“I commend you for doing this because I think it’s the real struggle of this generation of artists, how do you tell stories about abstract systems?....there is a real challenge to telling a story about finance and financialization, because ultimately it’s the story about how we as humans are capable of producing something that is more than the sum of our parts. ”
Development
Genesis
On a dark, cold early January day in 2019, I read a news report that a man had jumped to his death from one of the mezzanine levels inside Cabot Place at Canary Wharf in front of hundreds of lunchtime office workers and shoppers. I worked only a few DLR stops away at the Royal London Hospital in deprived Whitechapel and I knew well the glittering corporate precinct that was our rich neighbour in Tower Hamlets.
This set me in mind of Quadrophenia, a rock opera/ concept album by The Who released in 1973. The story and music by Pete Townshend explores alienated early ‘60s British Mod youth culture, set against the bleak backdrop of post-war austerity, social conformity and job choices void of meaning. The film version (1979) features a (now) famous scene of Mod Jimmy hurtling off the cliffs near Brighton on his scooter. It felt like there were parallels - were there?
Not long after, I became aware of two extraordinary London artists Daniel Edelstyn and Hilary Powel, staging an elaborate bank heist to free their local deprived Walthamstow community from £1.2 m of predatory payday debt. They succeeded and staged their blowing up of debt one freezing April morning in 2019 in the shadow of Canary Wharf. I was privileged to be there, and knew what I wanted to do next.
The Bank Job intervention into finance and subsequent film and community opened a door onto an artist/activist world I didn’t know existed, one that set the finance industry, banking and money in their sights.
No-one had yet (to my knowledge) produced a long-from narrative concept album about this all powerful world “beyond culture”. So I thought ‘Why don’t I try?’ This can be my contribution to a conversation about financial forces that are invisible but everywhere, even affecting people who apparently ‘produce’ them. Maybe I can write a story and music will help people realise (as all good music does) you are not alone.
“Finance is pretty dull and in a sense, it is outside the space we normally refer to as culture. And it’s very outsiderness is part of its power....and I think trying to animate that, try to bring it into culture, say ‘this is part of who we are’...is very important.”
Interviews
I set out to find out more about London’s finance industry and the so-called ‘financialisation of the economy’ by interviewing a range of finance workers and experts: stockbrokers, financial analysts, investment bank fund managers, finance journalists, economists, artist-activists. In addition, I pored over media stories, books and films about high finance corporate life.
The interviews were the most powerful influence on my creative process, as I wanted to tell a story that was authentic and based on real people and events. I particularly wanted to create characters whose thoughts and feelings everyone can identify with, although they inhabit the specialised, opaque world of hedge funds, investment banks, trading. My generous interviewees helped me humanise this world which I hardly knew anything about, and their stories gave me ideas for characters and dilemmas.
The story and characters of Canary Wharf are all fictional, but the trading events and crises depicted, and the less than ethical behaviour of the fictional Wagner Bank, Spring Tree Capital hedge fund and the Public Private Partnership company Sebvis are examples of behaviours that can and do occur in the banking and finance industry.
Some of the phrases used in the lyrics (for example ‘trading in air’, ‘I’m just doing my job’) are drawn verbatim from interviews. Several traders and analysts showed an acute awareness of the moral compromise and self-hatred that some people in the industry wrestle with - this is John, my central character’s, biggest internal problem
In the middle of the rock opera, I use audio samples of Professor Max Haiven talking about the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement which ushered in unprecedented financial regulation and stability after the second world war, since undone by neoliberal governments after the 1970s. Several of my interviewees mentioned the Bretton Woods conference as ushering in a ‘golden age of capitalism’ that supported more equal prosperity than the widening inequality we have seen grow exponentially over the last 40 years. It seemed important, therefore, to insert a music piece at the heart of the rock opera that momentarily breaks the fictional wall, and reflects on this real moment in history whose spirit of cooperation and regulation of excess is needed again.
“We get at your guts, in a sense, by writing a song that entices you. And then we deliver you an entire TV series in a few lyrics. And your response, as a listener is to deal with what comes up. And either, you know, attach yourself to the process, into the music, and the ideas, or you’re repelled by it. So the music is almost more important than the story, almost more important than the message. But I think having a good message and a strong message and a good story, is critical, and it seems like you are well on your way to doing that. ”
Big artistic challenges
I wanted to find out how I could use the form of the rock opera to demystify aspects of financialised capitalism through music and storytelling. I’m not a brilliant writer like Michael Lewis (The Big Short), nor a professional print-maker and filmmaker (like my friends Dan and Hilary behind the Bank Job film and project). My tools of trade are songwriting and music production: how can I use these to make a contribution to the wider cultural conversation about the power of the finance industry? In early 2023, these tools of trade were extended to DIY, zero budget filmmaking: I worked with former BBC producer Bill Garrett to pull together a 50 minute rock opera film for the launch of Canary Wharf at an independent Melbourne cinema in April.
This self-imposed artistic quest brought up a number of creative challenges I had to solve:
-financialisation is an abstract and complex idea, even a pretty dull subject, not easily lending itself to music or drama - how do I make this into a story that grabs interest?
-how do I write songs about forces that are bigger than the characters, the a-moral finance machine itself. I didn’t want to resort to ‘heroes and villains’ lyrics and story, I didn’t want to write ‘protest songs’ about us versus them.
-how can I use the emotional power of music and sound to best effect while spinning an album-length narrative?
The extent to which I have succeeded against any of these criteria is ultimately up to individual listeners to judge. However, this rock opera is also part of my practice-led Phd in creative arts at La trobe University, Melbourne. I’ll be exploring how I’ve tried to address these creative challenges and more as I write up my experiences in my thesis.
“What essentially happens with financialisation is...a million independent competitive and often contradictory gambles made by a million different actors working through a million different institutions, creating a system beyond any one person’s control ”
“If I was writing a rock opera about Canary Wharf? I think I’d write about the cleaners, you know, the inequality in Tower Hamlets, the left-behinds..”