My garden is ankle-deep in brown leaves. England, mainly green-on-green all year round, is not really all that deciduous, but by early winter enough brown leaves fall to make, when it rains, a boeuf stroganoff underfoot. “All the leaves are brown” is the opening phrase of one of the great songs of the 1960s, California Dreamin’, by the Mamas And The Papas. The song starts with those few ordinary words, then the whole number drives forward relentlessly, always sweetened and strengthened by Cass Elliot’s million-dollar trick of sustaining a lyrical overtone even when she was belting the melody like a blues-shouter. Her untimely death was like losing the music of happiness.
When I see the brown leaves now, I suppose I dream of one of Sydney’s beaches on a summer’s day. But a song called Avalon Dreamin’ wouldn’t swing. Unusually for Sydney, Avalon has a deliberately romantic English name. Other beaches achieve romanticism by accident: Curl Curl, an Aboriginal name, is still the best. “Tamarama” is thought to mean “thunder”. But Avalon was a name probably chosen to remind you of King Arthur’s burial island. It was nearly the death of me, too. One night I was stupid enough to join a bunch of friends who went surfing in the dark. This was 15 years before Jaws was released, but today I can’t see Steven Spielberg speaking on television without thinking of a possible scene in which I could have been redistributed through half a mile of ocean.
The funny thing – or unfunny thing, if you prefer – is that I was well aware that night-surfing, as a sport, was on a par with Russian roulette. But I did it anyway. And here I am today, telling my granddaughter to be careful when she stands on her head.
It could be said that Adele is Mama Cass born again, but she needs a song to match her voice. I have listened several times to her smash hit, Hello. I was hoping that the shapely beauty of her opening phrase would hook me for what remains of my forever. But the opening phrase never really arrives. The whole number is one of those big ballads in which the singer whispers her way through a verse section that hasn’t got a melody and then goes soaring and bellowing into a chorus section that hasn’t got a melody either. The virtuosity leaves you yawning with admiration.
Whitney Houston drove herself bonkers yelling stuff like that, and Celine Dion at full volume puts up such a barrage that she might be part of Canada’s anti-missile defence system. But Adele still has time for better things. The young almost always have time, as long as they don’t go surfing at night.
