Jonathan Dodd’s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
Everyone complains about the adverts in the cinema. Now that you have to book your seats at the same time as your ticket, there doesn’t seem to be a need to go and sit down to watch these any more. But I’m hardcore, and besides, it’s part of my ritual behaviour when entering what is for me the equivalent to and replacement for going to church.
I love to turn up in plenty of time and go through the pain of queueing for unrecognisable ice cream flavours in revolting colours at ridiculous prices, and waiting for them to photo my mobile phone so they can let me in, and I love nattering during the adverts while eating my ice cream, and then watching the previews and trailers.
These drive me to distraction
Sadly, these always seem to be completely random, and usually for films that I can find no earthly reason for wanting to see. If I go twice in a week, for whatever films, the trailers always seem to be the same too. And the adverts creep in to invade the trailer space so there’s no distinct line between them.
Cinemas feel the need to do their own advertising too, which is always very bad and annoying. And they always have a terrible thing requesting that we turn off our phones too, or other exhortations. Then they advertise special deals on membership and food and drink available in the foyer. These drive me to distraction.
In the extraordinary category
Anyway, the time it takes to sit through the adverts and the trailers is always exactly the time it takes to complete my very pleasant ice cream eating, and when the lights go down and the film begins I’m as ready as I can possibly be to watch the film I selected for my viewing pleasure.
And usually it’s good, sometimes excellent, occasionally extraordinary, once or twice life-changing, and rarely, thank goodness, awful and full of disappointment. We watched Spotlight, which was in the extraordinary category. But that’s another subject. I want to talk about one of the adverts.
You’re never alone with a Strand
It was an attempt to be clever, like some adverts are. Some of them are so clever that they fail spectacularly to do what they’ve been commissioned to do, because I remember the advert, and its cleverness, without at any moment remembering the name of the product or company it was supposed to be selling.
There was once a famous brand of cigarettes in England called Strand, and they ran a tremendously popular advertising campaign with the slogan ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’, showing a man in a hat walking along the Thames all on his own. Nobody wanted to be alone, so sales plummeted while the song became a hit, and the product was withdrawn within a year.
Not the John Hammond of Jurassic Park
The advert I watched recently was rather wonderful. It was about John Hammond. Not the John Hammond of Jurassic Park, played so admirably by the late, great Richard Attenborough, but the man who discovered and popularised Jazz and Blues in the USA from the 1930s to the 1970s.
He was born to a very rich but liberal family, and was musical himself, although he found he preferred the music he could hear downstairs rather than the civilised stuff in the drawing rooms upstairs. As soon as he could, he started going to clubs in Harlem in the early 1930s, sometimes at great risk, just to hear black jazz musicians.
What I wanted to do with Bobby
Hammond was one of those rare people, especially back then and there, who believed that everyone is born equal and any other idea or belief is completely wrong. He searched out musicians simply for the quality of their music, he championed black musicians in the USA and over here, he set up concerts for them, and recording contracts, and he also encouraged musicians to perform together regardless of colour, which was unthinkable almost everywhere back then.
Later on, Mr Hammond was instrumental in recording many famous musicians, including Bob Dylan right from the start. There’s a lovely quote from 1968 that sums him up.
“What I wanted to do with Bobby was just to get him to sound in the studio as natural, just as he was in person, and have that extraordinary personality come thru…. After all, he’s not a great harmonica player, and he’s not a great guitar player, and he’s not a great singer. He just happens to be an original. And I just wanted to have that originality come thru.”
I have a new hero
The advert names John Hammond and shows lots of black people dancing wildly to Swing music back in the 1940s, with one tall white man in a light-coloured suit really enjoying himself, and it gives some information about him and his achievements. At the end of the advert there’s a short sequence of dark beer being poured into a glass.
At first I thought this was just another of those clever adverts, but the more I think about it, the more pleased I am with it. It gave me some new information, which I was able to follow up and learn from, and the story, while emphasising the black and white elements, highlighted not only the beer but the difference between the race hatred of those times and the great improvements we’ve managed so far. And I have a new hero.
Drink more Guinness
So Guinness has a triumph on their hands, I loved their advert, John Hammond is better known, and everyone is happy. Without him, the careers and music of people like Dylan, Springsteen, Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Pete Seeger, Robert Johnson, and many others, might not have become part of our lives
Sadly I already like Jazz and Blues, and it hasn’t managed to persuade me to drink more Guinness. But I might just buy myself one, and raise a toast to John Hammond.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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