2019-08-10 The Spectator

BOOKS & ARTS

THE LISTENER

The Flaming Lips: King’s Mouth

Grade: B-

OK. So a queen dies as her giant baby

is being born. The baby grows very

big indeed and soon everything in the

universe is inside his necessarily large

head. One day he sacrifices himself

to save his subjects from a deluge of

snow. The townspeople cut off his

head and preserve it in steel so that

it will last for ever. Some of them

climb inside his mouth to have a look

around. They see thunderstorms and

stars, apparently.

Exactly what you’d expect from

another Flaming Lips concept

album, I suppose, this time narrated

by a bemused Mick Jones of the

Clash. Everything else is in place,

too — Wayne Coyne’s weedy and

winsome falsetto, a gallimaufry of

deranged Floydesque proggery, the

occasional strummed acoustic guitar,

lyrics pregnant with drug-induced

meaninglessness, electronic beeps and

farts and a portentous synthesised

chorale backdrop which, in the end,

really begins to grate.

But, this being the Flaming Lips,

there are also fragments of very

pretty tunes. This has always been

the Oklahoma trio’s Achilles heel:

the melodic ideas are often lovely,

but rarely developed beyond one or

two lines. Here, only on the charming

closing number ‘How Can A Head’

do those fragments coalesce into

something you might care to call

a song. Elsewhere the first minute

or so of every tune is endurable or

even appealing, but they never go

much further than that, maybe apart

from on the kind of Dandy Warhol

ur-funk of ‘Feedaloodum Beedle Dot’

(yes, yes, I know). There’s a book for

children to accompany this reliably

odd extravaganza. I’d keep your

children away from it, if I were you.

— Rod Liddle

Cinema

The Boss goes

to Bollywood

Jasper Rees

Blinded by the Light
12A, Nationwide

Once upon a time two men sat in a New
York bar lamenting the state of Broad-
way. So they decided to play Fantasy Musi-
cal. Several beers down they came up with
a weird hybrid: a jukebox musical that
injected the songs of Blondie into the plot
of Desperately Seeking Susan. Somehow
this botched centaur stumbled all the way
to the West End, where it joined that throng
of musicals that should have stayed on the
drawing board.
Blinded by the Light is a Bollywood-
style musical comedy set in the Pakistani
community of Luton that takes as its
soundtrack the oeuvre of Bruce Springs-
teen. No drunk blokes in a bar could ever
have conjured up such an implausibility.
And yet it is a trueish story, inspired by
the memoir of Sarfraz Manzoor. Greetings
from Bury Park (2007) told of a Muslim
teenager growing up in Luton in the late
1980s. His life is hemmed in on one side
by a despotic father and on the other by
the National Front, while the M1 roars by.
‘Luton is a four-letter word,’ he scowls in
a poem. His horizons expand at sixth-form

art-historical hypothesis: the ‘Master of the

Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece’. This person

seems to have been an outstanding painter

of the 15th century. But lacking a name or

even a clear nationality — he might have

been German, but possibly Flemish — it is

unlikely that books or exhibitions will be

devoted to his work.

So in such practical ways names defi-

nitely matter. But should they? One of the

sharpest disagreements I ever had with

Lucian Freud was about this point. He insist-

ed that it mattered not at all whether a cer-

tain picture was by him or by a forger. He

believed any painting should be judged sole-

ly according to its merits.

In fact, the Kettle’s Yard exhibition also

contains some forgeries: scientific instru-

ments purportedly made in the 16th century,

but which were actually created in the 1920s.

Again, does this matter?

Actually, I still disagree with Lucian

about this. I couldn’t look at a clever imi-

tation of his style with the same interest as

I would a genuine Freud, nor am I as happy

to look at a fake 16th-century astrolabe as

I am the real thing. But perhaps that is just

superstition. This little show only occupies

one gallery, but raises numerous intriguing

questions.

college when a Sikh classmate introduces

him to Born in the USA. Here Manzoor’s

name has been changed to Javed Khan, and

he’s played with charm and enthusiasm by

Viveik Kalra.

There’s no doubting the sincerity of

Manzoor’s discipleship. In Springsteen’s

songs — about making the best of the cards

you’ve been dealt in whatever shit town

you happen to live — he finds a comforting

gospel. ‘It’s like Bruce knows everything

I’ve ever felt,’ Javed says ecstatically. It’s

a harder task to prod and poke them into

the mould of a feelgood coming-of-age

film. As they swarm inside Javed’s head,

the lyrics of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and ‘The

River’ jostle helpfully on to the screen.

Sometimes he is moved to quote songs, as

if taking dictation from a life coach. Before

you know it ‘Thunder Road’ has prompt-

ed a mass dance-a-thon, or Javed and his

mates skip and chase around Luton to the

howling strains of ‘Born to Run’ (in which

Manzoor gets a tiny cameo).

The director Gurinder Chadha and her

regular co-writer Paul Mayeda Berges have

been this way before. Bride and Prejudice

was stuffed with song and dance, and Bend

It Like Beckham became an excellent West

End musical. Blinded by the Light sploshes

a fresh coat of paint on an archetypal nar-

rative that has been told and retold since

My Beautiful Laundrette: the British-Asian

kid who yearns to integrate, the immigrant

patriarch (Kulvinder Ghir) who says ‘you

will never be British’, the racist agitators in

the wings. However familiar they may be, it’s

in these clashes, when everyone stops fixat-

ing on Springsteen, that the film feels most

visceral and authentic.

The problem with adapting memoirs

is that it’s never simple joining the ran-

dom dots of a life to fashion a plotline.

The sweet but formulaic script wheels half-

drawn characters on and off according to

the needs of Javed’s story: the cartoonish

white mate over the road, the left-wing girl-

friend, the chirpy turbanned sidekick, the

dour but kindly neighbour who fought Hit-

ler, the inspirational schoolmarm (Hayley

Atwell), the market trader with 1970s hair

(Rob Brydon in a disaster wig). The hefti-

est use of the crowbar is accompanied by

‘Jungleland’: Javed misses the moment his

sister’s wedding runs into an NF march

because he absolutely must dash off to buy

tickets to Springsteen.

His dad tears them up, but no matter:

Manzoor, we learn in the credits, has seen

Springsteen live 150 times. It may be opti-

mistic to count on finding an audience that

will match his fervour in this arranged mar-

riage between Bollywood and the Boss.

This sploshes a fresh coat of paint on

a narrative that has been told and

retold since My Beautiful Laundrette