Elton does Orwell? Sorry, that’s just wrong
Posted on Wednesday 28 July, 2010
Filed Under Trivia
ELTON John’s first professional gig was with a blues band that covered Memphis Slim and Muddy Waters. But he quit that outfit in 1967, and pianistically speaking, it has been downhill for the Rocket Man ever since.
Now we read that the third most successful recording artist of all time has teamed up with the guy who wrote Billy Elliot to work on a musical version of Animal Farm. Whatever next? The Saturdays do Grundrisse? Atlas Shrugged, soundtrack courtesy of Meatloaf?
The news comes just weeks after George Galloway – a man whose gifts with song were long unsuspected by many – unveiled plans for a similar treatment of the life of noted lesbian songstress Dusty Springfield.
Some may detect a certain incongruity here, at least in so far as it must be presumed that Dusty would have been immune to the cigar smoking charms of the former Respect MP, although that dimension may simply add to the charm of the project.
Musicals, I must admit, are a genre around which I have never quite gotten my head. For me, the thought of sitting through a performance of anything ever penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber has an intrinsic appeal roughly on a par with being force fed asbestos.
I suppose there must be takers for such entertainment, otherwise the big West End productions would not be booked up for months ahead.
But after that maudlin display at the Diana funeral, Sir Elton surely forfeits any minimal claim he might every have had to be allowed anywhere near the Orwell oeuvre. After all, there are some things that should remain inviolate from the wanton attentions of Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths.
Animal Farm is a brilliant modern day political parable of Swiftian greatness, without peer in the canon of twentieth century allegorical literature. Essentially, it puts the Trotskyist analysis of the Soviet Union in story form. Despite its adoption by reactionaries as an ideological weapon in the Cold War, the message is not ‘revolution undesirable’ but very much revolution betrayed.
Elton John, on the other hand, is all about hopping and bopping to the crocodile rock and seeing Daniel waving goodbye. Don’t go breaking my heart? If this show goes ahead, I’m afraid mine will be shattered.
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33 Responses to “Elton does Orwell? Sorry, that’s just wrong”
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If not Elton, who?
The people behind the – so far – Toy Story trilogy? Yes, for sure!
Wit, perception and pathos need to be part of the ‘Animal Farm’ tale. Is Elton quite the right chap?
“I will work harder” Boxer’s simple maxim adumbrated Walter Schirra’s brief speech* – “Do good work” to the workers making the immense rocket engines that took the astronauts into space.
Animal Farm attracted no immigrants, unlike the USSR which attracted literally thousands of idealistic men and women from many lands.
Here’s something very different. In the USA some people of the centre-left or soft-left have paid intelligent attention to the immigration issue and been pelted with ordure – as “Racists! Racists!” – for their pains …
[DELETED]
See? Some subjects are just too sensitive for anyone with any brains to touch! Robert Putnam hid his own findings about diversity in communities leading to mistrust and community alienation for years because he feared nasty right-of-centre people would “misuse” his conclusions.
* Walter Schirra’s speech is considered to have been the shortest public speech on record. The workers at the plant – not the management but the workers – strung up a banner with DO GOOD WORK on it.
BILL – BEHAVE YOURSELF. PLEASE. NO LINKS TO ‘WHITE NATIONALIST’ SITES PLEASE.
“Marvellous news, darling. It just came in the mail today. We CAN go to the U.S.S.R. and build socialism together!”
The appalling and tragic story of those Western, Indian, Japanese [etc.,] communists and fellow-travellers and just plain starry-eyed progressives who ended up at the mercy of the Soviet State was a hideous one and Orwell certainly must have known about it even if only in fragmented whispers.
The U.S. Ambassador in Moscow was wholly unmoved by the plight of those disillusioned souls who wanted new American passports so they could return home …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Davies
At least one British citizen, Rose Cohen, disappeared into the Gulag.
There must have been many others.
It is mildly curious that Animal Farm had no escapees from neighbouring farms eager to Build Socialism. But perhaps this is as silly as observing that nobody in the ‘Rupert Bear’ Annual ever has to go to the toilet.
Now I read this and thought yes we need some light relief from the tastless shit that had gone before. I was imagining the cheeky girls interpretation of Hegel’s Philosophy of right or Chico dancing to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus but then comes along Corr to spoil the fun. Cue the Sewer.
It does sound a truly hideous idea, but fundamentally would it really be any worse than the way the book was treated in the 1950s cartoon version?
Meatloaf doing the sound track for Atlas Shrugged? That sounds like a kitsch, so-bad-it’s-good cult classic. Make that pitch to a studio quick, Dave! Not a British one obviously – there won’t be any left.
I wonder what the musical will be called – ‘Pigs’, perhaps?
For sheer inappropriate use of a medium (if that’s the right word), it gets nowhere near the French Olympic synchronised swimming team’s routine on the theme of the Holocaust.
I reckon they are going for the so bad it’s good appeal of the fictional ‘Springtime for Hitler’. They can’t be serious, can they? (Although in a perverse way I hope they are, it adds to the weirdness.)
Cardinal Newman posted this gem on his site awhile back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
It is a cut-’n-paste compilation but very very good
Stormtrooper Corr felt that the Sewer Rat [and maybe others too] would enjoy this …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH4ivOyO0PQ&feature=related
… mind you, it isn’t – in my opinion – anywhere near as insulting to black people as the vile trash cranked out by the Gangsta Rap Industry
And this primitive but brilliant animation has a political message that requires it to be watched from start to finish … Spartakist, in a politics-lite sense
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yt4UVGnxV8&feature=related
Are’t those bloodhounds just so cooooool ?
This is a classic.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFyKAUBkdOs
The Gorgeous one had better not show this to his friends in Gaza. They may take a fancy to his head.
I read somewhere that Burton may do 1984.
For what it’s worth it is just worth reminding people that apparently the CIA were involved financially in backing and bankrolling the filmakers successful attempt to get Sonia Orwell (who owned the copyright to the Orwell output)so that Animal Farm could be made as an animated cartoon.
Yes, David Walsh, there is a yarn to that effect, about the CIA and the ‘Animal Farm’ cartoon.
Is there hard evidence or just a good story in itself?
Stephen Fry and Borat-Cohen and French and Saunders and Rowan Atkinson could do a really ace ‘Animal Farm’
Here are Pete and Dud [you may not have seen this before]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UT02–Ijdc
My daughter claims she very nearly wet herself watching this
FOUR LEGS GOOD !
TWO LEGS BAD !
ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS !
CHAIRMAN MAO, YOU ARE THE RED SUN IN OUR HEARTS !
Let’s see if this works as an unbroken movie …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZldlyeR8DU
If not, it can be viewd in short stretches on YouTube
Bowie wanted to do a musical called ‘1984′ in 1973, but Orwell’s widow Sonia refused to let him use the name. So he did a musical called ‘The 1980 Floor Show’ (geddit?)
It was filmed at the Marquee Club in July 1973, and was pretty abysmal and even by the standards of glam the costumes were over the top. I was a big Bowie fan and glam rocker but it was around this time I began to think “you can only take this glam rock so far” (I looked like one of the NY Dolls, England was not ready, I got into more fights in mascara and platform heels than I did as a punk).
http://www.5years.com/1980.htm
Highlights included Bowie and Marianne Faithfull, dressed as a nun, dueting on “I Got You Babe”
(I think Marianne was too stoned to remember the lines and is reading an autocue).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zonxzIDNvgE
Here I am back, refreshed from my stay in lovely Satholic Malta. Ready to pick up where I left off!!!! Dave, I think you are being unfair about musicals, in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties musicals were a way of commenting on social and political events, often satriically. It was a an artform where European jews and Afro-Americans could make a mark and it was hugely popular. Think, ‘Showboat’ (Paul Robeson), ‘Fiddler on the Roof’(concerning pogroms and emigration), ‘Porgy and Bess’ (about poverty among American blacks) and many hundred others. I thought Elton John’s score for ‘The Lion King’ was very nice, but then I am not a music snob. Who would you like to see write it? Paul McCartney? The bloke with the funny name who writes scores for TV programmes (Phelung Barrington?)?
The Sewer Rat reminds us of Paul Robeson …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XlEzY4tMyg
… and a few years back I was in China and talking to some Brits teaching in China [not all of them Gap Year kiddies] and mentioned the recording of Paul Robeson singing ‘Chi Lai’ – the national anthem of China – and not one of them had heard of Paul Robeson
Here is Robeson, “useful tool” or ‘Comsymp’ in the eyes of the State Department, CIA*, FBI et al, singing ‘Chi Lai’ …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJv0jMLLRcw
Brilliant!
* Either the State Department and the CIA hated one another throughout the Cold War or they did a brilliant job of pretending to do so
O SEWER RAT
And – if the foregoing were not enough – here is Paul Robeson singing the Anthem of the USSR …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtU3vUOa2sw
… which even now and – yes – in spite of everything brings tears to my eyes
To be honest, I’m embarrassingly anthem-susceptibe.
Here is ‘Chi Lai’ in a slick modern version …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyHVsFdxGRU&feature=related
.. dead good, innit?
And – last posting for a while now – thinking of Robeson’s ‘Chil Lai’ renderine led me to Dr Norman Bethune …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7tLCbYBmxE&feature=related
… smart interview here and well worth anyone’s time to watch
Accidentally alighting here and reading the comments on this website shows me that they have descended to a level somewhat less interesting than the list of ingredients on the back of a shampoo bootle, and with none of clear prose or function of the latter.
I don’t know why the author continues but if he does still wish to waste his time I’d be happy to write comments for him here again, but only at £25 a pop, payable in advance.
“I don’t know why the author continues but if he does still wish to waste his time I’d be happy to write comments for him here again, but only at £25 a pop, payable in advance.”
Isn’t it “I don’t know why the author continues but if he does still wish to waste his time I’d be happy to write comments for him here again, but only at £25 a pop, payable in advance.”
Hang on, Southpawpunch
Isn’t it the other way around?
You owe Dave money, for the extreme stress and aggravation of the Kasche libel action and your apparent part in this matter?
Still, public school boys are unlikely to ever repay a debt..class nature of em….etc, so Southpawpunch you are never going to admit your culpability in this matter or cough up…no surprise there…
Ha. ha, what makes the petty bourgois deviationist Southpaw Punch think that any of us would be interested in reading his comments. Not while Bill Corr will supply bile for free.
BILE SUPPLIED! SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!
One wonders just how much money, in raw cash terms, SOUTHPAWPUNCH might justly be considered to owe David Osler.
Well, if we cost Osler’s time at a very modest tenner an hour [not much above minimum wage] my guess is that it’d be in the thousands.
Here’s counterfactual drivel from Al-Grauniad …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/13/saudi-arabia-king-abdullah-anniversary?showallcomments=true#start-of-comments
… drivel of a kind that turns me immediately into an unpaid P.R. shill – a Cameron Lite – for the House of Saud and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [of course, I'm typing on a laptop I bought in Al-Khobar with my wages in my last job, so I AM a hack of sorts] and it ENRAGES me that rot like this gets into print in what was once a revered publication devoted to the truth.
“I can stand rot but it must NOT be utter rot”
Bertie Wooster
To say that Al-Grauniad ought to be bitterly ashamed of hosting this drivel goes without saying.
By the way, do any of you recall
“BRITISH NURSES IN PRISON IN SAUDI ARABIA FOR MURDER” – well, that WAS the place of my last job and I can tell you that the old [Western] hands there in KFMMC were convinced beyond all doubt of the guilt of those two women.
One of the pair – nonames here – had already clocked up an interesting track record and it was alleged that the Ryal Scottish College of Nursing were keen to have a word with her about whether or not she knew anything at all about who might possibly have used a dying patient’s credit card.
[She might by now be working in the nursing home where you parked your beloved old granny!]
Yeah, it really was a mistake to comment. A moment’s lack of concentration when using the site for links and carelessly reading a comment and thinking – renegade Labourite factotum that Osler may now be – no-one deserves the meaningless scrawl that now passes for comments on this blog (since the departure of myself and other Lefts last year).
To correct the above commentators, the Kaschke matter wasn’t like that at all and if you really want to know what happened (and believe me, you really do not want to) it’s at http://www.davidosler.com/2010/05/johanna-kaschke-the-tory-suspected-of-links-to-leftwing-extremists/
Maybe the above comments and most now posted here are some great joke by some advant-garde artist. Just how irrelevant and inane can they be and still have at least a faint resemblance to the English Language.
Or perhaps it’s the current state of a Cold War experiment involving 40 monkeys with type-writers. These comments are as far as they have progressed in 45 years; in a few hundred years they should get to the level of simple nursery rhymes.
So rarely have so many keyboards been prodded so much to such little effect as the screed that fills these boxes nowadays. Give it up, Osler.
I’m not going to mention the absurd Kasche case or SOUTHPAWPUNCH’s outrageously caddish behaviour again.
Ever.
It was amusing to see the Rat using grotesquely archaic ‘Daily Worker’ lingo like “petty bourgeois deviationist” …
In Libya, in 1977, there were posters everywhere in Tripoli, in Arabic, English and Italian, exhorting people to do something or other and one slogan, stuck forever in my mind, was:
PURGE THE COUNTRY OF DEVIATIONISTS!
This is one of the best written and most interesting blogs around in my opinion.
Of course the comments are 90% shite as they are everywhere else.
Southpawpunch coming back isn’t an improvement. He’s full of shit. He’s got a nerve too after shitting on Dave from a great height when he needed some support.
Go and spout your simpleton ultra-left shite somewhere else punchy.
Southpawpunch,
You forget your previous statements:
http://www.davidosler.com/2010/05/johanna-kaschke-the-tory-suspected-of-links-to-leftwing-extremists/
The proceedings have ended, we are still awaiting you to report those reasons.
Just to finally (correct) Modernity, my understanding is that Kaschke is trying for a (verbal?) appeal despite losing her application for appeal and I presume she may also try both of those in relation to the Gray and Hilton cases (??).
When it is finally beyond doubt that she can do no more, then I will publish in full what happened (and as I did partially in the above link) and it will be seen that ‘Runia’ (sic), Modernity and assorted other munchkins have no clue about what they spout.
SUE R. [and others, too]
Concerning political music, there’s this gem …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-WaXrsFLgo
… if heard with visual images of Germans doing nice and sensible things, it comes across as mean and spiteful but if heard with the ghastly images of WW2 it seems like mildly ironic understatement.
This site is a beacon of civility compared to HP and SU right now …
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=6419#comment-248332
… is Mars in the cusp of Saturn or something?
Jimmy – it is Chinese people* and the Iban of Sarawak and Korean and Philippine people who eat dogs.
We Europeans only eat dogs in extremis during very hard times – the Siege of Paris and the Siege of Leningrad, for example.
* When one gets to know a few Chinese face-to-face they will tell you that the meat of dogs is:
-1- A luxury item and quite a bit more pricy than pork, beef and so on
-2- ‘heaty’ – a Malaysian Chinese word which implies, inter alia, that one has lots of sexual energy