Talk:Ian MacDonald
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[edit] Revert of rewrite
I just reverted a complete rewrite of the article (details here). The new content may well be much better, but it destroyed so much of the Wikipedia structure (links etc.) that I felt it had to be reverted. If updating/improving an article, please take care that what is left is still a good Wikipedia article, as well as a good piece of writing. Someone who knows the subject better than I may be able to use both pieces to create a better article, though I fear the new stuff really strayed beyond Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. (And, or or, new, sources are needed). Notinasnaid 12:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Apologies for damaging links. For those who might be interested in a more in depth profile of this author, I thought it might be a good idea, and acceptable to all, if I were to paste my article here on the Discussion page - though I know that's not its technical role. Thus, the 'Article' maintains the links and good Wikipedia format, and the discussion page, in a fairly harmless twist, includes additional material. A fair deal?!
Here is the piece: Born in 1949, Ian MacCormick (Ian MacDonald) was a child of the 1960s first, and a music critic second. MacDonald was educated at a public school, and then at King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied English for a term before switching to Archaeology and Anthropology. MacDonald dropped out of Cambridge after a year, disliking the ‘unearned’ privilege of its students, and seeing its ‘dusty’ buildings as out of keeping for a world which, he believed, was changing profoundly and swiftly.
Whilst he was fascinated by the present, MacDonald was also interested in the past. His wide interests about which only a little is publicly known, included traditional public school boy interests such as classical music. MacDonald’s connections and talent enabled him to contribute to publications such as ‘Classic CD’.
MacDonald wrote widely on classical music. His The New Shostakovich was one of the most talked-about classical books of the 1990s. It was the first western book that attempted to put the works of the great Russian composer in their political and social context. MacDonald's insistence on creating a cinematic scenario for every major piece — inevitably a bitter satire on Soviet brutality and Stalinism — polarised opinion sharply. Some rated his interpretations fanciful and musicologically worthless, while others believed they held some subjective truth.
Although MacDonald viewed classical music as its infinite superior, he also enjoyed popular music, both as a critic and a song-writer. Indeed, his brother Bill MacCormick, who went onto play bass in Robert Wyatt’s Matching Mole, was a song-writing partner for MacDonald in the band the Quiet Sun. In the late 1970s MacDonald provided lyrics for the album Listen Now. Later, Brian Eno would help MacDonald produce Sub Rosa, an album of his own songs, and release it on Manzanera's record label.
MacDonald believed that the popular music of the 1960s perfectly represented its decade. Indeed, MacDonald’s essays on popular music are coloured by his belief in the 1960s as a luminous and revolutionary decade, which he believed to be the architect of liberation in Britain of the ‘old order’s’ class system, snobbery and sexism. He wrote very widely on the popular music of the period for the New Musical Express (as Assistant Editor from 1972 to 1975), and later for Mojo, Uncut and Arena. Amongst many others, MacDonald was an admirer of Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, the Band, the Incredible String Band, Laura Nyro, the Who, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and The Beach Boys – he said that their 1966 song, ‘God Only Knows’ was pop’s ‘most perfect record’.
Particularly, however, MacDonald was concerned with The Beatles and Bob Dylan. For the former, he wrote an acclaimed book in 1994 'Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties’ and it has never gone out of print. The book was distinctive from usual books on popular music in its insistence on thorough research, on analysing every song that the band recording, on placing the songs in the context of his beloved Sixties, and, in viewing most of the songs as intellectual artistic pieces. Paul McCartney, a member of the Beatles, said that whilst he was happy to have his songs treated in this way, some of MacDonald’s conclusions, such as on ‘The Fool on the Hill’, were very wrong. Fans of the group, meanwhile, were greatly pleased at such a serious study, but some took umbrage at some of MacDonald’s sometimes damning views; for example, the much revered ‘Across the Universe’ is dismissed as ‘boring’ and ‘babyish’.
MacDonald said that he partly wrote the book to inspire the musicians of the early 1990s into making better work – he considered the 1970s and 1980s, with odd exceptions like Prince and the Police, to be devoid of quality. To an extent, he achieved his aim: Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, of whom MacDonald was a fan, as he was of Blur, were both full of praise for the book. Moreover, Simon Goddard, for his book, ‘The Smiths: the Songs that Saved your Life’, adopted, much to MacDonald’s pleasure, the song by song approach which he pioneered in ‘Revolution in the Head’.
MacDonald later edited the book into stocking-sized ‘One’ in 2001, which featured essays from ‘Revolution in the Head’ on the tracks from the Beatles’ compilation of No. 1 tracks from the same period.
His other great popular music love, Bob Dylan, was treated to an essay on his sixtieth birthday, titled ‘Wild Mercury: the Tale of Two Dylans’, which, like many of his essays, is contained in the compilation book, ‘The Peoples’ Music’. In the essay, MacDonald gave three theories on Dylan. MacDonald argued that ‘Bob Dylan’ was not a person at all; rather he was a character played of Robert Zimmerman – that being the real name of Bob Dylan – whom Zimmerman played in Method actor style, just as much as David Bowie played Ziggy Stardust. MacDonald further argued that Zimmerman had a spilt personality, which both hated and loved attention, and that he was maddened and brain damaged by drugs.
Such views can best be described as idiosyncratic, and he hinted at further unstableness in his essay on Nick Drake, with whom he was briefly associated with at university. The essay, ‘Exiled from Heaven: the Unheard Message of Nick Drake’, which is also in ‘The Peoples’ Music’ argued that Drake had tapped into truths buried deep in the human mind about the meaning of life: we are, he argues, exiles from heaven, who reincarnate.
The joy of MacDonald was such idiosyncratic views, buttressed by his broad knowledge, and serious research, captured in an exciting style. However, his style would be viewed as slightly eccentric and verbose by academics because of his obsession with using rare and complex words, and odd mixture of these with the most base vernacular. For instance, in the Dylan essay, MacDonald writes that ‘Zimmerman is playing this Dylan character for real tonight … (he would soon write) the hexagrammatic song’.
MacDonald was a believer in all sorts of things which were not mainstream – he believed that cats were especially intelligent creatures, and that many had been human in previous lives. He also believed in ghosts, and wrote the ‘New Shostakovich’ after Shostakovich tapped him on the shoulder, and told him to write it. This would seem to be an equivalent to Googol being told by God to burn half of ‘Dead Souls’ or Hell would await him; or, as an atheist might put it, like George McFly, in the film ‘Back to the Future’, being told by Darth Vadar to invite a girl to a dance or have his brain melted.
Nonetheless, MacDonald believed in such things, which perhaps caused, or at least aggravated his manic depression, and, never having married, in his forties he moved back in with his parents for support. MacDonald’s parents lived in a rural location, which was by the end of his life the only place that he found peaceful, as he believed that the Sixties’ legacy, which he sought to lionise, was being lost to materialism which was ‘murdering our souls’.
Towards the end of his life MacDonald grew increasingly eccentric: no longer willing to be interviewed over the phone, or face to face, he insisted upon being sent questions in writing, which he would respond to in writing. MacDonald was also burdened by an immense workload. He was reviewing widely and writing two books - 'Birds, Beasts & Fishes: A Guide to Animal Lore and Symbolism', and a book on David Bowie – neither of which were published. Unable to maintain his sanity, MacDonald committed suicide in July 2003, at just 52 years old.
