Tuesday, 8th September 2009.

Nowhere Man

Who the fuck does John Niven think he is?

An article in the Daily Mail – Tuesday’s edition – sees Niven wax lyrical about the evils of the Beatles’ excursion into remastering territory, dismissing the decision to mark the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road with the release of Beatles Rock Band and a newly-remastered back catalogue as “pure greed”. In his 1300 word rant, Niven lays into the alleged futility of both gestures, convinced that this new venture is in complete contradiction to Lennons’ communist plea that we should “Imagine no possessions”. However, for a former A&R man (I assume it’s the same John Niven who was responsible for Kill Your Friends, anyway) he displays a staggering lack of understanding about the music business and entertainment industry in general.

It does seem to be fashionable to stomp on the consoles of late, as if the release of products like Rock Band and Guitar Hero were in some way hampering creativity and dissuading teenagers from actually going out and taking up an instrument. As recently as today, Bill Wyman has stuck his oar in – the remarks were presumably taken completely out of context, but his comment that Rock Band “encourages kids not to learn” is completely missing the point. In the wake of other complaints from Jack White, Chad Kroeger and every Peter, Paul and Mary with an album to plug, Wyman has predictably jumped on the bandwagon, suggesting that playing the game “makes people less and less dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument”.

How anyone could jump to this conclusion is frankly beyond me, because if you’re going to go down that road, you could say that Wii Sports is hampering sports tuition, and that children are sitting in the comfort of their own lounges instead of heading down to boxing clubs, or throwing a plastic remote control round the room instead of hanging out on a tennis court. That may be true. But Wii Tennis is absolutely no substitute for the real thing, as anyone who’s ever played it (and I suspect that most of these musicians haven’t) will testify. It’s just that some people don’t actually want the real thing. The ones who spend a leisurely evening practicing their lob using a pixellated caricature at the expense of heading down to the nearest sports centre for a spot of doubles were, let’s face it, never going to get down there anyway. If you want to exercise properly, you’ll do it, console or no console. Similarly, I’ve seen no evidence that Guitar Hero actually dissuades potential musicians – nothing other than mindless speculation.

To be honest, I suspect that there’s a certain amount of sour grapes on behalf of the rock stars, who can’t really deal with the fact that you can now attain, with a little plastic-bashing, the sort of applause that it took them years to earn, albeit on an entirely synthetic and ultimately quite hollow level. Nick Mason more or less acknowledging this in the BBC article when he admits that “It irritates me having watched my kids do it – if they spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they’d be damn good by now”. That’s fine, but it isn’t that simple. Bashing out a perfect solo to ‘Hotel California’ gives a feeling of warm satisfaction, even on the easy setting, but all the sampled cheers and onscreen affirmations that “You rock!” are never going to come close to the rush that you get doing it for real, any more than winning a Gran Turismo championship is going to equal the thrill that Lewis Hamilton undoubtedly felt back when he was driving properly, and I think if we’re seriously suggesting that teenagers are incapable of making that distinction and realising that for themselves, we are giving them far less credit than they deserve.

The fact is that some children are simply indisposed to learning an instrument, and simply don’t want to do it. And no amount of cajoling or coaxing or rock star posturing is going to get them to change their minds. But tell that to Wyman. Perhaps it’s a generation gap thing. Many of the critics are those who presumably do not own consoles themselves, being either too old to belong to the target audience or too busy living the rock star dream. I also think there’s a lot of territory-marking going on here. You might as well have Chad Kroeger come in and urinate all over the plastic Les Paul imitation. I suppose there’s a reason they call it a Wii.

Niven’s remarks about Beatles Rock Band were not restricted to a critique of the game’s general principle, although he does quote “a friend” who laments that it’s impossible to get the game-playing zombies to do anything, like, real with their lives, man – “Try to get some of these kids to take guitar or piano lessons and you’d get stabbed in the heart”. (That’s probably true in inner-city London, but again I think it’s awfully unfair if it’s applied to kids in general.) Niven also claims the game’s extensive band package is a waste of money, freely citing the £500 you’d have to spend in order to pick up the game, full band kit, microphone stands (in order to replicate those harmonies) and the plastic guitar replicas, conveniently ignoring the fact that you do not actually have to buy any of this in order to enjoy the game (you don’t even have to buy the guitar, given that the more recent Guitar Hero controllers are perfectly compatible). The logic is so inherently false – even if he is trying to prove a point – that it almost defies belief. You can picture him saying “London’s so expensive, man. The stretch limo I hired from King’s Cross was a real wallet-emptier after my first class rail ticket, and then there was the Swedish massage parlour, the front row seats at the Apollo, the Planet Hollywood bill…Jeez, what a con!”.

Where Niven really shoots himself in the foot, though, is his critique of the Beatles’ remastering project. Somewhat rhetorically, he asks “Doesn’t the very remastering concept itself suggest that something was wrong with the old version?”, as if he expects us to shuffle our feet awkwardly and admit no, guv, the Beatles are national treasures, and lord, we can’t be touchin’ them sacred recordings. This completely ignores the rather obvious fact that them sacred recordings were not what we’ve been listening to on CD for the past fifteen years or so – instead we’ve had to be content with pale, fluffy fascimiles of the originals, as Niven would know or realise if he’d done any research into exactly what you’ve been able to buy and how hollow it sounds next to the vinyl. Evidently the man has either forgotten everything he learned in the studio, or he was simply never there to begin with.

And who, pray tell, has been saying for years that the Beatles CD recordings are inadequate? Bingo. The fans. The ones who were planning to buy the remasters – when they can afford them, and certainly not at the RRP. Most of us will wait for a 3-for-£20 offer on Amazon, or simply keep our collective eyes on Ebay. Because the truth is, while we are the first to admit to jumping on the bandwagon whenever there’s a new fad in town, we’re not entirely lacking self-control or the will to make our own decisions, or wait before we part with our cash. The communists may cry foul play and claim that we’re being grievously ripped off, but truth be told some of us were rather looking forward to September and the prospect of a digitally clean recording that allows us to hear ‘A Day In The Life’ the way it was meant to be heard. It’s true that a lot of this conviction that the remastered catalogue is such a vast improvement has come at the hands of the music press: they’ve told us that it’s going to be worth the wait, and we’ve believed them. But somehow they state their case with far more conviction and reasoning than our friend Mr Niven – who, to be fair to him, is somewhat handicapped aurally. Because I suspect that he’s never going to grasp the concept of improved sound quality. I have a feeling that he’s been unable to hear the difference between the old and new recordings not because of some puritanical vibe, or anti-capitalist principle, or even the need to Keep It Real, but simply because his head is stuck so firmly and completely up his arse.