be the best alt.country collection on disc to this day: The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Will Oldham, Calexico, Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Neal Casal, The Pernice Brothers, Josh Rouse...

 

Yet as much this was a movement, it was very much an underground one. 

I was working in a record shop at the time and it didn't really come on my radar until 1996/7 when most of my peers were still taking sides in the phoney Britpop wars or buying Spice Girls cds.

There was something wonderfully cool about following such an underground movement and I distinctly recall our excitement at being able to fill a whole shelf of these obscure artists (although it was tempered by having to file them at the bottom of the country section after the compilations and line dance cds...) 

Leicester seemed like the unofficial capital of the U.K's alt country scene at the time. Thanks largely to Ian from Magic Teapot promotions, artists like The Handsome Family, Lambchop, Chris Mills, Neal Casal, Grand Drive etc played regularly at the Princess Charlotte (now sadly defunct) and the grandly named International Arts Centre (which was essentially a bingo hall). Ditto Cosmic American Music and the Maze in Nottingham. These were exciting times for me: from sharing beers and discussing a mutual love of the Louvin Brothers with Brett Sparks of The Handsome Family, to deeply insulting one of my all-time heroes Mark Olson (ex-of The Jayhawks)... 

Me: "Your new album (Political Manifest) seems like a bit of a change in direction...it's more political"  
Mark: "We've always been political."  
Me: "Ok... musically it's a bit of change too, it's less acoustic more... funky." 
Mark: "We've always been funky."   

And so it went on... and so my aspirations towards a career in music journalism ended.

The alt-country scene grew through the next decade but I guess it left me behind a little. Most of the artists I truly loved either disbanded or moved on: Wilco ventured into deeper waters and became a kind of American Radiohead. The reconstituted Jayhawks split, although I was fortunate to see their first reunion show in the U.K in 2011. Ryan Adams went from releasing three albums in a year to going on strike. Some great bands from this first wave just disappeared entirely. Whatever happened to Nadine, Wagon, Lullaby for the Working Class, Lincoln '65 etc? 

The Jayhawks, Birmingham Academy  2/8/11
(l-r) Gary Louris, Marc Perlman, Mark Olson, Tim O'Reagan

What almost all of these alt-country artists had, and what much of contemporary Nashville lacks, is that 'sincerity and feeling' that Dawidoff was talking about. Or as Steve Earle puts it, "It's not about country or rock, it's really about any kind of music that's real."

Citizen Blimp

An English Citizen Kane : Powell & Pressburger's 'The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943)  

Putting aside personal opinion  it's difficult to argue with 'Citizen Kane's' status as the most lauded film in cinema history. For 50 years 'Kane' has topped the British Film Institute's 'Greatest Film of All Time' poll, and similarly it sits on top of the American Film Institute's '100 years of movies' list.

 http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx

So, it is a bold claim indeed to compare what is probably Powell & Pressburger's fourth best known film (after The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death and, perhaps, Black Narcisuss) to Welles' meisterwerk.  Not only would I argue that 'Blimp' is every bit as good as 'Kane' but there are a number of striking similarities between the two films.

                  

Both are life stories of fictional characters; Clive Wynne-Candy and Charles Foster Kane. Yet both Kane and Candy are more than that; they are are archetypal figures representative of their respective nations. 

Major General Wynne-Candy, the 'Blimp' figure, is a man out of time, a military man of the old school, whose values of fair play, 'clean fighting and honest soldiering' are outmoded in an era of modern warfare.  He is also, clearly, nineteenth century Britain, struggling to find an identity in the modern world.

Wynne-Candy: A man out of time

Charles Foster Kane has often been interpreted as a pastiche of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Whether this is true or not, only Orson Welles (and perhaps Herman J. Mankiewicz) could say, yet Kane is clearly a parody of a certain type of American: the rich, materialistic, power-hungry businessman. 'He was born poor and raised by a bank' as Welles himself put it. In short, he is The American Dream turned nightmare.

Kane in his Xanadu palace/prison

Both films begin with their titular character in old age and then proceed to tell their stories in flashback.  In 'Kane' Welles famously uses the device of a snow globe to initiate the first flashback...

Various reporters are given the task of unraveling the meaning behind Kane's mysterious last utterance, "Rosebud". It is their investigations that provide the framing device for the film's many flashbacks to Kane's past. Snow is repeatedly used as a visual metaphor in this.

   

In 'Blimp' we first meet Wynne-Candy in the Turkish baths of his gentlemen's club during WW2. Retired he is now head of the Home Guard, but finds that playing by the rules, even in a home guard training exercise, isn't the modern way.

Here Powell and Pressburger brilliantly use the water of the Turkish baths as the flashback device. Candy emerges out of the Turkish baths 40 years previously in the prime of his life, at the end of the Boer War. The story unfolds chronologically from this point as we follow him through three wars.

Now, at this point I should confess Citizen Kane, though a great film, isn't my favourite film. While no-one can deny it's technical brilliance it is, for me, a film lacking in heart - it's difficult to warm to. Maybe that's part of the point. The mature Kane is an unlikeable character, one incapable of forming meaningful relationships. This is demonstrated in a brilliant montage sequence where we see Kane and his wife breakfasting together over a number of years, literally becoming further apart. 

                                   

In contrast 'Blimp' is a film full of heart, one that admittedly at times borders on sentimentality, yet it is also technically brilliant. 

Roger Livesy gives a barnstorming performance as Clive Wynne-Candy. Pompous and arrogant, yes, but it's hard not to sympathise with the character. As much as Powell & Pressburger are satirising the reactionary old guard they are also paying tribute to an era of lost decency and honour that Candy represents. 

During the Boer War scenes Candy meets the love of his life, Edith, played by Deborah Kerr, only for her to slip through his fingers. Rather like Scottie in 'Vertigo', Candy, dedicates himself to finding an exact replacement for Edith (coincidentally Vertigo is the film that has finally supplanted Kane in the B.F.I's Greatest Films Of All Time list). Which he finds in Barbara, also played by Kerr.  In the third, present-day WW2, sequence of the film this ideal is represented  by Candy's driver, again brilliantly played by Kerr. Rather surprisingly Kerr was given top-billing on some of the film posters at the time, perhaps because Roger Livesey was something of an unknown at the time (Laurence Olivier having been the first choice for the role).

Yet, arguably, Candy's most important relationship isn't with the Kerr character/characters, but with the German he loses Edith to, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (brilliantly played by Anton Walbrook).  His rivalry with Theo becomes a lifelong friendship that transcends the world wars.  One of the most moving scenes in the film, in any film, is the speech Theo gives when pleading for asylum from Nazi Germany. 

Of course there was an obvious propaganda purpose to the scene, and many others in the film. There is also clearly an autobiographical element, on the part of the screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, a Jewish-Hungarian who fled to Britain in 1935. Yet drawing a clear distinction between a German and a Nazi was a brave thing to do in 1945. It was too much for Winston Churchill who thought this sentiment might damage the war effort and proceeded, unsuccessfully, to try and ban the film.  He did manage to refuse the release from military duty of Powell's first choice for the role, Laurence Olivier, but this is no great loss. 

The final scenes of the film return to the imagery of water that began Candy's story. Staring into the bombed and flooded remains of his house he at last realises his time has come, and recalls the words he spoke to his wife as they stepped across the threshold, "now here is the lake and I still haven't changed..."

There is of course a  supreme irony in that  Churchill himself  was very much a Blimp figure, not just in appearance and bluster. Like Candy  he  too  was a man out of time at  the end of  WW2, swept away in the  general election of  1945 on  Labour's tide  of  social reform. 

A new world beckoned. But maybe something was lost along the way.