By The Landlord
"The music business is the most childish business in the world. Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works." – Jeff Buckley
"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death." – Dave Barry
“You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely." – Ogden Nash
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." – T. S. Eliot
"Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats." – Woody Allen
"Tomorrow we settle this like children." – Jhonen Vasquez (cartoonist, animator, voice actor)
"The problem with children is, they're just so ... childish."
This was the moaning, also half-jokey complaint I received from an old friend of mine some years ago. It was uttered during a rare, all too blatantly relieved state as he escaped briefly from family responsibility to the pub, during a fraught period when his kids were between 3 and 7. Fatherhood had hit him where it hurts – not just through sleep deprivation and in the wallet department, but because as a man who had never really left adolescence himself, he had lost all various freedoms he used to enjoy, including the time to indulge own mood swings, baby-bathwater tantrums, stupid pranks, and generally running around as an entertaining idiot.
So what is immaturity? It's defined as not being fully grown, and displaying behaviour symptomatic of that, but it's also full of interesting levels of growing stages and nuance, everything from annoying, destructive self-centredness to touching naivety, lack of experience but also hunger to discover, playfulness and creativity. Human babies? Kittens and puppies? They are all constantly cute, but also very demanding.
And so that's this week's theme, and, after all, where could pop music be without immaturity? It's the cradle of so much musical creativity, driven by attention- and affirmation-seeking behaviour. Without immaturity, so many wouldn't have been motivated. And this week there are lots of visitors to the Bar who are mature, but cling on to some form of immaturity to give them a lifeforce
Of all the animals, humans are slowest to grow up. A very grown-up and serious George Bernard Shaw refines this by saying: "It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity."
When seeing the behaviour, and interests of children, it's a common remark to say "oh they grow up so fast these days", but in many ways humans are becoming more immature.
But that's a view that's been around for some time. Here's the great 20th-century economist John Kenneth Galbraith on our changing culture: "We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable."
And while each generation buries its head in small screens, and here's Tom Standage, current deputy editor of The Economist, who blames the media:
"It is a sign of a medium's immaturity when one of the main topics of discussion is the medium itself."
There are further writers and philosophers around eager to weigh in on this with a variety of definitions. "Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another," proclaims Immanuel Kant.
On the other hand, "philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions," slips in Isaiah Berlin, mischievously.
"Immaturity means self-centeredness, inability to compromise, to rise above hurt feelings, to postpone immediate pleasures in favor of future benefits, or to do unpleasant chores when they need to be done," adds Arnold J. Toynbee.
"Childish egocentrism is, in its essence, an inability to differentiate between the ego and the social environment," defines influential child psychologist Jean Piaget.
Child in the man. Simply disturbing …
And on wider issues: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one," writes Wilhelm Stekel, Austrian physician and psychologist.
And on the relationship front: "Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' adds Erich Fromm. Surely this kind of behaviour is going to come up plenty in the lyrics of this week's song suggestions.
And at the end of life: "Dying people often become childish," says German novelist Georg Büchner.
"You're only young once, but you can be immature forever," chips in Germaine Greer, echoing Ogden Nash, and who doesn’t loves some childish rhymes, now and again?
"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature," writes Tom Robbins, celebrating a certain form of immaturity.
“Perhaps it's imagination, still alive and fertile before onerous adult responsibility takes over, that is one of the great benefits of not being a fully formed person. "Imagination: the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature," proclaims Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita.
But perhaps it is most particularly teenage years that spur so much fertile ground on this subject. Photographer Lise Sarfati is particularly interested in this, and has made a series of striking portraits of moody teenagers in their bedrooms.
"I am interested in marginality, in immaturity, in naïveté, in illusion, in fictions, in transitions, in the fact that at a certain moment in life there is no limit. I would like my photography to pose a question rather than make a precise statement," she says.
17-year-old in bedroom by Lise Sarfati
Teenagers most often, or at least used to, cover their walls in pop posters. But here's the novelist Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, on pop culture:
"The essence of pop stardom is immaturity – a wretched little pseudo-musical gift, a development of the capacity to shock, a short-lived notoriety, extreme depression, a yielding to the suicidal impulse."
What constitutes maturity or otherwise in these various art forms. Mixing it up with these more recent figures only the way we can in this Bar, here's the composer Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695), who looks forward to music maturing as much as other forms during his time. "Poetry and painting have arrived to their perfection in our own country; music is yet but in its nonage [immaturity], a forward Child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more Encouragement."
So, let's hear from a few more recent musicians who are eager to grab our attention this week.
"Inside, I feel 30ish - I'm childish and optimistic," says the wonderful, ever youthful Suzi Quatro.
Gary Numan, however, says he looks back at his younger self and cringes. "I became famous so quickly and so young - it was daunting. I was immature and I used to say some really stupid things in interviews. I never smiled on stage so I looked really serious, but it was because I hated my teeth and was incredibly nervous."
And here's ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus: "I used to look so immature, like a young man without self-confidence. There was one particular light blue, shiny cape outfit I wore that still makes me cringe." Is it this one, Bjorn?
Bjorn again: embarrassed now about his cape crusading
Whether in looks or sounds, in pop music they all use that interplay between youth and adulthood, sometimes in slightly disturbing ways. Ever seen the TV series Minipops? Well don't.
Daryll Hall is in the house and doesn't like childishness in music. "I hear a lot of people singing in funny voices and singing like they're stupid. Singing in a deliberately fey and dumb and childish way. And I find it to be a disturbing trend."
Was he referring to the girly-girl style of a group such as The Spice Girls, perhaps? "A lot of people have said that I've got a voice that speaks to children. I think I've got a natural naivety to me. I'm childish," reckons Geri Halliwell, crying out for attention. After all, their core audience was targeted at the pre-pubescent level.
But this week we're mainly about the subject of the song, immaturity portrayed in lyrics. Here's the wonderful Ezra Furman on that, with something that should spark lots of ideas: "I've been writing songs since I was a teenager, so one kind of song I've written a lot is about, I don't know, teen angst feelings - feeling unsure of yourself and immature."
The normally silent Meg White has turned up, and describes another kind of creative childishness in her former partner and bandmate, the dominant Jack: "Every second is mapped out and he has this total childish fascination with colour and shapes and sequences."
Jack Wild - mature immaturity
Actors too have gathered in the Bar. Another Jack, Jack Wild, who was a brilliant child star, played the Artful Dodger in Oliver!, describes growing up too fast and going off the rails in an unhealthy way. "At an age when most youngsters are preparing for their GCSEs, I was suddenly a jet-setter, briefly the toast of Hollywood and London's West End. My immature wishes and naive opinions were treated with respect."
A child should never be in charge of a juggernaut. This reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Bart suddenly gains supernatural powers, and all the town live in fear for his childish ego.
Mickey Rourke meanwhile admits that "I was very immature when I was young, and for me there was no balance. Everything was just all or nothing."
But for Katharine Hepburn, the job itself required a kind of immaturity. "Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself."
Gene Wilder also delved into his inner child for his brilliant performances. " A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.'"
Some actors and comedians thrive on a form of immaturity and cling on to it. Here's the late great Norman "Mr Grimsdale!" Wisdom: "My comedy is for children from three to 93. You do need a slightly childish sense of humour and if you haven't got that, it's very sad.
Stewie Griffin: maturely evil but also immature …
… to the child-like innocent wonder of Spongebob Squarepants
But what forms of immaturity might you dig out in song? Will your examples interplay between maturity and immaturity like the brilliant cartoon characters Bart Simpson, the characters on Matt Stone and Trey Parker's South Park, or indeed evil baby Stewie Griffin, the very epitome of immature maturity?
Might they refer to silly behaviour and visual jokes? Whoopee cushions or jumping out of a cupboard. This sort of thing, in which the staged jokes betray a form of immaturity in themselves? I mean, c’mon, what idiot would fall for this?
Perhaps it might involve pulling down the trousers of shop dummies in Westfields shopping Centre, as shown here:
Mens where? Westfield exposure
Or this long held tradition for the Duke of Wellington statue on Glasgow.
Duke of Wellington wards off traffic in Glasgow
Schoolboy humour is something we might all relate too. My favourite example comes in the timelessly brilliant Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Talking of Biggus Diccus, among the most beloved forms of immature expression is giant knob graffiti. As you can see below, it's a timeless pursuit.
Ancient Rome 1,700-year-old graffitied phallus at Roman Vindolanda
Snow joke
One made every minute
In 2009, teenager Rory McInnes painted a giant phallus on the roof of his parents' Hungerford, West Berkshire, mansion, apparently after watching a programme about Google Earth. Unknown to his parents it was up there for a year.
But perhaps top prize goes to British teenager and eco activist Ollie Nancarrow of Bishop's Stortford, artfully mowing messages into fields, mainly of the serious kind to do with climate change, but also greeted the unwelcome visit of a former US president with this classic piece of work, continuing a long, historic tradition on these isles.
This penis trumps them all
OK then, that's enough knob gags. But if ever there was a week for it, this is it. So then, time to indulge in your own immaturity as expressed in song form, serious or humorous, and no doubt enjoying it to the full, let's welcome this week's guest guru to oversee it all, the wonderful Olive Butler! Deadline for nominations is 11pm on Monday UK for playlists published next week. How puerile!
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