The Good Companions
JB Priestley's novel set the pattern for The Commitments
The Commitments, a 1991 film by Alan Parker, and based on the novel of the same name by Roddy Doyle, is one of my favourite cinema memories. For those who have never heard of it, or just need their memories jogging, here is the trailer:
Jimmy Rabbitte is a young Dubliner, down on his luck, but his fortune begins to change when he becomes the manager of a band of young musicians. Will they hit the big time?
For the last ten days I have been ploughing my way through The Good Companions, the book that made JB Priestley famous, and very rich, when it was published in 1928. It won the prestigious James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, was made into a film with John Gielgud and Jessie Matthews, and even as recently as the 1970s into a stage show with music by Andre Previn and starring Judy Dench. I say ‘ploughing’ deliberately: it is a surprisingly long book, 600 pages, and to be honest I didn’t enjoy it as much as Angel Pavement, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago:
But it was an easy and at times very funny read, the multiplicity of characters were believable and attractive, and as in Angel Pavement, Priestley paints a faithful portrait of an England that was fast disappearing. The story is extremely simple: three very different characters, from three very different parts of the country, all find themselves unexpectedly on the road, with no particular place to go, as the saying has it. Miss Trant is a recently-orphaned woman from the Cotswolds, who has barely been further than Cheltenham but comes into the possession of a small car and a small inheritance. Inigo Jollifant is a smart young teacher, sacked from a boys’ prep school, with a wonderful talent for the piano. Jess Oakroyd is a labourer from Bradford, or Bruddersfield as Priestley calls it, who has fallen out with his wife. Their journeys happen to collide at just the moment and the place where a travelling band of musicians, singers and variety acts, the Dinky Doos, needs a major reboot. On the spur of the moment, Miss Trant decides to provide the money and the vision, Inigo writes the tunes, and Jess can build a set. The concert party, as they describe themselves, reforms under a new name, The Good Companions, and sets off on a tour of music halls and theatres across the small towns of Middle England. Priestley is at his best describing the places they visit, a vision of post-industrial Britain in decay:
Cathedral cities, market towns, ports forgotten by the sea, spas long out of fashion, all these can decay beautifully, and often their charm increases as the life ebbs out of them. Industrial towns, like steam engines, are only even tolerable if they are in working order and puffing away. Tewborough was like an engine with a burst boiler lying on the side of the road…it was a factory that could now show you nothing but broken windows and litter and mouldering ledgers and a mumbling caretaker, it was nothing but an old cash-box containing only dust and cobwebs and a few forgotten pence.
At first the troupe seems doomed to failure, but talent will out, and before long as their reputation grows, they find themselves surprisingly successful and on the brink of fortune. And one glorious night, the most famous of the West End Impresarios will be lured north to see the show.
It is at this point when a memory hit me: surely I was reading an early version of Roddy Doyle’s great story. Miss Trant transformed in my mind into the Jimmy Rabbitte of Dublin, as she inspired and turned a disparate bunch of no-hopers and inexperienced youngsters into a group with a vision and a purpose. She changed their name. She made their life on the road supportable and gave them hope of a brighter future. Against the competing claims of the dance hall, the public house, the radio and above all the cinema, she and her troupe revive a dying art and find an audience again.
They have crowded in from Mundley and Stort as well as from Gatford itself…Mechanics, fitters, electricians, clerks and cashiers from the motor works, with their wives and sweethearts; typists and milliners and elementary-school teachers; women who might be anybody’s wife or nobody’s; men who might at any moment be awarded a medal or given five years’ penal servitude, who might be heading for the town council or the gutter…jovial middle-aged fellows who earn good money and can eat anything, and their tired wives who have been fighting, right up to six o’clock this very evening, the week’s long battle for cleanliness and respectability.
Jimmy Rabbitte takes a feebly unsuccessful soundalike synthpop band, shakes up the membership, rechristens it The Commitments (“All the good 60s bands started with a ‘The’”) and gives it a new purpose. The most famous line in the film is ‘The Irish are the blacks of Europe’. The working classes of Dublin, with unemployment at 40% in some areas, need to see themselves in a new light, and Soul music will be the vehicle to lift them up. Both novels are set among a population beaten down by economic depression: unemployment stalks the streets and opportunities for improvement are few and far between. Music brings a moment of joy and a chance to forget your troubles. It might even help you leave the sad streets behind.
The moment that I became convinced I was reading the same tale was when the Impresario arrives at Gatford to see The Good Companions, hoping to sign both Inigo Jollifant and his sweetheart Miss Susie Dean for a West End show. Jimmy Rabbitte manages to persuade a talent scout from a big record label to watch The Commitments. In both cases, the groups themselves are unaware that this is their big chance. And then, in both cases disaster strikes. Amid extremely funny scenes of mayhem and destruction, we realise that neither group will ever make the big time, or even play together again.
I am not suggesting Doyle stole the story, I have no idea if he had ever heard of The Good Companions, but I really enjoyed thinking about the parallels. And the more I looked into the background to the two works, the spookier it got. Both books are what launched their author into fame. Doyle was 27: he had been writing novels, stories and plays for years but none had hit the public consciousness. He took out a bank loan to buy a car, and used the money to self-publish The Commitments: slowly over six months the 2,000 copy print run sold out and it was acquired and relaunched by Heinemann. When Elvis Costello endorsed it, its fame was assured. Jack Priestley was in his early thirties, desperate for a publishing break. He had lost his first wife to cancer, he and his second wife had a handful of children and were living on the breadline, while he scribbled reviews and non-fiction volumes at a prodigious rate to make ends meet. But, again, it was Heinemann that bought the book. The editor CS Evans wrote ‘The only thing I can say is, bless you! In a desert of aridity which I have been traversing in the last six months, your book stands out as a green and pleasant oasis.’
The Good Companions was published in August 1928, and after a slow start, as Priestley wrote, ‘the balloon went up’. By Christmas it was selling 1000 copies a week in England, double that in America. A ‘Good Companions’ industry grew up round it, sentimental pictures of babies or puppies cuddling or holding hands sold by the thousands as well. Both Priestley (who died in 1984) and Doyle (still going strong) went on to publish other successful novels, to write plays and to win awards. One of these books may be 600 pages long, the other only 100, but both are laugh out loud funny. It is perhaps easy to write depressing books in a Depression, but it’s the funny book that deserves to succeed.
Postscript: Alan Parker’s film of The Commitments was famously created using a cast of amateur actors. As he wrote
In order to cast our net as widely as possible, we had organized an open casting call at the Mansion House (town hall) where we invited anyone in Dublin who wanted to be considered for the film. Over 1500 young hopefuls turned up reading a page of the script and singing and playing everything from guitars to tin whistles, banjos to bagpipes (quite a miraculous turnout considering Ireland was doing rather well in the World Cup at the time, consequently bringing Dublin to a halt). The truth is, of course, if you ask absolutely anyone to sing in Ireland they’ll gladly oblige —often quite beautifully and sometimes even without a glass of Guinness in their hand.
Andrew Strong, the lead singer with the extraordinary voice, was only sixteen when he auditioned. Glen Hansard went on to become one of Ireland’s most famous composers and musicians, writing and starring in Once, another of my favourite films, and winning the Oscar for best song. I only found out when researching this piece that Jimmy Rabbitte’s sister was one of The Corrs.
I have been meaning to read more of Priestley and Doyle; these seem good places to start with them.
I haven't thought about The Commitments in so long - but I used to LOVE that movie!!