"But 'don't look back in anger', I hear you say..."

“Don’t Look Back In Anger” almost bleeds a distinct, sharpish edge of self-justification and emotive sadness - typical of its time.

The lyrics seem to be an explanation, but we still don’t understand. The explanation fails. It’s inadequate. It’s unclear what they explain and to whom the explanation is being offered - it also seems unsolicited. Further, the whole thing seems devoid of context - rather like one of those Tolkien tales where you can trust neither the sky above your head nor the earth below your feet, because neither actually exists. If all this weren’t enough, the explanation isn’t even a good one, because the words are utterly unequal to the task.

But there is intense, passionate, driving emotion. As an emotional statement it is ravishingly beautiful, innocent in its purity, tender in its teenage mawkishness and astonishingly vulnerably firm and strong as only adolescence can be.

Even so, why strive so hard to express something that one does not even possibly know, that no one asked about? That is without context?

I don’t know. And in this case, neither does the songwriter - he says that to this day he does not know what the song means.

People often write songs like “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, not knowing what they mean to say and not being able to say what they mean. It’s not unique in that predicament. In places it’s not even beautiful. It’s just a set of words. Disparate clumps of sentences.

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I heard “Wonderwall” sometime in 1996 and somehow I knew immediately that something bigger and more definitive was waiting in the wings - that moment of legend was gonna be here any time now.  Then I thought “Champagne Supernova” was it. It was only a bit later that I heard “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and looking back, it’s safe to say they’ve never done anything remotely of this calibre either before or after.

Looking at the song now, it seems unmistakably redolent of The Beatles, very closely resembling “Let It Be” which has the same intense, passionate, vulnerable, driving emotion and a very closely similar chord structure. Still, all things considered, apart from being a kind of pathbreaking inspiration and apart from Ringo’s ride drumming, “Let It Be” is, admittedly, a somewhat lesser thing. I can’t believe I just said that but I can’t take it back and be fair at the same time.

It’s sweet, sweet – to see tributes to the Beatles in the 90s, as charming as any that McCartney might have written, or as hard-hitting as Lennon might have. It is also rare.

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At the end of everything, there is a throbbing sadness about songs like this which is so indelibly associated with adolescence. The lingering aftertaste is that of not being able to explain anything even though one has tried and after all the words (just like I’m doing right now……..)

Take me to the place where you go
Where nobody knows if it`s night or day

Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain`t ever gonna burn my heart out

So Sally can wait, she knows it’s too late as we`re walking on by
Her soul slides away, but “don`t look back in anger”, I hear you say

I know I’m going to wish I never said it but I found something very comforting in the wall of sound in the song – organ, guitars and drums; but most especially in the chord structure. I can remember feeling how I couldn’t explain, how I was being misunderstood, and how I could take comfort in the loneliness of not being able to explain, and in the beauty of a chord structure. Even after I’d worked it out and then played it a hundred times, I never lost anything by playing it one more time. And I wish I could sing like that – maybe I could if I tried.

Okay….I’ve said enough; there is a time when one does things like write songs with no context, no overarching story, and are just beautiful sentences strung together, but which only explain by failing to explain, and which make a coherent stand in their stammering incoherence. “Don’t look back in anger”, though, like the song says – “AT LEAST NOT TODAY”. There will be a day when it all comes back to you…….but don’t wait up for it – that’s the best way to meet it.

None of this makes any sense, does it? Ah yes but it does….and if you aren’t catching it then go do the daily crossword….nothing left here to say. It’s okay if you don’t understand – it must be me and the way I say it. Not your fault.

But won't you listen anyway? Mawkish, yes. Bumbling, yes. Incoherent, yes. But won't you listen among those crashing chords.....to the absolute horror behind Noel's howling guitar at the end of the lead solo - on the A minor G F chords....maybe the music will explain what the words cannot....and you'd have done a noble thing.....listening to that which is failing to be said. That's how adolescence is. You want someone to listen, but sometimes no one actually does.

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Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don`t you know you might find
A better place to play
You said that you`d never been
All the things that you`ve seen
Will slowly fade away

So I start the revolution from my bed
Cos you said the brains I have went to my head
Step outside the summertime`s in bloom
Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain`t ever gonna burn my heart out

So Sally can wait, she knows its too late as we`re walking on by
Her soul slides away, but don`t look back in anger I hear you say

Take me to the place where you go
Where nobody knows if it`s night or day
Please don`t put your life in the hands
Of a Rock n Roll band
Who`ll throw it all away

So I start the revolution from my bed
Cos you said the brains I have went to my head
Step outside the summertime`s in bloom
Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain`t ever gonna burn my heart out

So Sally can wait, she knows its too late as we`re walking on by
Her soul slides away, but don`t look back in anger I hear you say

Don`t look back in anger
Don`t look back in anger
Don`t look back in anger
At least not today