Music & Letters, Vol. 88 No. 2, ß The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1093/ml/gcm006, available online at www.ml.oxfordjournals.org

NARRATIVE THEORY AS AN ANALYTICAL TOOL

IN THE STUDY OF POPULAR MUSIC TEXTS
BY DAVID NICHOLLS*

oo0o ç 20 [PROOIMION ç AGON]

On the face of it, narrativity and popular music are not the most obvious of bedfellows:
narrativity is theoretically a feature common to all activities involving the representa-
tion of events in time, but it is almost invariably encountered in the context of
storytelling. Popular music, on the other hand, tends to manifest itself in three- to
four-minute songs, often intended as dance accompaniments, which describe essentially
staticçrather than kineticçcameos, vignettes, or states of mind. Thus, from among a
myriad British examples, one could cite The Beatles’ 1963 track ‘I Want to Hold your
Hand’, or Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1983 ‘Relax’, as songs that contain no mean-
ingful narrative elements. Thus it is hardly surprising that narrativity (as a term, a
concept, or an analytical approach) is rarelyçif at allçmentioned in three of the most
influential monographs dealing with the study of popular music: Richard Middleton’s
Studying Popular Music, Allan F. Moore’s Rock: The Primary Text, and David Brackett’s
Interpreting Popular Music.1 Conversely, discussion or even mention of music is almost
invariably omitted from books dealing with narrative theory and narratology; the one
notable exception to this rule is Seymour Chatman’s 1978 monograph Story and
Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, though even here musical narrative
tends to be referenced briefly rather than being discussed in depth.2 Thus the narratives
of the world, as Roland Barthes has characterized them, may indeed be numberless;
but in Barthes’s own list of narrative genresçwhich includes ‘myth, legend, fable, tale,
novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting . . . stained-glass windows,
cinema, comics, news items, [and] conversation’çmusic is conspicuous by its absence.3

*Department of Music, School of Humanities, Southampton University. E-mail: drn@soton.ac.uk. I am extremely

grateful to Nicholas Reyland and Carol Vernallis for their pertinent and insightful comments on an earlier draft of this
article. Given that a significant proportion of the technical vocabulary associated with narrative theory is derived
from Ancient Greek terms; that Greek drama played a crucial role in the development of storytelling; and thatç
whether by chance or designçone of the examples discussed in this article displays, in its lyrical structure, a notable
similarity to the conventions of Greek Old Tragedy, I employ here subheadings derived from Ancient Greek terms,
both dramatic and otherwise.
1
Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes, 1990); Allan F. Moore, Rock:The PrimaryText (Milton
Keynes, 1993; 2nd edn., Aldershot, 2001); David Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music (Cambridge, 1995; 2nd. edn,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000).
2
Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, 1978). Other general texts on
narrative theory include H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge, 2002), and Mieke Bal,
Narratology: Introduction to theTheory of Narrative (2nd edn., Toronto, 1997).
3
Roland Barthes, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’, in Susan Sontag (ed.), A Barthes Reader
(New York, 1982), 251^2; quoted in Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 1^2.

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 This is not the place for either a survey of narrative theory or a history of narratology;
but even the most superficial investigation of the extant literature on the subject suggests a
basic conflict between the fundamental intentions of narrative theory and the apparent
resistance of musical texts to narrative interpretation.4 As H. Porter Abbott has written,
Given the presence of narrative in almost all human discourse, there is little wonder that there
are theorists who place it next to language itself as the distinctive human trait. Fredric Jameson,
for example, writes about the ‘all-informing process of narrative’, which he describes as ‘the
central function or instance of the human mind’. Jean-Franc
ois Lyotard calls narration ‘the
quintessential form of customary knowledge’. Whether or not such assertions stand up under
scrutiny, it is still the case that we engage in narrative so often and with such unconscious ease
that the gift for it would seem to be everyone’s birthright.5

Elsewhere, Abbottçin apparent confirmation of Barthes’s viewçasserts that ‘narra-

tive is the principal way in which our species organizes its understanding of time’ and
that ‘[the] human tendency to insert narrative time into static, immobile scenes seems
almost automatic, like a reflex action’.6 Ultimately, he argues,‘wherever we look in this
world, we seek to grasp what we see not just in space but in time as well’.7
The emphasis here (and elsewhere in the literature) on the temporal dimension of
narrative immediately suggests a potentially strong link to the art formçmusicçthat
almost uniquely depends on time for its measurement. Jean-Jacques Nattiez has written,
in an excellent critique of the early application of narrative theory to music, that,‘through
the work, the composer speaks to us’; he goes on to quote Le¤vi-Strauss’s suggestion that
The musical work, which is a myth coded in sounds instead of words, offers an interpretive
grid, a matrix of relationships which filters and organises lived experience, acts as a substitute
for it and provides the comforting illusion that contradictions can be overcome and difficulties
resolved. . . . It is inconceivable that there should be any musical work that does not start from
a problem and tend towards its resolutionçthis word being understood in a broader sense,
consistent with its meaning in musical terminology.8

Yet Nattiez concludes his article by stating, fairly bluntly, that ‘music is not a narra-
tive and that any description of its formal structure in terms of narrativity is nothing
but superfluous metaphor’.9 Before proceeding further, it may therefore be useful to
provide a brief overview of the musicological literature and the conceptual issues that
brought him to this conclusion.

2
” [ANALEPSIS]
The crux of the matter has been identified by Fred Everett Maus thus: ‘The attractive
but problematic concept that shapes much recent work [in musical narrativity] is that

4
For an excellent overview of narrative theory, the history of narratology, and especially the ongoing debates
concerning musical narrativity, see chapter 2,‘Plotting Musical Narrativity’, and the ‘Afterword’ in Nicholas Reyland,
‘‘‘Akcja’’ and Narrativity in the Music of Witold Lutolawski’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cardiff University, 2005), 115^91, 307^25.
5
Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 1. The interior quotations are from Fredric Jameson, The Political
Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, 1981), 13, and Jean-Franc
ois Lyotard, The Post-modern Condition,
trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Theory and History of Literature, 10; Minneapolis, 1984), 19.
6
Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 3, 6.
7
Ibid. 11.
8
Jean-Jacques Nattiez,‘Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 115 (1990),
240^57 at 240^1. The passage quoted by Nattiez is from Claude Le¤vi-Strauss, L’homme nu (Paris, 1971), trans. John and
Doreen Weightman as The Naked Man (London, 1981), 659^60.
9
Nattiez,‘Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?’, 257.

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 an individual compositionçwhether a single movement or a multi-movement workç
sometimes resembles, or simply is, a narrative, and that recognition of this is important
for critical interpretation.’10 That the concept of musical narrativity is attractive is clear,
not least from the tendency of most individuals to ‘hear’ stories and ‘see’ images while
listening to music. Indeed, an experiment conducted by Nattiezçin which 300 children
aged 11 to 14 were asked to interpret, in narrative terms, Dukas’s L’apprenti sorcier but
without being told its titleçlies at the heart of his article.11 But after analysing the
results of his experiment, Nattiez comes to a rather disappointing conclusion:
while our experiment regarding Dukas seems to confirm that, beyond the projection onto
a work of an explicit narrative plot, the listeners perceived what [Anthony] Newcomb
calls ‘functional events’, I am not certain that it is legitimate to speak of narrative.
. . . As [Carolyn] Abbate and [Hayden] White insist, the listener, alongside the historian
and . . . the reader, is a ‘gap filler’. The narrative, strictly speaking, is not in the music, but in the
plot imagined and constructed by the listeners from functional objects.12

No wonder, then, that Maus similarly concludes his Grove article by stating that
‘the exploration of instrumental music as narrative remains a tantalizing, confusing,
problematic area of inquiry’;13 and that delegates attending the narrativity sessions
at the 2004 Symposium of the International Musicological Society conference in
Melbourne, Australia, often seemed bewildered by what, exactly, it was that they
were attempting to define and discuss.
The existence of programmatic music notwithstanding, there isçit seemsçgood
reason for agreeing with Stravinsky who, in one of his best-known remarks, asserted
I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,
whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature,
etc.. . . Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the
purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something,
this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and
inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a conventionçin short, an
aspect unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.14

However, it is also important to note at this point that much of the foregoing
discussionçand the content of much of the literature so far citedçhas been concerned
with instrumental, rather than vocal, music. Indeed, that theorists and analysts have
apparently been so little concerned with vocal music is odd, for at least three reasons.
First, most musicçeven within the limits of the Western art music traditionçis vocal
rather than instrumental in nature; second, the customary presence in a vocal work
of one or more texts immediately provides an entry point for narrative analysis; and
third, one of the firstçand most influentialçstudies of what came to be called musical

10
Fred Everett Maus,‘Narratology, narrativity’, in New Grove II, xvii. 641^3 at 641.
11
Nattiez,‘Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?’, 246^9.
12
Ibid. 249. The interior references are to Anthony Newcomb,‘Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative
Strategies’, in 19th Century Music, 11 (1987^8), 164^74 at 165; Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in
the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1991); and Hayden White,‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’,
in W. J. Thomas Mitchell (ed.), On Narrative (Chicago, 1981), 1^23 at 9^11.
13
Maus,‘Narratology, narrativity’, 642.
14
Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York, 1936, repr. 1962), 53^4.

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 narrativity, Edward T. Cone’s The Composer’s Voice, spends the first four of its eight
chapters in a detailed, thorough, and extremely useful exploration of vocal music.15
In summary, then, it might be suggested that even the best narrative interpretations
of music succeed only because they are ultimately concerned with texted music (and
therefore, by implication, find narrative elements in the music through association with
the texts it sets); because they deal with programmatic music (in which musical ideas
acquire narrative properties through specific composerly designation); or because they
infer narratives through the subjective impositionçby the analystçof particular
meanings onto otherwise objective musical materials.16 The fundamental problem is
perhaps thatças Abbott positedçour desire to read for narrative ‘seems almost auto-
matic, like a reflex action’.17 In other words, we striveçin spite of ourselvesçto per-
ceive stories in musical texts that do not, per se, narrate. If there is a solution to this
problem, then, it may lie in the acceptance, however reluctantly, of two basic principles:
first, that narrative theory is, despite its superficial complexity (and rather abstract
dryness), in essence a relatively simple tool that can aid us in the analytical interpreta-
tion of a variety of texted materials; and second, that from a musical point of view the
main application of narrative theory may have to be restricted to those instances in
which the musical material has been created in response to, orçbetterças a setting of,
a literary text. Furthermore, instead of applying narrative theory solely to the body
of art music, it may prove more beneficial, at least initially (and pace Cone), to explore
its usefulness in the interpretation of popular songs. It is this task to which the remain-
der of this article is dedicated.

0” [THESIS]
Before moving to the main focus of this articleçwhich argues that narrative is not only
present in popular music, but is also in some cases a vital element in its interpreta-
tionçit is necessary to lay out the basic premisses from which I proceed. First, and
most fundamentally, I would agree with Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s view, cited earlier, that
‘in itself . . . music is not a narrative and that any description of its formal structures in
terms of narrativity is nothing but superfluous metaphor’.18 Second, but in partial
contradiction of this view, I do, however, believe that music can become part of a
narrative discourse, either in those instances where it is ascribed extra-musical meaning

15
Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974). Although Cone’s book was written before
narrative theory became well known (let alone posited as a musico-analytic tool) it uses a good deal of vocabulary
shared with narrative theory. Cone has little interest in popular music: though he seems to concede the songwriting
skills of Lennon and McCartney (p. 43), he makes clear throughout the book that he is only really concerned with
‘serious’ music. Despite this, much of what he writes in chapters 1^4 concerning music with texts is of relevance, albeit
contrapuntally, to the material discussed in this article. In addition, Cone’s approach has been adopted in two recent
articles on popular music, which present a fascinating parallel to the argument developed here: see Matthew Gelbart,
‘Persona and Voice in the Kinks’ Songs of the Late 1960s’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128 (2003), 200^41, and
Allan F. Moore,‘The Persona-Environment Relation in Recorded Song’, MusicTheory Online, 11/4 (Oct. 2005), 5http://
mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.05.11.4/mto.05.4.moore_frames.html4.
16
It is important here to draw a distinction between musical narrativity and musical narrativization: this article is
solely concerned with the former, specifically in relation to its usefulness in analysing popular music texts. On the
latter, Nicholas Reyland has noted that ‘Any piece of music can inspire ‘‘musical narrativization,’’ an interpretative act
in which a listener invents an explanatory response to events in a composition’ (cf. Nattiez, ‘Can One Speak of
Narrativity in Music?’, 249, quoted above). Given this distinction, and the focus of this article, a great deal of fine,
stimulating, and often provocative earlier workçby Carolyn Abbate, Lawrence Kramer, Fred Everett Maus, Susan
McClary, Anthony Newcomb, and a number of other scholarsçis deliberately passed over here. See chapter 2 of
Reyland,‘‘‘Akcja’’ and Narrativity in the Music of Witold Lutolawski’ esp. 138^65, for further details.
17
Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 6.
18
Nattiez,‘Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?’, 257.

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 through association with an object or a conceptçthat is, where it acquires a leitmotivic
functionçor where it interacts with one or more other media. Third, in order to
impose some limits on the material under consideration, I am restricting my examples
to British pop and rock tracks of the approximate period 1960^85, specifically those
that appeared at some point in the top ten single or album charts. However, the
observations made should be applicable more generally.
In concrete terms, I would suggest that there are five basic levels at which narrativity
can operate in popular music texts:19
(1) The ‘control’ level, at which there is no story per se in the lyrics, and as a
consequence there is no element of narrative discourse in the musical setting.
(2) The lyrics contain elements of narrative discourse, but these are not reflected or
supported in the (neutral) musical setting.
(3) The lyrics contain elements of narrative discourse, and these are supported by
the musical setting.
(4) Both lyrics and music contain elements of narrative discourse, which to some
degree operate independently of each other, though always in relation to an overlying
story.
(5) A complex narrative discourse is rendered through multiple media, including
lyrics, music, prose, and art work.
In order to put some flesh on this skeleton, let me turn to some specific examples.
Level 1çwhere there is no story per se in the lyrics, and no element of narrative
discourse in the musical settingçcan be illustrated, as suggested at the outset, by The
Beatles’ 1963 hit ‘I Want to Hold your Hand’.20 The lyrics of the song paint a typically
static romantic cameo, in which the protagonist expresses his feelings directly to the
antagonist. Although there are slight changes of perspective in the exhortations of verse
2 and the more reflective stance of the middle 8 (accompanied in the latter case by a
new melodic and harmonic setting), the text merely amplifies the statements already
made by the protagonist, rather than suggesting any actual narrative discourse.21 Even
more blunt and static in intent is Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’, released in 1983,
whichçdespite occasional and minor detours into quasi-episodic materialçis remark-
able for its insistence on (in contemporary parlance) ‘staying on message’, with its
multiple, mechanistic, and almost ritualistic urgings (supported by the magnificently
predatory growls of a ^1^6^^ b7^ bass line) to ‘Relax don’t do it/When you want to go to it/
Relax don’t do it/When you want to come’.22 An example of a level-2 relationship is

19
From this point on, readers unfamiliar with narrative theory may find it useful to consult the brief glossary that
appears as Appendix I, in order to be clear as to the definition of such terms as ‘story’,‘narrative discourse’, etc.
20
‘I Want to Hold your Hand’entered the UK singles chart on 7 Dec. 1963. Its highest chart position was no. 1, and
it remained in the charts for a total of twenty-one weeks. The statistics quoted here, as well as those appearing in later
notes, are gleaned from Tony Brown, Jon Kutner, and Neil Warwick, The Complete Book of the British Charts (London,
2002).
21
In a vein similar to that exposed in n. 16, it should be pointed out that while gendered readings of several of the
songs studied here would be both appropriate and informative, the analysis of gender issues is not germane to, let
alone a focus of, the present article.
22
‘Relax’, despite being banned by the BBC, entered the UK singles charts on 26 Nov. 1983. Its highest chart
position was no. 1, and it remained in the charts for a total of forty-eight weeks. In fairness to Frankie and their song,
several colleagues with whom I have discussed the contents of this article feel that ‘Relax’ has at least the potential for
narrative interpretation (i.e. narrativization).

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 found in ‘Don’t You Want Me’, the 1981 Human League single.23 Here, the lyrics contain
definite narrative elements, with verse 2 shifting its narrative perspective from that of
the earlier male protagonist to that of the female antagonist. But despite the opposi-
tional nature of this exchange, with each character asserting a different, personalized,
view of the same sequence of events, the musical settingçin its unvarying melody and
accompanimental texturesçresolutely resists any attempt at reflecting that narrative
shift.
Level 3çwhere the lyrics contain elements of narrative discourse that are supported
by the musical settingçcan be illustrated first by the lyrics and harmonic skeleton of
Kate Bush’s 1978 single ‘Wuthering Heights’:24

v. 1 Out on the wiley, windy moors A F

We’d roll and fall in green E C#
You had a temper, like my jealousy A F
Too hot, too greedy E C#
How could you leave me? A
When I needed to possess you F E
I hated you, I loved you too C# [G#]/A b
link Bad dreams in the night e b7^G b^F4
They told me I was going to lose the fight eb7^G b^F4
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering e b7^G b^F4
Wuthering Heights.
ch. (x2) Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home now G b^e b7^A b7^D b
[It’s] so cold, let me in-a-your window G b^A b7^D b^G b

G b/F# !A

v. 2 Oh it gets dark, it gets lonely [as previously]
On the other side from you
I pine a lot, I find the lot
Falls through without you
I’m coming back love, cruel Heathcliff
My one dream, my only master
link Too long I roam in the night
I’m coming back to his side to put it right
I’m coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Repeat ch.
m8 Ooh let me have it, let me grab your soul away b b^A b^G b^e b^D b
Ooh let me have it, let me grab your soul away b b^A b^G b^e b^D b
You know it’s me, Cathy b b^G b^b b
Repeat ch.
Instal. coda

23
‘Don’t You Want Me’ entered the UK singles charts on 5 Dec. 1981. Its highest chart position was no. 1, and it
remained in the charts for a total of thirteen weeks.
24
‘Wuthering Heights’ entered the UK singles charts on 11 Feb. 1978. Its highest chart position was no. 1, and it
remained in the charts for a total of thirteen weeks (the last of which was a re-entry on 13 May 1978). ‘Wuthering
Heights’. Words and Music by Kate Bush. ß Copyright 1977. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd,
London WC2H 0QY.

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 The song was inspired by Emily Bronte«’s 1847 novel, written from the perspective
of the book’s heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, who reflects (albeit from beyond the
grave) on the nature of her relationship with the anti-hero, Heathcliff. In
the lyrics, there is again a definite narrative shift between verses 1 and 2, as the
discourseçand the grammatical tenseçmove from Cathy’s recollections of her
living past to the hopes and intentions of her deceased present. However, this narrative
shift in the lyrics is supported by an unexpected harmonic shift, via an instrumental
link, between the end of the first chorus and the start of verse 2, as can be seen from
the annotations to the lyrics. Specifically, the chorusçwhich is rooted in G bçis
in an enharmonically altered submediant relationship to the opening key of A.
Because of the song’s poetic structure, this move from chorus to verse is never
repeated. Subsequent iterations of the chorus are associated with the middle 8,
rather than the verse: thus the abrupt harmonic shift from G b/F# to A between
the chorus and verse 2, asterisked, which parallels the narrative shift from past
to present, is similarly never repeated. It is also worth noting, incidentally,
that the song’s harmonically unstable versesçbased in a series of descending
submediant shifts (A^F, E^C#, and by implication C#^A)çreflect the restless wander-
ing of Cathy’s spirit,‘out on the wiley, windy moors’, while the ‘bad dreams’ and roam-
ing of the link passages feature an unsettling sequence (e b7^G b^F4) revolving
around the flattened submediant of A (the verse key) and the leading note of
G b (the chorus key). The more assertive, declamatory chorus, however, is
correspondingly more stable, being based in a conventional I^ (vi7^) II7^V^(I)
sequence in G b.
A second, and even subtler, example of a level-3 relationship is found in The
Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (1979).25 The subtlety of the relationship
subsists in the fact that the musical support of the developing narrative is
achieved through instrumentation and timbre rather than melody and harmony. As is
shown in Table 1, the lyrics of the song are declaimed by three distinct voices,
whose functions are analogous to those of the first actor, second actor, and chorus
of Greek Old Tragedy.26 The first actor is in this case a solo male singer, whose
voice has been electronically treated such that in timbre it resembles the sound
produced when speaking through a megaphone (or possibly via the distorted medium
of the wireless). The second actor, a solo female singer, takes on two roles: as the
somewhat mechanical utterer of the ‘Oh-a-oh’ punctuations of both verse and
refrain, andçusing a more conventional singing toneças the provider of vocal
countermelodies in verse 3, the link, and refrain 5. The female chorus, meanwhile,
is restricted in its appearances to the refrains, and in its lines to the title phrase ‘Video
killed the radio star’, which appears with increasing regularity as the song, and its
narrative, progress.

25
‘Video Killed the Radio Star’entered the UK singles charts on 22 Sept. 1979. Its highest chart position was no. 1,
and it remained in the charts for a total of eleven weeks. Somewhat ironically, given its subject matter, the song’s
promotional video was the first to be shown on MTV in America.‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. Words & Music by
Geoffrey Downs, Trevor Horn & Bruce Woolley. ß Copyright 1979 Universal/Island Music Limited (50%). Used by
permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.‘Video Killed the Radio
Star’. Words & Music by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes & Bruce Woolley. ß Copyright 1979 Carlin Music Corp and
Island Music (50%). All rights on behalf of Carlin administered by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London W6 8BS.
Reproduced by permission.
26
On Greek Old Tragedy, see H. D. F. Kitto, GreekTragedy (London, 1961), 31^63.

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 TABLE 1. Tabular analysis of The Buggles, ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (1979)

Lyrics Structure No. of 4/4 bars Comments

First actor Second actor Chorus

basic pulse: crotchet ¼ c.128

introduction [2 þ 2] þ [2 þ 3] electric piano, bass guitar, cymbals,
synthesizer
I heard you on the wireless verse 1 2 electric piano, cymbals
back in ’52,
Lying awake intently tuning 2
in on you.
If I was young it didn’t stop 2
you coming through.
Oh-a-oh 2
They took the credit for your verse 2 2 electric piano, cymbals, bass drum
304

second symphony,
Rewritten by machine on new 2 þ synthesizer fanfare and
technology. counter-melody
And now I understand the 2
problems you can see.
Oh-a-oh 1 þ bass guitar motif
I met your children. 1
Oh-a-oh 1
What did you tell them? 1
Video killed the refrain 1 2 electric piano, synthesizers,
radio star. bass guitar, drums
Video killed the 2
radio star.
Pictures came and broke 2 synthesizer chords, bass guitar, drums
your heart.
Oh-a-a-a-oh 2

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 And now we meet in an verse 3 2 synthesizers, bass guitar
abandoned studio. motif, drums, electric piano
We hear the playback and Ah-ah 2 þ vocal counter-melody
it seems so long ago. from ‘we hear the playback’
And you remember 2 þ descending synthesizer
the jingles used swoop from ‘jingles’
to go.
Oh-a-oh 1
You were the first one. 1
Oh-a-oh 1
You were the last one. 1
Video killed refrain 2 2 as for refrain 1
the radio star.
Video killed 2
the radio star.
In my mind and in my car 2
We can’t rewind, we’ve 2
305

gone too far.

Oh-a-a-a-oh 2 þ synthesizer counter-melody
Oh-a-a-a-oh 2
instrumental 2 þ2 þ2 synthesizer, electric piano,
episode þ bass guitar, cymbals, drums
variant of 3 þ2 electric piano, synthesizer, bass guitar,
introduction’s cymbals; electric guitar and drums
second sentence for last two bars
Video killed refrain 3 2 as for refrain 1
the radio star.
Video killed 2
the radio star.
In my mind and in my car 2
We can’t rewind, we’ve 2
gone too far.

(continued)

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 TABLE 1. Continued

Lyrics Structure No. of 4/4 bars Comments

First actor Second actor Chorus

Pictures came and broke 2

your heartç
Put the blame on VCR. 2 þ pause þ synthesizer counter-melody,
dissolve þ effects
You are a radio star. link 2 fade in against electric piano
2
You are a radio star. 2 þ bass drum and synthesizer
counter-melody
2 drum fill at end
Video killed refrains 4 & 5/ 2 as for refrain 1
306

the radio star.

Video killed fade-out 2
the radio star.
Video killed 2
the radio star.
Video killed the 2
radio star.
You are a radio star. Video killed 2 vocal counter-melody from link
the radio star.
Video killed 2
the radio star.
You are a radio star. Video killed 2
the radio star.
Video killed 2
the radio star.
[Repeat to fade] [Repeat to fade] electric guitar counter-melody
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 The narrative, voiced by the first actor, commences in verse 1 with a childhood
reminiscence. This is rendered principally in the first person singular, and is in effect
heterodiegetic narration, despite the paradoxically distanced tone of the singer’s voice.
However, the first actor also refers in verse 1 to the main protagonist, the second person
singular subject of his reminiscences, and in verse 2 to the third person plural agents
responsible for the apparent demise of the protagonist. The incidents described in both
verses are located in the past, and are punctuated by the meaningless utterances of the
second actor. This segment of the narrative is supported musically by a gradually
expanding instrumental and timbral palette, which employs elements of word painting;
these include the electronic synthesizer fanfare and counter-melody at ‘Rewritten
by machine on new technology’. The tension resulting from ‘their’ actions (i.e. the
appropriation, by a group of antagonists, of the protagonist’s work) is suggested by the
pounding bass drum present from the start of verse 2; and at the point in that verse
where the lyrical and musical structure expands beyond that of verse 1, the timbral
spectrum is further broadened by the introduction of a repeating bass guitar motif
(a decorated 3^^4^^5^ pattern), the dominant conclusion of which prepares the perfect
cadence that leads into refrain 1.
In refrain 1, the chorus speaks for the first time. Its words can be interpreted as either
the protagonist’s response to the first actor’s questionç‘What did you tell them?’çor as
a more neutral comment on the result of the antagonists’ actions. However, these
alternatives are not mutually exclusive. The full instrumental texture underpinning
the chorus’s words is reduced as the first actor introduces the first of an expanding
sequence of comments reflecting on the protagonist’s situation; this sequence is contin-
ued in refrains 2 and 3, in a manner not dissimilar to that of the alternating, recurring
lines found in villanelles. Thus refrain 1 contains line a (‘Pictures came and broke your
heart’); refrain 2 contains a new couplet (lines b and cç‘In my mind and in my car/We
can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far’); and refrain 3 recapitulates lines b, c, and a, capping
them with a new, final, accusatory line d (‘Put the blame on VCR’).
A feature common to the first two verses and the first refrain is the recurrent
‘Oh-a-oh’ of the second actor. This is also found in verse 3 and refrain 2; however,
for verse 3 the narrative tense shifts to the present, and for the first time the narrator
and protagonist meet: the venue, an ‘abandoned studio’, suggests the tragedy of
dereliction and redundancy, both actual and metaphorical, that has befallen the
protagonist. There are again elements of word painting here (a vocal counter-melody
from the second actor to quantify the ‘playback [from] so long ago’çi.e. from the
period of verse 1çand a descending synthesizer swoop to represent the remembrance
of how ‘the jingles used to go’).
With refrain 3’s ‘Put the blame on VCR’, the story seems to be at its sad end, and
subsequently we hear no more from the narrator. The link, however, points to some
sense of redemption (albeit through the apparent historical canonization of the protag-
onist) with the second actor’s emerging assertion ‘You are a radio star’; and although
the chorus (literally) has the last word with its seemingly endless chanting of ‘Video
killed the radio star’, this is countered in the final refrain by the second actor’s more
positive utterances, and by the appearance (during the final fade-out) of a new electric
guitar counter-melody that hints at future optimism.27

27
The electric guitar’s only previous appearance in the timbral mix was immediately before refrain 3.

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 The examples discussed thus far have all been concerned with situations whereçat
bestçthe lyrical narrative is supported by the musical texture. But at level 4, the music
moves beyond mere support and instead assumes agency in the developing narrative: in
other words, the music plays an active (rather than passive) part in the storytelling.
A good example of a level-4 relationship is the 1965 Beatles song ‘Norwegian Wood’.28
Interestingly, by 1965 Lennon and McCartney were, in the words of Ian MacDonald,
‘running out of variations on simple romance and knew they had to branch out or dry
up. Probably they privately agreed with their publisher Dick James that most of their
lyrics didn’t ‘‘go anywhere’’ or ‘‘tell a story’’’.29 Accordingly,‘Norwegian Wood’ is one of
several tracks on Rubber Soul that are ‘written in the form of [a] comic short [story];’ the
others include, to a greater or lesser extent, ‘Drive My Car’, ‘Girl’, and ‘In My Life’.
Subsequently, kinetic narratives (as opposed to static cameos) became an increasingly
important feature of Beatles albums, most notably on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
(1967).30
MacDonald argues that ‘Norwegian Wood’ is ‘the first Beatle song in which the lyrics
are more important than the music’; and it is certainly true that the song’s music, for
the most part, has no narrative function: rather, it merely accompanies the narrative of
the lyrics. However, in the instrumental verse 3, the music takes on a distinctive
narrative function: narrative suspension is created through the interruption of the
lyrical and textual narrative by the purely instrumental repetition of the song’s princi-
pal melody. Additionally, the instrumental break apparently interrupts the verse^epi-
sode structural pattern previously established, for it is only in retrospect that the song’s
actual palindromic structure: jj:verse^episode^verse:jj becomes clear. Prior to the
instrumental verse 3 (and the start of the song’s second half) the antagonist has
announced ‘It’s time for bed’; but it is only after the musical interruption and the
narrative suspension that the protagonist, in episode 2, informs us he has been required
to sleep in the bath, rather than (as we might otherwise have surmised) the antagonist’s
bed. During the instrumental verse, then, both narrative time and clock time are
suspended; and the narrative, as a consequence of the unexpected turn of events,
achieves equally unexpected closure via a revengeful act of arson.
Individual level-4 tracks such as ‘Norwegian Wood’are, I suspect, rather rare; but the
application of narrative theory to popular music truly comes into its own in relation to
the analysis of larger units, whether these be extended tracks or, more particularly,
albums containing a large number of individual songs that are in some way related to
each other. This is especially true when the songs are presented in a level-5 concept
formatçthat is, where the authors have intentionally linked the various tracks as a
narrative cycle, and where the album packaging has been designed to emphasize or
complement the narrative theme or themes of its constituent songs. In illustration of
this point, I therefore intend to occupy the remainder of this article in an examination

28
‘NorwegianWood’ is the second track on side 1 of the Rubber Soul album. Rubber Soul entered the UK album charts
on 11 Dec. 1965. Its highest chart position was no. 1, and it remained in the charts for a total of forty-two weeks.
29
The quotations in this and the next paragraph are from Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’
Records and the Sixties (London, 1998), 144^5.
30
On Sgt. Pepper, see Allan F. Moore, The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Cambridge, 1997), especially
chs. 4 and 6.

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 of two albums from the 1970s: Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, released in
1974, and The Who’s Quadrophenia, from the previous year.31
These two albums have many features in common. Each consists, in its original
format, of two LP discs contained in a foldout double sleeve. The recorded material is
mainly individual song tracksçtwenty-three for The Lamb, seventeen for
Quadropheniaçthough some of these are linked, while others are purely instrumental.
In the terminology of narrative theory, each album has a basic story, focused on a
single male protagonist. In The Lamb the protagonist is called Rael; in Quadrophenia,
he is named either Jim or Jimmy; their basic stories are summarized in Appendix II.
However, the means by which these stories are rendered as narrative discourses is quite
complex, as both albums contain four narrative versions of each story, presented in
different media. As might be expected, two of these versions consist in the song lyrics
and their musical setting, but beyond these linked narratives are two others: a prose
narrative and a pictorial narrative.
The principal difficulty for the reader or auditor of these texts lies in the inevitable
need to negotiate between them. Are they complementary (and therefore equal) parts
of a single narrative discourse? Or is one of the versions the principal narrative,
with the other versions acting as paratexts, framing narratives, or even the analogue
equivalents to the lexia of a hypertext narrative? In The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,
the prose and pictorial narratives are partially combined on the album’s inner sleeve.
The former narrative appears to have been penned by an omniscient heterodiegetic
narrator, located outside the world of the story: the author of this prose narrative
(and of the song lyrics) is Genesis’s then vocalist Peter Gabriel; but the prose style of
the narration gives the strong impression of implied authorship, by someone other than
Gabriel, as the opening paragraph suggests:
Keep your fingers out of my eye. While I write I like to glance at the butterflies in glass that
are all around the walls. The people in memory are pinned to events I can’t recall too well, but
I’m putting one down to watch him break up, decompose and feed another sort of life. The one
in question is fully biodegradable material and categorised as ‘Rael’. Rael hates me, I like
Rael,çyes, even ostriches have feelings, but our relationship is something both of us are
learning to live with.32

The interpretative issues raised by even this brief extract could easily occupy the
remainder of this article, but two of them immediately demand attention. First, is the
omniscient heterodiegetic narrator of these words represented pictorially in the sleeve
photography? In my reading of The Lamb’s various textual layers, the answer is uncer-
tain: the two characters portrayed in the diamond-shaped images of the inner sleeve
can reasonably be equated with ‘The Supernatural Anaesthetist’çotherwise known as
Deathçof side 3, track 4, and ‘The Doktor’ of side 4, track 1. But the Colombo-like
shadowy figure appearing in the central and right-hand panels of the back outer sleeve
has no obvious analogue in either the prose narrative or the lyrics, and may therefore
be the omniscient heterodiegetic narrator.

31
Quadrophenia entered the UK album charts on 17 Nov. 1973. Its highest chart position was no. 2, and it remained
in the charts for a total of thirteen weeks.The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway entered the UK album charts on 7 Dec. 1974.
Its highest chart position was no. 10, and it remained in the charts for a total of six weeks. However, both albums have
continued to sell in significant numbers right through to the present day, and the ongoing cult reputation of The Lamb
is evidenced by its 2005 live tourçreplete with the original costumes, sets, and lighting plotçgiven by Genesis tribute
band The Musical Box.
32
Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Charisma Records, 1974), inner sleeve, [1].

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 The second interpretative issue relating to the opening of the prose narrative is that
the initial actions it describes are in no way replicated in the lyrical and musical
narratives, which commence with a description of the Manhattan street to which Rael
subsequently ascends from the subway:
And the lamb lies down on Broadway.
Early morning Manhattan,
Ocean winds blow on the land.
The Movie-Palace is now undone,
The all-night watchmen have had their fun.
Sleeping cheaply on the midnight show,
It’s the same old endingçtime to go.
Get out!
It seems they cannot leave their dream.
There’s something moving in the sidewalk steam,
And the lamb lies down on Broadway.33

The obvious reading of this disjunction between the prose and lyric narratives is that
the prose is a framing narrative, containing preliminary or concluding material not
essential to the story. However, in all other respects the prose and lyric narratives are
complementaryçthough by no means identicalçand in this sense the prose narrative
assumes greater importance than its designation as a framing narrative might imply.
Indeed, an alternative reading might even view the album’s twenty-three numbers as
paratexts that amplify and enhance the prose narrative. On the one hand, this reading
is supported by the often static nature of the lyrics, and by the appearance of several
instrumental tracks thatçwhile possessing titles that relate to events in the prose textç
do not perform any meaningful narrative function. On the other hand, a significant
number of the song tracks are kinetic, and in some instances include either Rael’s first-
person, homodiegetic, narrationçsometimes rendered as interior monologueçor
even straight dialogue between Rael and other characters. Moreover, the occasional
repetition of both lyrics andçmore importantlyçmelodic fragments associated with
particular phrases or images lends both the lyrical and musical texts an importance
greater than that suggested by their designation as mere paratexts.34
Conundrums of this kind are also encountered in The Who’s Quadrophenia. The main
differences between Quadrophenia and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway are as follows:
first, Quadrophenia’s pictorial narrative is more extensive, comprising a portfolio of
thirty-three starkly realistic black-and-white photographs; second, its prose narrative is
written as first-person homodiegetic narration by the album’s protagonist, Jimmy; and
third, a large number of environmental soundsçsuch as those of sea, rain, juke box,
or trainçare employed in order to provide narrative contextualization for the songs.
Such are the strengths of the prose and pictorial narratives that there is even greater
potential than in The Lamb for Quadrophenia’s songs and instrumental numbers to be
read as paratextual. Indeed, the song lyrics convey little in narrative terms, as most
focus on a particular, static, state of mind associated with either one aspect of Jimmy’s
character or (more usually) an event in his immediate past, invoked through analepsis.

33
Genesis,‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’, verse 1.‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’. Words and Music by
Michael Rutherford, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Steven Hackett, and Anthony Banks. ß Copyright 1974. Reproduced
by permission of Genesis Music Ltd/Hit & Run Music (Publishing) Ltd, London WC2H 0QY.
34
For further discussion of these matters, see David Nicholls,‘Virtual Opera, or Opera Between the Ears’, Journal
of the Royal Musical Association, 129 (2004), 100^42, esp. 129^36.

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 It is principally for this reason that the sounds are so important: without them, it
would be quite difficult in some cases to relate the songs’ events to the chronological
(and mainly chronometric) prose narrative. The song ‘5.15’, the first track on side 3
of the album, provides a simple illustration of these points. Both the prose and pictorial
narratives are quite explicit concerning this event. The latter includes two pertinent
photographs: to the left is shown the entrance to London’s Waterloo Station,
with Jimmy ascending its steps; to the right is an on-board shot of Jimmy slumped on
a seat between two bowler-hatted businessmen reading newspapers. These photographs
are clearly illustrative of the following passage in the prose narrative:
I walked to the station down the railway tracks, across the river. I felt like throwing myself in
front of a train, but I didn’t. I took about twenty leapers at once, got a first class ticket to
Brighton and set off to my land of dreams.
I did some thinking on the train. At one point I could swear I was floating about in the
carriage, looking down at these two city gents. What was weirdest about it was that I could see
myself as well. Must have been the pills again.35

In stark contrast, the lyrics of ‘5.15’ seem representative solely of the thoughts Jimmy
has while on the train. As a consequence, the song’s connection to the prose and
pictorial narratives is established only by its title, its opening environmental sounds
(of distant station announcements, and of slamming carriage doors), and the varied
final line of its chorus:
Why should I care? Why should I care?
Girls of fifteen,
Sexually knowing.
The ushers are sniffing,
Eau-de-cologning.
The seats are seductive,
Celibate sitting.
Pretty girls digging
Prettier women.
Magically bored
On a quiet street corner.
Free frustration
In our minds and our toes.
Quiet stormwater,
From m-m-my generation,
Uppers and downers,
Either way blood flows.
Inside, outside, leave me alone.
Inside, outside, nowhere is home.
Inside, outside, where have I been?
Out of my brain on the five fifteen.36

35
The Who, Quadrophenia (Track Records, 1973), inner sleeve, [1].
36
The Who,‘5.15’, verse 1 and chorus. The stuttering line ‘From m-m-my generation’ is a subtle cross-reference to a
track from the band’s 1965 debut album, and to its mode of vocal delivery.‘5.15’ Words and Music by Pete Townshend.
ß Copyright 1973 Fabulous Music Ltd. Used by permission.

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 However, the apparentçand rather paradoxicalçirrelevance of the songs and
instrumental tracks to Quadrophenia’s overlying narrative is dramatically refuted at the
album’s climax. At this point, both prose and pictorial narratives place Jimmy on a rock
located off the coast at Brighton, to which he has travelled via a quasi-ritualistic boat
journey; neither narrative, though, makes clear what exactly it is that Jimmy does once
he arrives there or, indeed, what subsequent fate awaits him. The resolution to this
yawning gap in the narrative is supplied in purely musical terms, via the penultimate,
instrumental, track ‘The Rock’. Throughout the album, the warring psychological
aspects of Jimmy’s quadrophenic state have been represented by four musical ideas, or
leitmotifs; in ‘The Rock’, for the first and only time on the album, these four previously
separate leitmotifs are superimposed contrapuntally, before dissolving into the sounds
of a thunderstorm. The inevitable conclusion is thatçin narrative termsçJimmy’s
mind has been healed and he has become whole.37
However, there is one final twist in this narrative tale, for Quadrophenia is not just
about Jimmy; it is also about The Who. Pete Townshend described the album, at a pre-
compositional stage, as ‘an all-embracing story of the group that would at the same
time as reviewing their mod past, free them from it completely’.38 Thus, each of the
four leitmotifs is specifically equated in Quadrophenia’s libretto with a member of the
band, suggesting that The Who’s personnel are actually at war with each other to some
extent. This reading is further strengthened by the album’s front cover photograph,
which shows Jimmy astride his scooter. On the back of Jimmy’s parka is The Who’s
emblem, and in the scooter’s four offside mirrors are reflected the faces of the band:
Townshend at the top, then Keith Moon, John Entwistle, and Roger Daltrey.
Thus Jimmy ‘is’ The Who and his imageças reflected in the mirrorsçis initially
quadrophenic; by the album’s end, though, the band’s past has been exorcised andç
through a performative and quasi-ritualistic journey similar to that undertaken by
Jimmyçits members have lost their individual, warring, identities. Thus, through
Rock, their collective quadrophenia has been cured, and they have again become a
singularity, The Who.

7o o” [EXODOS]
In an introductory article such as this, it is possible only to scratch the surface of the
topics under discussion. But in conclusion, I would nevertheless argue that narrativity
can be an extremely useful tool in our understanding of popular music. Although the
sample of texts studied here has been extremely selective, there are numerous other
songs and albums, not least from other periods and countries, which could similarly
benefit from an interpretation based in narrative theory. These range chronologically
from Bill Haley and his Comets’ 1955 hit ‘(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock’,
through Queen’s 1975 ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and Michael Jackson’s 1983 ‘Thriller’, to
Busted’s recent ‘Year 3000’ and ‘What I Go to School For’. Among albums, one might
cite such examples as side 2 of The Small Faces’ Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (1968),

37
This final sentence strays dangerously in the direction of narrativization, and other interpretations of the
musical events of ‘The Rock’ are indeed possible. Perhaps, then, it would be more honest to render the sentence as
‘The inevitable conclusion (to this reader) is that . . .’
38
Richard Barnes, The Who: Maximum R&B (London, 1982; repr. 2000), 103.

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 Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds (1978), a whole raft of 1970s concept albums, and more
recent releases including Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera (2002), The Streets’A
Grand Don’t Come for Free (2004), and Maroon 5’s Songs about Jane (2004). Finally, many
Eminem tracksçnot least ‘Stan’ (2000)çpositively cry out for narrative readings.39
Once such tasks have been achieved, and the true relevance of narrative theory to
music has been demonstrated, it will perhaps at last be possible for at least some
musics to assume their rightful place among Roland Barthes’s otherwise
comprehensive list of the ‘narratives of the world’.

ABSTRACT

Narrative theory and popular music are not the most obvious of bedfellows: the former
lends itself primarily to the elaboration (or analysis) of extended narrative structures,
while the latter tends to manifest itself in three- to four-minute songs describing essen-
tially static cameos, vignettes, or states of mind. That popular music texts may never-
theless contain elements of narration is hardly in doubt, however, as is shown by such
songs as The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’ (1968), Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1978),
or The Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (1979). But narrative structures truly
come into their own at the point where albums begin to function as significant units
of music organization. Referring primarily to Genesis’sThe Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
(1974) and The Who’s Quadrophenia (1973), this article explores the ways in which music,
lyrics, prose, art work, and other elements can be used to create and describe both
single and multiple narratives.

39
Although the intention here has been to highlight material that might benefit from a narrative interpretation
based on aural and static visual elements, the possibilities for the complementary narrative analysis of video material
are clearly enormous. For an excellent introduction to these possibilities, see Carol Vernallis, Experiencing Music Video:
Aesthetics and Cultural Context (New York, 2004) especially chs. 1 (‘Telling and Not Telling’), 7 (‘Lyrics’), 8 (‘Musical
Parameters’), and 9 (‘Connections among Music, Image, and Lyrics’).

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 APPENDIX I
Glossary
Mainly adapted from H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative.

Agency The ability of a person or object (an agent, or entity) to engage in

acts that contribute to the developing narrative discourse.
Analepsis Flashback.
Framing narrative Extradiegetic preliminary and/or concluding material in a narrative,
not essential to the story.
Gap A void in the narrative, requiring imaginative infilling by the reader.
Heterodiegetic A narrator located outside the world of the story.
narrator
Homodiegetic A narrator located inside the world of the story (i.e. one of the story’s
narrator characters).
Hypertext narrative Narrative conveyed in electronic media; may permit or require the
reader to switch between lexia.
Implied author An author constructed by the reader as s/he reads the narrative.
Lexia Units of meaning in a text. In hypertext narrative, passages (whether
textual, graphic, or otherwise) triggered by hypertext links.
Narrative discourse The story as narratedçi.e. as rendered in a particular narrative.
Paratext Material outside the narrative but related to it.
Story A sequence of events. Bound by the laws of time, it moves linearly.
Not to be confused with narrative discourse.

APPENDIX II
Basic stories (precised from the original prose narratives)
GENESIS, ‘THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY’
Manhattan, early morning. Rael, ‘not even a pure-bred Puerto Rican’, ascends from the
subway and walks along the street. A dark cloud descends into Times Square and consumes
Rael; as if in a dream, he encounters memories of Broadway’s past. He passes out; on regaining
consciousness, he is in a cave, wrapped in a cocoon. He drifts back into sleep, but on next
awakening, the cocoon has disappeared, and the cave becomes filled with stalagmites and
stalactites, forming a cage. Outside the cage, Rael sees his brother John, who calmly walks
away. The cage dissolves, and Rael is left spinning like a top.
Rael next finds himself in a modern hallway, where a ‘dreamdoll saleslady’ describes ‘the
Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging’. Examining several of the packages, Rael sees a number
of familiar faces, including those of his gang. Running from the factory floor, he again sees
John, this time with ‘9’ stamped on his forehead. Rael recalls his life above ground: his parents,
his time in prison, his cuddling of a sleeping porcupine, a dream of the shaving of his hairy
heart, his first sexual experience.
Returned from his reverie, Rael discovers a long carpeted corridor; at its end are a group of
kneeling individuals, whom he questions. He exits through a door, and ascends a spiral stair-
case into a crowded chamber with thirty-two doors. A middle-aged blind woman, Lilith,
shows him the way out; she leads him down a tunnel, before leaving him in a large round
cave. Trying to break out of the cave, Rael becomes trapped in the rubble of its collapse. Death
arrives, and puffs Rael with a spray.
Rael follows a thick musky scent to an ornate pink-water pool. Seduced and devoured
by three lamia, Rael turns into a grotesque slipperman; encountering others of his

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 kindçincluding Johnçhe is advised that the only cure for the condition is castration, at the
hands of The Doktor. After their operations, Rael and John are presented with their organs,
contained in sterile yellow plastic tubes. A raven steals Rael’s tube; John refuses to follow Rael
in his quest for its return.
At the end of a long tunnel, Rael finds himself in a subterranean ravine, into which the
raven drops his tube; it floats away on the current. Above him, Rael sees a skylight, beyond
which is Broadway. He hears screams: John has fallen into the ravine and is being swept away.
Rael rescues him: but the body he saves has his own face, rather than John’s; they become
transfigured, and dissolve into the haze.

THE WHO, ‘QUADROPHENIA’

London, mid-1960s. Jimmy, a young mod, suffers from quadrophenia (i.e. his personality is
split four ways). He has a fondness for alcohol and for ‘leapers’. Having been involved in a
mod/rocker battle in Brighton, he argues with his parents and leaves home. He sleeps rough
under Hammersmith flyover. He attends a concert by The Who; afterwards, he is annoyed
when the band’s members fail to recognize him.
Jimmy gets a job as a dustman, but resigns after two days. Fed up with sleeping rough, and
seeing his girlfriend in the company of his supposed best friend, Jimmy loses his temper and
smashes up his scooter. After taking a large dose of leapers, he travels to Brighton; the sight of
a mod hero, who now works as a hotel bellhop, further disenchants him. Jimmy steals a boat;
fuelled by gin and pills, he travels out to sea towards a Rock. The sound of the boat engine
turns into ‘the sort of noise you’d expect to hear in heaven’. As a distant thunderstorm threa-
tens, he mounts the Rock and ponders his life heretofore.

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