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1. This is a true story: In connection with my work on a novel, I had to investigate when the English pop group The Hollies started their career. I was unsure. 1963? Or could it be 1962? So I went to my eminent encyclopaedia, Store Norske, 3rd edition - still in some doubt about this "national memory" would "remember" anything about a band, perhaps not even an overly significant band, which had its glory in the 1960s. But to my delight, I found an article on The Hollies, between the U.S. biochemist Robert W. Holley and the Swiss oboist and composer Heinz Holliger (this is the fringe benefits of an encyclopaedia, that it has the property to get you tracked out of course). I could read the following about The Hollies - I am quoting the entire posting, since it is so short:
Norwegian original last modified:27.03.2009
Translated to English by Knut Skyberg:19.07.2009
Norwegian version:
http://www.snl.no/The_Hollies_%E2%80%93_av_Jan_Kj%C3%A6rstad
Introduction to the encyclopaedia Store Norske, 4th edition of volume 7. Thanks to Tom Thorsteinsen and Agneta Andersson for input on translation. Homepage publication approved by the author 19th July 2009
2. Hollies, The, British pop group formed in 1962 and named after Buddy Holly, with Allan Clarke, vocal, Tony Hicks and Graham Nash, both vocal and guitar. The group got their breakthrough in 1964, and had great success over the next ten years with the singles ‘Searchin’, 'Here I Go Again', 'Bus Stop', 'Sorry Suzanne' etc. The line-up changed somewhat (including Nash quitting in 1968), and from the middle of the 1970s The Hollies disappeared from the limelight, but the group was still active in the middle of the 1990s."
3. Thus, I found what I looked for, and I thought that the editors had done an excellent job; here was what you needed to know about The Hollies. Then - a landslide in my consciousness. Complete fireworks. I was transfixed by memories, melodies, thoughts, and when I came around, half an hour later, I realized that there basically was nothing about The Hollies in the encyclopaedia. That is, about my Hollies. I could try to explain this in several ways. I could say that I, on closer reflection, missed some important facts. The small article is certainly expanded a bit in the new edition - it has the name of the drummer, includes one more hit ("Just One Look"), it mentions that Nash joined up with Crosby, Stills and Young, and says that the group has continued with concert performances in the 2000s - but I could certainly have wanted more information, particularly about the two very underestimated albums both of which came in 1967, Evolution and Butterfly. Small masterpieces. Just listen to the single "King Midas In Reverse." An imaginative and intricate piece - with great arrangements for both strings and wind instruments. The track is not inferior to anything from The Beatles' Revolver or Sgt. Pepper's lonely hearts club band. It could also have been mentioned that the members Clarke, Hicks and Nash early began writing their own songs together (under the pseudonym L. Ransford). And incidentally, it is not certain that The Hollies are named after Buddy Holly - even if this is the "official" explanation. Another tradition claims that the group, as they considered names ahead of its debut appearance in the Oasis Club in Manchester just before Christmas in 1962, found it because they were in a room decorated with holly. (And does not the very capable bassist Eric Haydock deserve to be mentioned, even though he left the band in 1966?)
4. But this is not what I, after having digested the impression from the trip back to another decennium, actually believe the article is missing. What is missing is simply, and inevitably, something about the experience good popular music creates in a listener - an experience that is beyond words. It lacks above all a wealth of details and stories from 1965, the year I discovered The Hollies. And with the entire body as only a boy in early puberty can. For Hollies, and 1965 is synonymous with the singles "Yes I Will," "Look Through Any Window" and especially "I'm Alive", their first number 1-hit in England. Probably, I have never been as alive as I was this year. All of 1965 was a resounding "I'm Alive": Now I can breathe, I can see, I can touch, I can feel! Seen from this angle any encyclopaedia falls short. A dictionary cannot capture the happiness of hearing these songs. There are moments in life when the handclaps and lightness in a catchy song like "We're Through" can be greater art than Beethoven's 5th Symphony. A dictionary can never reproduce the blast "I Can’t Let Go" gave to the consciousness of a young listener in the middle of the 60s,what a drive the backing had, especially Tony Hicks' guitar and first and foremost the tight three part harmony vocal, thanks to Graham Nash's high voice - so effective that I forever since this, even as a 50-year old, fall instantly for new groups that base their sound on guitars and vocal harmonies.
5. It is also beyond the scope of an encyclopaedia to communicate what a miracle a hit record is. A hit that strikes millions of people in the solar plexus of their consciousness. A good pop song sounds simple, but is as difficult to create as it is to shoot the bull's eye with a shotgun, and get all the hailstones inside the inner ten. A melody, some chords, and lyrics that often come close to being embarrassingly banal, in sum becomes ingeniously good, something that reaches the Mariane pit in you, reaches depths that nothing else made by man, including Leonardo da Vinci, has been capable of. A good pop song touches the border of mysticism, releases something in the nervous system, a substance I imagine we not yet have discovered. You are infected - you cannot get the refrain out of your head. You stand with closed eyes and howl: "Now I can breathe, I can touch, I can feel, I can taste all the sugar sweetness in your kiss, you gave me all the things I've ever missed, I've never felt like this, I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive!"and you feel that you have found the holy grail.
6. I must confess that I am full of admiration for a man like Graham Gouldman, the composer behind "Bus Stop", one of The Hollies 'biggest hits, 1966, the first of their singles also reaching high up in the charts in the United States. Apart from being co-writer of the aforementioned "Look Through Any Window", Gouldman stood for songs like "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits, and the much played stirring and beautiful "I'm Not In Love" by 10cc, a 70s group he formed. The mystery of a good pop song is that it remains in your memory throughout life. And it has a phenomenal ability to save memories. I hear "Bus Stop", and my memories from the early summer of 1966 appear -recollections that would never have been recovered otherwise. It may seem as if a pop song of this kind takes a shortcut to the innermost layer of the soul, and joins forces with all the senses; provides a hollow in me, and I suddenly remember how the battery-powered gramophone I was playing "Bus Stop" on smelled – near the swimming pond while I chewed sun warmed biscuits and glanced at Anne’s (discretely described) not unbecoming yellow bikini. "Bus Stop". Two minutes and fifty seconds.I hear it, and not a whole encyclopaedia can contain the thoughts it sets in motion. A thesaurus simply cannot reflect the wealth of associations - I nearly wrote knowledge, yes, wisdom - which is in something as insignificant as a pop song. I read the three lines about The Hollies and nod in agreement. About as poignant as it could possibly be phrased. Then I listen to "He Ain’t Heavy, He's My Brother" and begin crying, without understanding why.
7. With this I will not deliver a critique of the encyclopaedia as an idea, a criticism that might be reminiscent of romantic criticism of the Enlightenment era and its naive faith in reason alone. Although I have suggested the problem, it is not some weighty accusation that an encyclopaedia is unable to embrace the irrational that is in the shadow of all pieces of knowledge - the wisdom you intercept, so to speak, with your ribcage rather than the brain. An encyclopaedia cannot tell about feelings, it should be a source of reference for dry facts. "Hollies, The, formed in 1962." However, there is a problem for an encyclopaedia today to select what dry facts to include. The amount of information in the world doubles with ever-shorter intervals. And the information that increases the most, is what we in English call trivia, trifles, small things: information that has no particular practical importance. And The Hollies - I apologize for having to admit it - are and will be negligible. The Hollies are at best among the ten most important British groups from the 1960s, and although their songs can make me and a lot of other people do the splits in enthusiasm, initiate complex flows of consciousness, even we know that an encyclopaedia cannot use too much space on the phenomenon. It is a kind of ephemeral knowledge. How many will look for information about the group that sang "I'm Alive" in one hundred years? It is painful to read the short, cheerless posting about The Hollies. But I accept it. It is laudable that there's anything at all about The Hollies in the encyclopaedia. If someone, for some reason, is wondering what the group's drummer is called – by the way a very able drummer - they can find the name here: Bobby Elliott. Unfortunately, and fortunately, we do not require anything more of a good encyclopaedia.
