Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 18 Sep 2016

The Day the Music Died: A life lived behind the lens by Tony Garnett

I now realise just how much I took for granted in my late teens. Television and cinema in the late 60s and 70s crackled with innovation and daring – it seemed to me that great new directors and exciting but challenging films and dramas just kept coming. I never questioned my assumption that this would be the norm – forever. What a fool I was. Forty years on and both t.v. and the cinema feel largely sterile as far as challenging ideas and anti-establishment attitudes are concerned  and the lowest common denominator seems to be the order of the day – as long as it makes money.

Back in that period of the late Sixties and early Seventies that I now think of as a golden time for drama and film, one of the men behind the fabulous Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play was the producer, Tony Garnett. To be honest, I’ve never really understood what a producer does and so I was keen to get my hands on Garnett’s memoir to see what it was he actually did.

And, I have to say, this book is a whole lot more than a conventional media memoir full of fluff and indiscreet gossip. Now 80 years old, Garnett has clearly decided that it’s time for a bit of public therapy and he spends as much time on his inner journey as he does on his life as an actor or film and television producer.

Garnett was born in Birmingham and spent much of his early life in the working class Erdington area of the city. His mother died when he was barely 6 years old as the result of an illegal, back-street abortion and he also lost his father very soon after that as the result of a suicide born of misery, despair and guilt. He was farmed out to be brought up by his aunt and uncle who were loving but strict and unimaginative – conventional in the extreme. But Tony himself was anything but conventional and developed a love of radical ideas and acting . By the time he was at the end of his schooldays he wanted two things – to be an actor and to spend time with the love of his life, Topsy Legge. Topsy wanted to act as well and so they both headed off to London to find their fortune as actors – which all looked on course until Topsy suddenly succumbed to mental illness.

What soon becomes clear in Garnett’s story is that his strong political beliefs and his own tragic circumstances are the key to understanding the work he felt compelled to do. He soon realised he needed to stop thinking of himself as an actor and that his real gift lay in making important things happen. His partnership with the brilliant director Ken Loach takes root and he is soon looking for iconoclastic and politically aware writers like Jim Lane and David Mercer who have real stories to tell about working class life.

There are some wry tales of how he finds ways to navigate around the  BBC television hierarchy. It's interesting to see how deeply his disdain for the inherent conservatism of organsiation runs  - he saw them then and he sees them now as a fundamental part the ruling establishment. Somehow, however, he finds a way of working on the inside and getting the support, funding and permission for a string of extraordinary dramas including Cathy Come Home, The Lump, The Big Flame. He also moves into cinema production to make Kes, a film of Barry Hines’ Kestral for a Knave, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush and Family Life written by Mercer.

Later in his career he tries his hand at production in the USA but with only mixed success and when he returns to the UK he begins to explore the merits of therapy to try and understand the impact the loss of his mom and dad had on him. This book is the result of coming to a crucial understanding:

“Our parents are always inside us and it’s coming to terms with them, and understanding their point of view, and forgiving them that makes you a grownup,”

This book is about 300 pages long but it feels like a lot less and, at the same time, a lot more – it’s packed with insight but it isn’t hard work. That’s a real recommendation.

 

Terry Potter

September 2016