I was a Frank Turner fan before being a Frank Turner fan was
uncool. This is another way of saying that prior to Manchester’s
Guardian outing the singer as a right-winger, I judged his
thematic “England Keep My Bones” the best album of a young decade
that no longer much cares for the long play.
Last week, the Guardian’s Michael Hann
posted excerpts from old interviews in which Turner opined that
“socialism’s retarded,” decried the Treaty of Lisbon’s European
Union as “the end of about 800 years of continuous parliamentary
history,” and suggested that politicians should “concentrate on
ways of minimising the impact on ordinary people’s lives and allow
them to get on with their lives and not be bothered by the
state.”
If you didn’t catch Olde-England-troubadour Turner’s so-fitting
three-song set at the opening ceremonies of the London Olympic
Games, the folk-punk phenomenon is perhaps best thought of as Billy
Bragg with Bruce Springsteen’s talent. So once critics discovered
that their darling shared Bragg’s full-throated folk style but not
his hard-left politics, their love notes become “Dear Frank”
letters.
The Guardian article’s author labeled Turner’s views
“jaw-dropping rightwingness that used to get pop singers castigated
in the music press,” an incitement other scribes read as marching
orders. A Labour MP took to Twitter to title Turner a “twerp.”
Music writer John Robb, a Turner fan, found himself “disappointed”
and “struggling to understand.” He noted in an open letter to the
Eton-educated Turner, “I somehow felt that you were like a sort of
Joe Strummer, a sort of protest singer who transcended public
school.”
Turner responded to the national controversy by denying
affiliation with any political party or rigid ideology. The London
School of Economics graduate humbly noted, “I just think the world
works better when people are left alone to do what they want as
much as possible.”
Patriotism isn’t politically correct, particularly among the
citizens of the EU superstate. The title of Turner’s album,
“England Keep My Bones” — consequently, not “Britain Keep My
Bones” or “UK Keep My Bones” — subtly points to his politics. So
does the album, a rollicking ode to the island Turner calls home.
Closing with an overtly anti-God number — not surprising since
atheism has replaced the C of E as the national religion — that
may have helped mislead his leftist fans into thinking Turner one
of their political cult, the album nevertheless strangely obsesses
over sin, redemption, and the life after. And, oh yeah, it’s also
about William the Conqueror, navigating the labyrinth of drunks on
Winchester’s Jewry Street, and the pastoral past.
If England didn’t have a national anthem, Frank Turner would
write a better one. In “Rivers,” he sings: “When I die I hope to
be/buried out in the English sea/So that all that then remains of
me/Will lap against these shores/Until England is no more.” In the
energetic “One Foot Before the Other,” Turner imagines another fate
for his corpse, with his ashes dumped into London’s reservoir to
flow into his thirsty countrymen to ensure continuity, an imprint,
eternal life.
Is Turner pondering his mortality or England’s?
Can one fault people mesmerized by style over substance for
missing the substance here? Because they loved his songs they
assumed he loved their politics. This comforting delusion, as
confusing as it is common, imagines the same forces that prompt its
sufferers to vote a certain way as responsible for talented
strangers picking up a guitar, a paintbrush, or a pen. Art is
indeed a Rorschach test. Interpretations tell us much about the
admirer and little about the artist.
Like the fawning-turned-fuming critics, I hadn’t a clue of
Turner’s politics until the controversy erupted. For political
monomaniacs, no slate is blank. They hubristically infuse their
aesthetic likes with their ideology. I don’t feel affirmed by
discovering that a folk singer agrees with me on the foolishness of
state funding for the arts or the dangers of allowing foreign
bureaucrats to usurp local decisions. Why do those who like
Turner’s music but not his politics feel so betrayed?
Frank Turner writes catchy songs with arresting lyrics. Must he
also carry the right protest signs to win critical acclaim?
