People in the Pub 1 - Nostalgia for the past

He has a story to tell, but no-one to tell it to. Life hasn’t been easy since the return to London. The street looks the same; those rows of houses, each seemingly innocuous, but loaded with memories of youth. The day when his father had left with barely a goodbye, and the absence of twenty years that followed.

Happier times; the celebrations, crowds of familiar faces, arm-in-arm, singing songs joyfully and far into the night. The time when Brian had lost a bet and had had to streak all the way down the road, only to find a slow patrolling police car had chose that very moment to roll past.

He remembers the race riots in the early eighties. The appalling treatment of the Pakistani immigrants in the corner shop. The sour regret at feeling helpless to do anything to help them.

The pub is still on the corner, where he had his first drink, age fifteen. His uncle had allowed him a taste (after much persuasion) and had subsequently turned his nose up when he asked for lager. “Bloody Euro-fizz,” he had said. Strangely, this had subconsciously influenced his drinking habits way into his adult life.

The pub is different now. A group of Spanish students sit around a table, eating olives and drinking white wine. He likes to think of himself as a well-rounded sort of chap, happy to embrace people from other countries. Though as he sips his London Pride, this all seems so wrong. He mildly loathes himself for feeling this way, and sits on the bar stool quietly, half reading the sports pages of the Daily Mirror.

The dank smell of years of spilt beer and ancient cigarette smoke, the slight yellowing of the walls, the ancient clock with its roman numerals offer some comfort, but within these walls is a map of his past that no-one here could understand. The bad discos and ill-judged copulations with friend’s sisters. He allows himself a smile now at this memory; of the sheer terror as a gang of ten older boys had chased him down the street. There is a slight scar just above his left eyebrow. They had taught him a lesson that day that went far beyond the code about fooling around with friend’s siblings. They had taught him about the community, the importance of people close to you.

Resntful of finding himself middle aged and bitter, he plays up to this stereotype. Joan used to run this place. Third generation. He makes sure the barman knows it. The people he once knew have long since gone, and now the most prominent sound in the pub is not old George crooning a war song, dewy eyed and looking down at the remains of his seventh pint of Light and Pride, but a language and a youth he has no recognition of.

He orders another drink. His third. “You from round here then mate?” he asks as the young barman hands him his change. “No, been here just a few months.” He smiles, wryly.

Musical Inspirations Project

I was about ten or eleven years old when I first heard the song by the band Pulp, 'Common People'. It was the first contemporary song that I can remember having any sort of effect on me. The album it came from, 'Different Class', was the first I owned, given as a present from an uncle, who himself is a keen musician. I vaguely remember him telling of his work colleagues' wry amusement at what they considered to be a rather inappropriate gift for a nephew on the cusp of his eleventh birthday; talk of drugs and sex prevalent throughout. Wouldn't Oasis be a better choice?

Of course, I had next to no clue about the song's social connotations at such a tender age, but even then, listening to it felt as though it was touching on something incredibly insightful. That, of course, and the trivial matter that it was catchy; something to sing along to that wasn't written thirty years previously.

In my opinion, 'Common People' remains one of the best pieces of social commentary ever put to music. The mid-nineties were notorious for the glamorisation of the working classes, brought on by the rise in popularity of Oasis and lad culture. Hailing from a working class background had become so synonymous with the formation of "Cool Britannia', the middle classes were now trying to hide their roots, in an attempt to appear fashionable or relevant. Rather than Jarvis Cocker supporting this idea, 'Common People' remains a stark and ever relevant reminder that actually, it's not much fun to be poor, and have little sense of direction in your life.

The song has a definitive narrative structure, that serves to build the tension of his frustrations. He begins slightly perturbed with the idea that his subject, (the student from Greece with a wealthy father) finds the idea of pretending not to have any money a good old laugh ("Yeah? but I can't see anyone else smiling in here.......") , right through to terribly accurate and poignant line that -
"You will never understand how it feels to live your life, with no meaning or control, with no where left to go...."
The passion and belief to which the song reaches its climax gives great weight to its message.

I think the ideas of champagne socialism explored in 'Common People'; of a desperate need for the privledged but liberally minded to affiliate themselves with the poor, and finding romantic notions in the struggle, completely relevant. Rarely does a song touch on a social issue with such reverence, understanding and accuracy, and it really took me by surprise when, having not listened to the song for many a year, that the line
"You'll never fail like Common People"
still had the rare ability to make the hair on the back of the neck stand up.

Have a listen back..