Timbre! Elvis vs. The Beatles

In an earlier one of these Blog essays, I complained that popular music has become more about the spectacle than the soul. The actual music and the individual singing it are usually drowned out by the pyrotechnics mounted in connection with any live performance. It's now a rarity to see a person simply stand and deliver a song, unadorned by gaudy skimpiness, wild background writhing, and deafening-dazzling special effects. But in all this cacophony, the thing I miss most is the individual human voice. What I miss most are telling lyrics, clearly sung in a voice with a moving, expressive timbre.

There are rather technical, mathematical definitions of the word "timbre." The difference between the timbre of a clarinet and a flute, between one singer and another, has to do with ratios of overtones, waveforms, and frequencies. But the reason one timbre can be so emotionally affecting, while another one leaves us flat - remains largely a mystery. We can only say we know it when we feel it.

There aren't many modern singers whose voices have a moving timbre, who convey some unique combination of joy and pathos. There aren't many modern singers with mature, distinctive voices that are immediately recognizable and that therefore in and of themselves provide grounds for imitators. Perhaps Jimmy Fallon could imitate Justin Bieber's hairstyle and dance moves. But Bieber offers no distinctive vocal timbre that can be imitated, and that can evoke surprise and recapitulation of some strong emotion. Any imitation of Bieber can only be an imitation of exteriors in order to produce a derisive laugh.

It's the same with almost the entire roster of American Idols. When that show first came on the air, I thought it would be a true search for another Elvis, for someone with a searingly distinctive style and voice. But that hasn't happened. It has found people who can sing competently - even beautifully. Its finalists could all give gladdening performances as choir soloists or lounge singers or in some re-imagined version of "The Lawrence Welk Show." But there has been almost none among them whose voice has a memorable individuality. With all due respect to Kelly Clarkson's ability to render a song faithfully and with appropriate feeling, there is very little that's distinctive about her voice. It has no compelling singularity that makes it recognizable and uniquely evocative. There's nothing there to give imitators a toehold now, and there certainly won't be an industry of Kelly Clarkson imitators fifty years from now.

It's not some characteristic smooth and easy mellowness that I'm looking for in a voice and whose absence I'm regretting in the modern world, although when I really pause and listen, I can appreciate that quality in the "old standards" of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Dean Martin… But I want more than that in a voice. I want "gravitas," that word that's applied to mature actors who can freight the most incidental dialogue with import and a sense of inevitable succession. I want a foreshadowing of triumph and defeat. I want that quality that makes a voice both imitatable and inimitable.

A lot of the people whose voices thrill me with such qualities have fallen roughly into the category of "country-western" singers whose heyday was in the 70's and 80's, although their renderings transcend any set time and classification. They're beyond country-western, rock, or blues.

Willie Nelson is an example of a singer who has one of the most touching timbres for me. His voice is so much an onomatopoeia of the dry desert winds that sweep through his songs. When he sings in "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" -

You could die from the cold

In the arms of a nightmare

Knowin' well that that your best days are gone -

his voice and that lonely fate form an uncanny confluence. His voice is that lonely fate. In the same way, he embodies the long wistfulness of love when he sings in "Will You Remember?" -

I have sat 'neath the trees

While the cool summer breeze

Blew away the sands of time…

And when you've heard, all the songs of love,

Will you remember mine?

Similarly, something of the melancholy that suffuses our short time on this earth is a strain in other of my favorite voices. There's Tom Waits' whiskey-wasted search "for the heart of Saturday night" and his "breakin' all the rules in the cold, cold ground." Hoyt Axton conveys the richer bourbon worldliness of drifting down "every road I see," to find what's waitin' round the bend. There's Rod Stewart's hoarse hopefulness when he wonders, "Will I see you tonight, on a downtown train?" There's Leonard Cohen, whose voice has truly become "golden" only in the last decade or two, as he extols Joan of Arc's "solitude and pride." Even Johnny Cash, whose voice is so much the macho of solid oak, can have the admixture of that other, more complex craving as becomes apparent, again in a lesser known song he sang - "I've been sittin' here thinkin' about old times, some old times - dead and gone."

I see that most of the voices that affect me are men's voices. I don't know if that's because I'm a woman and therefore automatically more drawn to the male principle, or if men do cast a wider range of rebellion and individuality in their tones. But there are women whose voices, although they can't be thrillingly basso profundo - are still profunda. There's Edith Piaf who so fiercely regrets nothing. There's the incomparable crying catch in Patsy Cline's voice. Then no one conveys a pining romantic nostalgia better than Bernadette Peters singing an Irving Berlin song, wondering "When I'm alone, with only dreams of you, that won't come true - What'll I do?"

All these people have recognizable, distinctive voices that pave a pathway to the heart of things. Their singing is supremely affecting in a way that no rapper's cannonade can ever be. I can't help but think that most people who claim to enjoy the latter's performances do so for the same reason they claim to enjoy the spatterings of a lot of modern art. They say they like it, not because they find the work intrinsically expressive and interesting, but because they want to fit in with a certain crowd. They want to project a certain persona, and their choice of music must conform to their assumed character and to the part they're playing.

It's more difficult for me to understand though why so many people seem to be sincerely enthusiastic about singers who have no distinct personality, no unique voice - singers who are unripe and dependent on electronic synthesizers for the homogenized sounds they produce. More generally, it's difficult for me even to understand people's enthusiasm for most groups. Again, that's because the ultimate for me in popular music is an individual expression. Just as I wouldn't care for a novel written by a committee, I'm not often able to care deeply for the combination sound of barbershop quartets, choirs, or groups of any kind.

That's why the popularity of the Beatles has always been something of a mystery to me. Their joint sound never struck me as having any rich resonance. Then as they fractioned off into solo careers, I didn't find that any of them had that kind of moving individuality of voice that I value. People have argued with me about this. One friend claims that Paul, for instance, does have a distinctive voice that's anywhere recognizable, and that its unique timbre does provide fodder for imitators. Well, I don't know about that. Somehow, I doubt it. I can't help but think that people who claim to find that Paul, or any of the Beatles, produce a touching sound that, beyond any intellectual content of their songs, speaks directly to our emotions - are imputing qualities that aren't really there. I often feel that Beatles fans have ulterior reasons for attributing striking vocal ability to their idols. Perhaps fans are associating the advent of the Beatles with their youth or with some generally happier, freer time in their lives. They surround the Beatles with the glow of those better days.

Sometimes though, I worry that the shift from appreciation of someone like Elvis to groups such as the Beatles was the result of a more profound shift in Western culture - a shift away from my personality type and the kind of individualism that I still feel is the best hope for a sound, interesting, and humane society. Perhaps sociologist David Riesman put his finger on this swing in temperament in his 1960's bestseller The Lonely Crowd. He traced what he thought he detected as a progression of dominant personality types in our culture over the last couple of hundred years. It started with people who were guided by, and often bound by, tradition. Then society transitioned into favoring individualists, both bad and good. There were the robber barons, but also the creative artists and thinkers who forged their own paths. These newer generations of people incorporated the singular experiences they had growing up in eccentric, often self-sufficient families. As adults, they maintained inner compasses that reflected the unique circumstances in which they had been forged and which caused them to forge ahead in divergent directions. Riesman called these generations "inner-directed."

But then Riesman believed that somewhere in the mid-twentieth century, another personality type emerged and became dominant. He wrote that these most recent generations are primarily shaped by peer expectation. They take their cues from the likes and dislikes of the amalgamated group around them. They follow the crowd and are more geared to "group-think" than to rugged individualism - although the words "crowd and group-think" have a more strongly pejorative connotation that Riesman probably intended. He was primarily making an observation that the latest generation was what he called "other-directed or outer-directed."

Of course any such cultural analysis is a vast over-simplification. There have obviously been people of all types in all eras. Still, I can't help but feel that some such cultural shift might have marked the shift from widespread appreciation of Elvis to widespread appreciation of the Beatles. Or, to de-escalate the enthusiasm and to widen the time-scales just a bit - it was a shift from people who liked the extravagant, energetic individuality of Al Jolson to people who, from an early age, cried out after the passive uniformities of the line of Barbies and the Spice Girls. It was a shift from the apotheosis of the non pareil to the apotheosis of the united front.

There is indeed a "generation gap" between the two fandoms, although it's not really along the lines usually cited. The difference between the Eisenhower era and the hippie era is usually said to be the difference between conformity and a "do your own thing" outlook. Actually, it's closer to being the reverse. In the decades before and including Eisenhower, movie stars, singers, heroes, were people who had some distinctive, vivid aspect - people whose wit, beauty, or brains, seemed largely unattainable, above and beyond. But in the decades that followed, it was the "Average Joe" who was sought after - someone like everyone, someone who blended in - in appearance - and in voice. It was someone who sang, not alone, but in unison.

But I do miss that solo voice, the outstanding performance of an individual who stands stark, free from background noise. I miss the ravishingly distinct timbre that comes out of the darkness and touches some emotional core of me, one-on-one.

Sometimes I think perhaps there can't be any new voices with such unique tones, that perhaps all the possibilities have been used up. I think that after Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Elvis, and those other often-imitated/never-duplicated voices, that all the available band wavelengths, all the most striking registers, have been taken. Unlike the children in Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone, everyone can't be "above average," and so maybe we are left with just the ultimately unmemorable averageness of most of the American Idol voices.

I hope not. I hope that other truly distinct and moving voices can emerge and not be drowned out by the necessity of presenting with accompanying pyrotechnics. I think many of us were flabbergasted during the recent Oscar Awards Show to hear that Lady Gaga has a truly affecting voice when she sang without all the usual distractions. Maybe other such talents will come to light and find a platform.

If not though, there are always the recordings of those older unique voices to turn to. When the present world is too much with me, I can always turn to something like that 1956 recording of Elvis Presley singing "Love Me Tender" - pure and simple. He sings almost a capella for some stretches of the song, then with only the occasional guitar strum as accompaniment. His unique voice comes through - before he became a caricature of himself - before the hype and the hysteria so often tended to drown him out in the way that current singers purposefully, panderingly drown out any individuality they might have.

And even though the national character might have shifted in the way Riesman described, I won't be alone in my preferences. There was a scene from the movie Pulp Fiction that brings home the persistence of people who prefer Elvis over the Beatles. Director Quentin Tarantino had the scene deleted from most modern copies of the film - because he thought it sounded too scripted and because it became a cliché among dating couples. Nevertheless, it makes a telling point. On their arranged date, Uma Thurman's character tells John Travolta's character that there are only two kinds of people in the world - those who like what's in Column A, and those who like what's in Column B. She proceeds to quiz Travolta about his A or B preferences. The most notable choice she challenges Travolta to name is between the Beatles and Elvis. It seems likely she knows his answer in advance.

When Travolta unequivocally responds "Elvis," he stands with all of us who respond less to the necessarily homogenized sound of a group and more to an individual with a touching timbre for all times.