Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed?
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
– William Blake, from Songs of Innocence, to accompany Songs of Experience
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
– Philip Larkin, MCMXIV
When I was about nine years old, I had a school friend come over on a Saturday to stay over. We were watching TV with my parents after the evening meal, and my dad, who was both eccentric, humorous, but also often inhabited an entirely different headspace to most people, got bored with the show and, hinting that it was beyond our bedtime, turned to my mum and said: “I think it’s about time we had it off.” He was of course, quite innocently only referring to the TV control, but you can only imagine the sniggering going on between me and my best mate.
Innocence then, is all relative, and doesn’t only come from the mouths of children. And what is life after all, but the story of innocence moving inexorably towards experience, and the arc of that narrative told, with pain, pleasure, yearning, and indeed more effectively and efficiently in song? So then, this week we are going to dip into innocence in all forms, and with an extraordinary host of visitors at the Bar, leaning over with their drinks, telling their own tales or innocence lost or regained, and staring down the glass of their own experience.
So this week we’re searching for song-related innocence in three main ways. FIrstly, songs that mention innocence, or other related words in title or lyrics, or tell a tale about that quality. Second, songs that have a style or air of wide-eyed innocence about them. And third, when you’ve exhausted these suggestions, feel free to share your own innocent experiences of early music discovery, how you ran to the shop to get that first 45-inch single, how you put pop band patches on your school bag or jacket, or when you first saw that artist on Top of the Pops or another TV or radio show and thought, “This is the best thing ever!” Ah, great days …
Innocence is something that many artists yearn to recapture as a means to be creative. David Bowie used his own dreams for much lyric writing, trying to capture that sate of passive innocence for creativity. And here’s Tom Waits, who in his own gruff form of tenderness, captures that same idea:
Meanwhile one of Bowie’s collaborators, Robert Fripp, has appeared to tell us more about his need for innocence: “The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.” And Pablo Picasso is now here, draining our supplies of Chianti, with this pithy comment: ““It takes a very long time to become young.” Meanwhile, in an unusual combination, the trio is made by Muppets Show creator Jim Henson, who reveals how, “The most sophisticated people I know – inside they are all children.” Like the superlative Muppet Show the best children’s books, films and TV shows always capture innocence in a knowing fashion.
So let’s have a song about nostalgic innocence. Here’s Jeffrey Lewis, who when four, knew the names of every dinosaur, and much more:
Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan is now here to tell us how working with children helped her regain something valuable: “I was a nursery school teacher, and I worked with youth groups. I loved that job. It was exhausting, but you got a lot back - all their purity and insight and innocence is so on the surface, and they're so unrepressed; they'd really scream at you and then give you a massive kiss.”
Bruce Springsteen meanwhile, who is so very affable, and happy to visit us here at the bar, sums up his entire songwriter process with this theme: “I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.”
As the Boss says, as much as innocence is cherished, it is also lost. More musicians are now here to tell us about that. Here’s Nick Cave: “I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.”
Meanwhile Taylor Swift does not hesitate to talk about here own material: “'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.” You don’t say, Taylor. Other artists yearn for innocence because they feel the music industry is burned out. Morrissey famously said “the ashes are all around us” in the 1980s at the height of The Smiths, and now Brian Wilson has this to say: “Pop music has been exhausted. The innocence has been exhausted. I think we've lost the ability to be blown away by music.” Meanwhile here’s Tom Petty, who indicates there’s nothing innocent about record companies: “The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.”
Film-makers too are always yearning for youthful qualities as a key to creativity. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, says “I have always said that innocence is much more powerful than experience.” And here’s Federico Fellini: “If you see with innocent eyes, my friend, everything is divine.” Making our day at the bar, comes this comment from Clint Eastwood: “The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.” Is that what comes from working with an not so innocent orangutan in Every Which Way But Loose?
Good Ship Lollipop’s Shirley Temple was once the very epitome of innocence, but in this later quote, it seems, in retrospect she knew what was going on in how we view past days of nostalgia: “Make-believe colours the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways in science, in politics, in every bold intention.”
Some actors, as well as other performers, even as adults, have a quality of innocence, in private or public, that entrances others. “Tony Curtis was a joy to work with. He had a curious innocence that is very young and wise at the same time.” says Nicolas Roeg. And in a very different form, Ozzy Osbourne. “The first time I met him,” recalls Geezer Butler, “he came round my house with a chimney brush over his shoulder, his Dad’s factory gown on, and no shoes. He said, I saw your advert for a singer.”
So from early wide-eyed Beatles to the not-so-innocent Taylor Swift or Britney Spears, music often tries to capture the quality of innocence in its style as well as lyrics. That could even be contained in an instrumental. Certainly much of Kraftwerk’s output has a nostalgic innocence about it. And now we hear that “the characteristic of 'Oxygene' is a mixture of innocence and ambition, of trying to do something different in a different way,” says Jean-Michel Jarre. True. But let’s now enjoy some Young and Innocent Days from the pen of Ray Davies, taken from the album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire):
This very much reminds me of the theme tune from that 70s sitcom about two old Geordie friends, both looking to recapture their innocence, in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, written by Tony Rivers:
