This Charming Man Named Dave
Gerry Hassan
October 9th 2009
Do you like Phil Collins? I’ve been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn’t understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins’ presence became more apparent. I think “Invisible Touch” was the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don’t you dance a little. Take the lyrics to “Land of Confusion.” In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. “In Too Deep” is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I’ve heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your ass. Phil Collins’ solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like “In the Air Tonight” and “Against All Odds.” Sabrina, don’t just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is “Sussudio,” a great, great song, a personal favorite. (1)
Dave Cameron has already created a bit of a controversy with his remarks earlier in the year that he was a bit of a Smiths and Jam fan in his youth and to this day. He realised that this might be his equivalent of a Clause Four moment, commenting about his love of Morrissey and Paul Weller, ‘I’m a big fan, I’m afraid. Sorry about that’ (2).
This brought a fascinating set of responses. Weller got irate asking if Dave was ‘thick’, while Morrissey was more diplomatic refusing to comment. The indie establishment and cognoscenti – who define themselves around two watersheds, post-77 and 1980s indie – were outraged.
They have already lost the battle to maintain the purity of post-77 and ‘Year Zero’, the ubiquitousness of the Sex Pistols and Clash diluting their meaning. Still they thought they had 1980s indie as their own and could still act as the guardians of the Holy Grail of this era. They can thus feel horror at this latest Tory onslaught!
This was their decade and their counter-story to the mainstream Tory account of the decade being taken from them. It was whether Cameron knew it or not a direct act on the self-importance and identity of such people. First, the miners, next the NME version of the 1980s. It is so insensitive!
Cameron’s comments show that people could just listen to music and groove to it, get their air guitar out, swing their hips and sing along and have a good time. They can do so, and no matter the earnest intent of the artist to convey a certain meaning, they can completely understand it, or understand it in another way. That’s not right or wrong, just kind of natural.
Then along comes this week, ‘When Boris Met Dave’ (More 4) (3), a pretty poor, aimless, meandering and in places quite funny ‘drama’ about when David Cameron and Boris Johnston were at Oxford University together, in the posh ‘bad boy’ club, the Bullingdon Group – of the famous photo of Dave and Boris arrogantly standing in their coats and tales.
It was straight back to another world, which was both very 1980s and post-Edwardian at the same time. Sort of ‘Brideshead’ meets Alan Hollingshurst meets ‘Grosse Pointe Blanc’. Only with no ‘out’ gays, but lots of fey Tories. All that was missing and needed was a serial killer. It is the usual story; there is never one around just when you need one the most!
Anyway, young Dave had, how can one put it a more eclectic palate than just being a boring indie boy. Oh no, young Dave had a higher set of standards as apart from the Smiths and Dylan, he was hugely into much more than anyone else Genesis!
This is where the previous Jam/Smiths story begins to fall apart. Dave apparently – according to ‘When Boris Met Dave’ – was a massive Phil Collins/Genesis fan. Maybe not to the degree of Patrick Bateman but not far removed.
He grooved and waxed lyrically to friends about Phil Collins solo records and drumming. He endlessly went on like a pub bore about his favourite Phil Collins records such as ‘Sussudio’ and appreciated the MOR 1980s Genesis albums such as ‘Invisible Touch’ just like Bateman. Spooky coincidence or what?
If Dave Cameron had been a Labour leader pre-Blair such as Neil Kinnock this would have made for a front-page tabloid splash on his musical taste being the same as a psychopathic mass killer albeit a fictional one!
What it does show is that all the talk about Dave being ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ in the 1980s was rubbish. These are now meaningless terms bandied about all over the place by the sort of types who would have previously been incontrovertibly ‘square’ and ‘straight’. Dave was ‘cool’ in unhipland, but it turns out he wasn’t very cool at all.
This makes him a bit like Tony Blair in yet another way. Blair passed himself off as ‘cool’, strumming guitar and playing a few tunes, and despite being in a band called Ugly Rumours and modelling himself in the 70s on Mick Jagger, he managed because people wanted to believe it that he was one of the guys. Blair of course turned out to be anything but one of the guys, but all that helped sell him.
So Cameron is following the Blair archetype, having as that great source Alasdair Campbell says read the summary of the Philip Gould opus ‘The Unfinished Revolution’ and an outline of the Blair life ‘official version’. This though is getting ridiculous in terms of copying and emulation!
We also have to ask what did the young, clearly impressionable and like Blair deeply apolitical Oxford Dave make of the Smiths and Jam? For a sheltered, cosseted boy from a posh background, the music of these bands would have been an introduction to an alien, unknown world to the young Dave. It would have been the educational equivalent of ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’, telling him the equivalent rich and complex stories of northern life, loves and hopes.
This could all in another place be inconsequential but it matters deeply because Dave Cameron is making character, and specifically his character one of the central themes of the next election. And that character seems to be far from straightforward, but something very carefully and calculating manufactured.
Notes
1. Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho, Paladin 1991.
2. Neil McCormick, ‘David Cameron: no need to apologise for loving Morrissey’, Daily Telegraph, February 18th 2009,
3. ‘When Boris Met Dave’, More 4, October 7th 2009,
Isn’t there something unhealthy about still liking the music you loved when you were a teen / early twenties person? Maybe the music still gets you going, but the teen angst? I left school the year the Pistols made it big and was into punk (and reggae) in a big way. But I grew away from it, especially once it became institutionalised – which took about three months
As for Cameron and the like trying to create a character – or rather a series of “characters”, each appealing to different potetnial audiences – well it goes back a long way. I remember Harold Wilson pretending he was a “bloke in pub enjoying his pint” and being photgraphed with John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
Nothing strange either in young guys from any walk of life liking music that isn’t of their class or type. Pieces of music, like all art, just hits home for particular individuals, so although The Jam’s In the City or Going Underground may not have been meant for rich kids that doesn’t mean the music, or indeed the words, won’t sink deeply into the heart of some folk from that walk of life. By the way I still remember the Jam playing two great concerts at Strathclyde Uni in 1977 or 78 (though if I could go back in a time machine and watch them now I’d not enjoy it, even as a nostalgia trip.)
Finally, a related aside. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is a result of doing a Cameron / Blair / Harold Wilson. You can even get the supposed top honours now for presentation rather than efforts, for oratory rather than action, for style rather than substance. I hope Obama turns out to be a President of a different kind than almost all of those who have gone before him since WW2, and from that I hope he does different things, both in the USA and especially in global affairs, than his predecssors. But I am deeply skepitcal. The USA’s equivalent of David Cameron’s “cool guy cos I like phil COllins” spin is to say they are the champions of freedom in the world when all they really are is the protector and develop of their own position at the top of the economic and military league. For Obama to be different it’d mean moving towards spreading economic benefits to the people of the world and reducing its own military dominance. Does anyone see any sign of this?
Good piece Gerry
The return to the 1980’s is interesting since what is being forgotten is as important as what is being remembered.
So, I agree that Cameron is getting the “educational equivalent of ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’, telling him the equivalent rich and complex stories of northern (and southern in the case of the Jam) life, loves and hopes” by listening to and referencing the Smiths and the Jam. At the same time, he is also screening out the strong republican elements in the Smiths as well as other bands of that era, such as the Dexys and the Pogues. These bands all focused on a very different and much more fragmented UK – and were harbingers of what has happened politically since. By focusing on Phil Collins’ take on black music, he also screens out other viewpoints such as that of Soul II Soul and young black kids exploration of their identity.
Given this careful act of amnesia, I’m not so sure that Cameron is making character such an important element as image. As a former marketing man, he will know the importance of the MOSAIC consumer classification system in getting a message across, particularly in the key marginals and the importance of getting the marketing right for the crucial group of swing voters.
Cameron’s retro music tastes, his cycling, his skilful and judicious sharing of family tragedies, Osborne’s ‘we’re all in this together’ speech, new MPs like Chloe Smith and Camerons wife’s choice of an M&S dress all strongly suggest that its this group who are being targetted. This group are the deal to seal the election with.
Browns response to this has been Sarah Brown and the constant references to the Bullingdon background, instead of making common cause with other progressive parties in the UK and shifting to a voting system that downgrades the importance of small groups of swing voters in a few seats that decide elections.
Labour go on about Cameron’s “shallowness” but more fool them for letting him choose the ground to fight upon.
The ironic part is that in the UK since the late 1970’s, its often been through music (including much maligned dance music) where national, communal and personal identity has been explored and challenged rather than political parties – a terrible comment on the politicians and their policy-wonkery/media advisers who have focused on marketing rather doing the more difficult work of forging a common cause and language.