By The Landlord
“Why bother choosing a certain chair? Because that chair says something about you.” – David Bowie
“Necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And luxury the accomplish'd Sofa last.” – William Cowper
“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois.” – Le Corbusier
“Every chair should be a throne and hold a king.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Hey buddy, don't you be no square, if you can't find a partner use a wooden chair.” – Elvis Presley
“Writing = Ass + Chair.” – Oliver Stone
“I was walking along and this chair came flying past me, and another, and another, and I thought, man, is this gonna be a good night.” – Liam Gallagher
“Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth! It does not lie!” – Warren Ellis
“Why don’t you come up and have a little ... scotch and sofa?” – Mae West
“I wonder what chairs think about all day: ‘Oh, here comes another asshole.'” Robin Williams
It stands. We sit. Comfortably? Modern human life means spending so much of our waking hours in them - working, eating, watching, reading, scrolling, socialising – they have almost become part of our bodies. As an imperfectly evolved ape, we’re originally designed more to walk, run, climb and crouch down, than sit on some manufactured furniture, even a rock, but chairs of all kinds from swivelling to dining to reclining, to sofas and couches, ornate thrones to humble stools, beanbags, pouffes, to the office, barber’s, dentist’s or even, the electric chair, all have a range of associations, contexts, functions, and emotions, and for this topic, hopefully bring some inspirational support.
“If the 19th century was the age of the editorial chair, ours [the 20th] is the century of the psychiatrist's couch,” wrote the Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), and in the 21st century, whether under analysis or otherwise, we’re still stuck to many forms of chair, perhaps even more so than ever. So this week we’re resting our focus on all such furniture and emotions in the context of song, where they featuring prominently - whether easy, formal, rockin’ or otherwise.
For some parallel reference, already seven years ago we did rest our attention on “songs about sitting and standing” with all of these songs nominated, but as ever, the Song Bar punters proved endlessly creative and knowledgeable that the resulting entertaining playlists barely needed to reference chairs or sofas.
Sofa, so good, then. From couch potatoes to back stiffeners, furniture is a key part of home, school, work and bar life. Many of our formative experiences are shaped in them, from those uncomfortable wooden or plastic primary school chairs or benches, to the hopefully more relaxing family sofa. Talking of which, here’s a selection of the famous opening ‘couch gags’ inventively referencing all kinds of film, art and more, around that mainstay resting place of family life:
You can even see them all via this link. Meanwhile here in full is another of my favourites, referencing the film Avatar, with the clan having to claim and tame their own winged sofa chariot.
What does a couch or sofa mean to you? “I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can repose familiarly. If you can't have intimate terms and freedom with one and the other, they are of no good,” writes Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.
And with classic Song Bar contrast and yet parallel, here’s TV presenter and journalist Janet Street-Porter, who gives another context: “I’ve owned more sofas than I've had husbands. Both sag in the end, but I generally fall out of love with the furniture quicker than the men.”
Meanwhile actor Benedict Cumberbatch, whose name itself sounds like a old-fashioned recliner, has dropped in to the Bar to peruse our shelves, and by our fireside, with a glass of whisky, casually declares: “I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.”
But a sofa, or indeed a chair, is not just a chair. We began with a comment by David Bowie, and he’s back in the Bar to expand on that, and reckons there’s much more meaning to it. “Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilisation that you wish to uphold. I will buy a chair for my house. What style of chair are you gonna buy? Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.”
Some chairs are functional, some sexy, some iconic. This image of 1960s political scandal exposer Christine Keeler is as famous for the way she sat as the chair itself:
Christine Keeler: seat of scandal
Famous Danish furniture designer Arne Jacobsen is also lounging around, responsible for some of the most atttractive designs, but also modestly reckons that:“People buy a chair, and they don't really care who designed it.” Yet we probably all have a favourite most comfortable chair. The philosopher Bernard Williams reckons that: “Women have a favourite room, men a favourite chair.” Is that true? Do you have best for working/ watching TV choices?
In my dotage I’m hoping to acquire something like the Charles Eames classic walnut chair and ottoman:
Charles Eames walnut classic
“What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?” chips in comedian Steven Wright. Perhaps there could be an answer. Here is a small selection other sitting furniture, various inspired by the classic simple Shaker style to more ornate and strange. Hopefully these will also inspire song ideas:
Which of these look inviting? “If more designers had bad backs, we would have more good chairs,” reckons the American design writer Ralph Caplan.
Chairs and similar furniture also inspire all kinds of behaviour and moods. Another British TV presenter and journalist, Evan Davis, now best known for Dragon’s Den, drops in too, and reckons that “a chair's function is not just to provide a place to sit; it is to provide a medium for self-expression. Chairs are about status, for example. Or signalling something about oneself. That's why the words chair, seat and bench have found themselves used to describe high status professions, from academia to Parliament to the law.”
From thrones to office, chairs do have associations of power, but General William S Patton has just stormed in to shout: “No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair!”
But for others, chairs are a key part of their work.
Here’s the artist Paul Klee: “For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind.”
Paul Klee’s The Chair Animal
And the playwright Sam Shepard: “For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If you don't have these essentials, you might as well be writing a theoretical essay, not a play.”
Fellow playwright, Moliere (aka Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), albeit from three centuries earlier, also expresses some sit-down-context passion: “Show some mercy to this chair which has stretched out its arms to you for so long; please satisfy its desire to embrace you!”
And with one of his best know works in hand, Aldous Huxley is also in the house, going into more detail: “The legs, for example, of that chair--how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes--or was it several centuries?--not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them---or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.”
Carrie Fisher is also always good company, and now she too is really into the subject: “I've got to stop getting obsessed with human beings and fall in love with a chair. Chairs have everything human beings have to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need. Less emotional feedback, less warmth, less approval, less patience and less response. The less the merrier. Chairs it is. I must furnish my heart with feelings for furniture.”
“Well,” chips in Audrey Hepburn. “All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air. With one enormous chair; Oh wouldn't it be loverly?” Core blimey, Audrey.
And not wishing to miss out on the party, here’s Etta James, also getting excited. “They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something!”
Many of us sit don with our laptops and other devices. In that context, Song Bar regular Douglas Adams is also here, and rests on the topic with a different angle: “We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often "crash" when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I'm sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for ‘productivity’.”
So the association of the chair next quite sits still, and of course here, is always spanning the ages. “It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs,” declares W. S. Gilbert, lyricist of the popular opera duo with composer Arthur Sullivan.
We’ve also got three guest who like to provoke with a more sizzling example of a more deadly kind:
“Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair, I told you dirty jokes until you smile,” says Billy Joel, switched on.
“Yeah!” declares the great stand-up Lenny Bruce who is really excited by this topic now. “And d’ya know what? If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”
“Well, when I go, God's going to have to give up his favourite chair!” adds the great football manager Brian Clough.
We began with one, but when we all get old, perhaps we’ll all end up with a rocking model. Is that a good idea or not?
“Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere,” says Glenn Turner.
But Dolly Parton thinks of that classic design in a more contented way: “When I sit back in my rocking chair someday, I want to be able to say I've done it all.”
But have we done it all? No, we’ve only just started. Is your chair comfortable or otherwise? It’s time to persuade some songs from you, and to end with, let’s do the unexpected, in the form of the Spanish Inquisition with Monty Python ….
So then, who’s in the comfy chair this week? Staying put, but never quite resting, DiscoMonster is back, taking double shift after last week’s album theme. Please sit tight and put your nominations in comments below before deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week. Chairs to you all.
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