It's official - suave urbanity and the crisp conversation of cavalier chaps are the new rock'n'roll. A new tribute album celebrating the Britishness of Noel Coward and his influence as a lyricist, stylist and gay icon has just been released.
Coward, born to the ranks of the lower-middle-classes in Teddington on December 16th, 1899, was half Scottish, and quarter Irish, but the archetypal Brit. The album, Twentieth Century Blues, is a collection of Coward songs complied by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. The songs are covered by pop stars stately and slatternly, thereby constituting yet another coffer-filler for the Red Hot AIDS charitable trust, as well as copper-fastening the connection between sexuality and pop music. It's also one of the first of numerous other Coward-related events scheduled for next year's centenary celebrations. Already, television documentaries and broadsheet profiles have ensured the raising of Coward's stature (and the record's), which in turn will heighten both fin-de-siecle fever. Coward, inveterate snob that he was, would have undoubtedly loved the attention, but would probably have balked at his songs being covered by all those horrid, tatty pop stars.
The arch irony, of course, is that Coward - who once memorably uttered the oft-quoted jibe of how extraordinarily "potent cheap music is" - was the multi-media shock pop-star of his day. He borrowed much of his performance style from American pop, jazz, and theatre, while his early social dramas (including his ground
breaking work The Vortex) combined every underground and anti-Establishment "vice" so well known to, and hidden by, the British upper classes: hard-drug addiction, bisexuality, homosexuality, pacifism, and atheism. The Vortex, in particular, caused a sensation. Its depiction of adultery, promiscuity, and cocaine use was thrown back in his face with fatuous comments from the House of Lords and hypocritical sermons from the nation's pulpits. Round one to Noel. Despite his elitist, silk-smoking-gown attitudes, Coward was adept at slipping between the social classes. In his 20s, he had an affair with the Prince of Wales's licentious brother, George. In his 40s, he aided the French Resistance, his name being added to Hitler's death list for his efforts. In his 60s, he cruised London's East End for rough trade. In his 70s he finally received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, but only after homosexuality had been legalised.
It is his sexuality and songs that have made him so tantalising to UK pop stars, especially when British pop from the 1960s onwards has continuously traded on the illicit perfume of homoerotic cool and camp in equal measures. Coward's generation-spanning legacy, from The Kinks to David Bowie to Suede, is there for all to see.
The connection between Noel Coward and British pop music, then, was already firmly in place. As Celtic as his family background was, he was indisputably as typically British as they come: as patriotic as an Able Seaman and as traditional as the BBC World Service. A matinee idol to women, yet covertly homosexual (another clear link with pop musicians), Coward was a subversive who filtered through to the consciousness of the great British public, a misfit who cloaked his sexual leanings and mores - as well as his scorn of the pretensions of the British aristocracy - in a language of louche wit and sophistication.
Like other essentially English artistic icons such as Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman, Coward paved the way for the likes of Peter Cook and Joe Orton, who in turn influenced the likes of The Sex Pistols and The Smiths. It's also too much of a coincidence (spurious or not) to ignore the fact that both The Vortex and his 1923 revue London Calling! might just have indirectly influenced the sneering face of British punk rock (The Vortex was a renowned London punk rock dive in the late 1970s; The Clash's third album was called London's Calling). Add these to the Beeb's recent Arena documentary on Coward, in which they described him as a "1930s punk rocker", and you've got a playwright and lyricist who broke not only with tradition but also the concept of what had previously been the norm.
Which is where Twentieth Century Blues enters the picture. For a tribute album that takes risks, it isn't necessarily successful. It's a bemusing mixture of Britpop's old vanguard (Paul McCartney, Sting, Elton John, Bryan Ferry), and newish oiks of the genre (Space, Suede, Robbie Williams, Pet Shop Boys, Vic Reeves, Shola Ama, Texas, The Divine Comedy). With a couple of odd ones thrown in for good measure (Marianne Faithfull, Damon Albarn with Michael Nyman), you've got an above average tribute record that, irrespective of several failures, ultimately bears testament to a cultivated modern composer of playfully decadent, vitriolic, ironic, and pan-sexual pop songs. In other words, it's not the new one from Oasis.
Unlike previous recorded projects by the American-based Red Hot organisation (notably the Cole Porter collection on which Twentieth Century Blues is modelled), the treatment of Coward songs was deliberately given a Britpop makeover. Compiler Neil Tennant decided to concentrate on using British artists only (Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon? Playing the Oscar Wilde card, obviously), and then linking them, however vaguely, with what he thought Noel Coward currently represents.
While elder statesmen Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry, Elton John and Sting acquit themselves to the manner born with traditional versions, the younger elements tend to be somewhat more experimental. Clearly, all concerned had free rein (although the final foul language verse of Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington, brilliantly covered on the album by comedian Vic Reeves, was edited out). Tennant gives no explanation, however, as to why mordant Brit wits such as David Bowie, Morrissey or Elvis Costello aren't lending their tuppence-worth to the album. "We looked at artists who had some sense of theatre, wit, style, humour, even music hall," explained Tennant of the selection process recently. "Pop music in my view always swings between the kind of `authentic' school as represented when I was a teenager by progressive rock, as against the theatrical and ironic represented by Roxy Music. This album is therefore on the Roxy Music side of that divide, whereas I think the other side has been dominant in pop music in the past five or six years."
Like many rock stars of the past 40 years, Noel Coward sailed through a world of celebrity orgies, hidden sexuality, drug dives, cynicism and gossip. What a marvellous party that must have been.
Twentieth Century Blues (EMI) is currently on release.
Twentieth Century Blues
Track listing
Texas: Parisian Pierrot
The Divine Comedy: I've Been To A Marvellous Party
Paul McCartney: A Room With A View
Pet Shop Boys: Sail Away
Shola Ama with Craig Armstrong: Someday I'll Find You
Robbie Williams: There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner
Bryan Ferry: I'll See You Again
Marianne Faithfull: Mad About The Boy
Space: Mad Dogs And Englishmen
Suede featuring Raissa: Poor Little Rich Girl
Sting: I'll Follow My Secret Heart
Damon Albarn with Michael Nyman: London Pride
Vic Reeves: Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington
Elton John: Twentieth Century Blues