Correspondence No. 3: “Alcohol,” a song by Ray Davies, performed by the Kinks on their album Muswell Hillbillies // “The Demon Drink,” a poem by William McGonagall
“The Demon Drink,” written in 1887, is heartbreaking in its earnestness. A married man (no name given) who repeatedly spends “his earnings foolishly on whisky, rum and beer” beats up his wife, knocking her down and accidentally killing her. It’s actually a bit more complex: in McGonagall’s scenario, “he finds his wife fou’” (a Scots word meaning inebriated), so it appears that both spouses are drunk. There’s plenty of blame to go around; society is also at fault: “…if there was no strong drink to be got, / To be killed wouldn’t have been the poor wife’s lot.” His wife’s drunken state angered his drunken self, so there’s a hefty load of hypocrisy in his actions as well.
The husband is executed for murder, and McGonagall spends the remaining stanzas fulminating more generally against the evils of strong drink. Even politics is affected by drunkenness (“The man that gets drunk is little else than a fool, / And is in the habit, no doubt, of advocating for Home Rule”).
McGonagall regularly performed in the clubs and music halls of Victorian Britain, where he was viewed as a novelty act. And when we turn to “Alcohol,” one of the things that strikes us is the music hall atmosphere. Muswell Hillbillies was recorded in 1971, but the Kinks were consciously going for a sound that had flourished decades before.* With the addition of brass and woodwind, they turn into a “temperance band,” something like in the photo above.
McGonagall is earnest in his intent, while Davies offers a stylized memento of times gone by, with a light satirical touch. The theatrical element in “Alcohol” turns it into a period piece. McGonagall, writing at a time when the temperance movement was in full swing, represents the real thing. Yet such is the difference in aesthetic skill between the two works that “Alcohol” comes across as the serious piece and the poem as a parody.
The differing roles played by women are notable. In the poem, the man and his wife are both drunkards. In the song, in addition to pressures at the office and in his social life, the man takes to drinking under the influence of women. First, it’s “his selfish wife’s fanatical ambition”; then comes a “floozy” – who gets him hooked on alcohol and eventually leaves him “lying on Skid Row.”
McGonagall’s awkward sketch of a drunkard’s problems lacks the telling details we expect from good writing. He hectors his audience at length, in a flagrant violation of the “show, don’t tell” rule. Davies tells us exactly what our hero is drinking, and you can practically see the empty bottles piling up on the way to Skid Row: “Barley wine, pink gin, / He'll drink anything, / Port, Pernod or tequila, / Rum, scotch, vodka on the rocks, / As long as all his troubles disappeared.” Now that stays with you.
The example of McGonagall shows us that an artist must have self-awareness to do his work properly. Accounts of McGonagall’s public readings show that he apparently never cared, or maybe didn’t even know, that he was an object of mockery, even when being bombarded with rotten food and laughed at by the audience. He just carried on, convinced of his own poetic genius. In the end he achieved a form of immortality, but not in the way he wanted.
*There’s another drinking song on this album – “Have a Cuppa Tea” – and it contrasts with “Alcohol” by its upbeat, feelgood nature (earworm alert). Tea is presented as the cure for everything, except perhaps alcohol addiction. Note also how it combines three genres in one song: music hall, rock, and country.