The Earth spins on its axis
Massive Attack - 'Hymn of The Big Wheel' (Blue Lines - 1991)
In May 2008, Channel Four’s sitcom Peep Show aired episodes from its fifth series; it would reach nine before it finished and ran for 12 years, making it the longest running sitcom in its history. In the second episode of S5, Spin War, Mark Corrigan was attempting to navigate returning to work alongside his former fiancee and is ostracised by everyone except The Johnson and an IT worker called Dobby, whom he ‘encounters’ in a stationery cupboard.
If the scene wasn’t memorable enough, Mark makes his excuses to leave predicated on the idea that if he doesn’t get back to work, his job might be at risk by stating;
The world turns on its axis: one man works while another relaxes.
This is a lift from ‘Hymn of The Big Wheel’ the closing track of Massive Attack’s 1991 debut Blue Lines which tells us that in its chorus;
The Earth spins on its axis. One man struggle, while another relaxes
Now, this would be an odd thing to say at the best of times1 and, given the quote isn’t quite right, you assume that Mark has picked up this line from his slightly cooler flatmate, Jez, rather than sitting in their Croydon flat nodding out to some early 90s conscientious trip-hop himself.
Back in the late 1980s, Neneh Cherry was riding on the crest of the wave of the success of her early singles and her debut album Raw Like Sushi. On ‘Buffalo Stance’, she names checks The Wild Bunch sound system, a collection of musicians and DJs from Bristol who would become members of Massive Attack and work on records by Smashing Pumpkins, Soul II Soul, U2, Portishead, Madonna and Björk throughout the nineties.
Massive Attack member Daddy G has said in a 2004 piece that
“We were lazy Bristol twats. It was Neneh who kicked our arses and got us in the studio. We recorded a lot at her house, in her baby’s room. It stank for months, and eventually, we found a dirty nappy behind a radiator.”
In that same interview, he speaks of making dance music for the head and not the feet. This is around the time such music would be called IDM2, for better or worse. It wasn’t until 1994 that the phrase most associated with the band’s early work, Trip-hop, came into the vernacular, and it is both music to be enjoyed on coming back from a night out or a soundtrack to a night in. By the end of the century, albums from this genre what would be called, somewhat dismissively, dinner party albums, and Blue Lines, Dummy, and Maxinquaye would be prominent examples of downtempo, critically acclaimed records that middle-class people could show off to each other with.
‘Hymn of The Big Wheel’ was written by Robert Del Naja and Neneh Cherry, and the lead vocal is from Jamaican roots reggae singer Horace Andy. The female vocal harmony is from Cherry, though it is not credited officially. It is also the only song of the nine on the record not to contain samples and does an effective job of showcasing the musical styles the band had visited on the preceding tracks. That means that are elements of dub, electronica, hip-hop, pop, R&B and reggae flecked throughout it.
It is a song that stands back, always something we like to see on a final track. Here Massive Attack are seeing in widescreen. There’s a planet-sized scope to the lyrics, and indeed it marks one of the first points where the band tackled geopolitical subjects that they would revisit many times over in their future discography. This time, with some nods to Buddhism, there is a focus on an anti-pollution message.
3D told NME in June 1991 that;
‘Hymn Of The Big Wheel’ does build a bigger picture than the rest of the tracks on Blue Lines because the rest are kind of unfocused – they just drift around and round in their own way, which is what we’re into, rather than paint an obvious picture or leave a message. We’re as worried about things like pollution as everyone else, it’s just we don’t want to write about it so obviously. We ain’t got no solutions to the problems, we’re just the same as everyone else living it. We’re just pointing things out to ourselves, rather than to everyone else. It’s just a story about a man talking to his son, talking about the future or what’s gonna happen, what’s it all about? Just questions, y’know. We don’t offer alternatives like solar power or anything like that.
You can take the sense of offering a global perspective with instruments such as a didgeridoo incorporated.
3D, this time in Sounds, Apr 1991;
The sentiments and the idea of the track are about life in general. I mean a didgeridoo is one of the oldest sounds you could possibly imagine.
So, we feel this collective is riding off into the sunset, concerned about the world around them through optimistic about the future, even with acid rain, lead, and climate change to worry about when a new day breaks and they’ve shaken off the fug of the night before3.
Next week: The Rolling Stones and The Ramones
Peep Show also had relatively obscure references to European Bob, a character from The Streets’ debut album Original Pirate Material and a character insisting, like Kim Deal of the Pixies, that her bone had a little machine.
IDM is Intelligent Dance Music - A phrase first used around 1991-93 on Usenet and on mailing lists about music better suited to listening to at home than dancing to. Contemporaneous artists included under this banner include The KLF, The Orb, Aphex Twin, The Future Sound of London and others.
Maybe doing a Chesil Beach is what gave Mark Corrigan some clarity to free up the grey matter to recall the song.