Читать книгу Grumpy Old Men: A Manual for the British Malcontent - David Quantick - Страница 16

Rock musicals were once very different from today’s rock musicals as they featured original songs and were like your mum’s idea of rock music, i.e. opera songs done loudly by hairy stage school students with lots of guitar solos at the wrong moment. Most, for some reason, were set in Biblical times and conspired to give the impression that Jesus was a hippy and the Disciples were drug addicts.

Now ‘rock musicals’ are something else entirely. They are made up of bits of old rock songs and plots that wouldn’t fool a kitten. Abba musicals, Madness musicals, Buddy Holly musicals, Queen musicals and even Rod Stewart musicals. Recycling proper rock songs and getting stage-school johnnies to sing them in castrated voices with good diction is hugely popular, and coachloads of people come in to hear music they loved as teenagers kicked in the arse by dancing gimps.

Soon people will only form bands so that a rock musical will be based on their songs. Soon people will only know the work of, say, Bob Dylan from the new West End show, It’s All Right Ma, I’m Only Singing And Dancing. The Sex Pistols will be commemorated by Ben Elton’s latest masterpiece, We’re So Pretty, Mister Vacant. And anyone who fancies a nostalgic evening sound-tracked by the music of Kraftwerk can go and see Autobahn! at the Leeds City Varieties, with Jane McDonald as The Model and Darren Day as Trans-Europe Express the Singing Train.