Literary allusions in popular songs

Popular music doesn't exist in a vaccum. Music of any era is a reflection of as well as a component of contempory culture. Just as Jazz, Surrealism and Existentialism influenced each other, Rock music has been influenced by the popular literature of the time.

I was just listening to Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation and noticed a number songs which suggest what Kantner, Balin and David Crosby might have been reading at the time. Triad alludes to Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein (waterbrothers); House at Pooneil Corner alludes to Ionesco's Rhinocerous and Crown of Creation is directly taken (plagiarized) from Wyndham's Chysalids. I am sure there are quite a few that I missed. White Rabbit, from Surrealistic Pillow, was an intereting take on Lewis Carroll's work.

I can think of a few other songs that either mention a book or author or allude to them - Cream -Tales of Brave Ulysses (The Odessy by Homer); Procol Harem - A Lighter Shade of Pale (Cantebury Tales - Chaucer) Simon and Garfunkel - Dangling Conversation (Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost).

I am sure there are lots of examples. Can you add to the list?

Bryon

 

You really need Gardo for this thread; he'd come up with tons of examples. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is Sting's reference to Lolita in "Don't Stand So Close"

I'll try to think of some more
Best-
Norm

 

As we all know from the liner notes, Steely Dan's Home at Last is a take on the Odyssey.

"Neal and Jack and Me" from the King Crimson 1982 album Beat uses Kerouac's On the Road as the basis for a song about life on the road as a musician.

Sort of related...there was an alternative rock band in Washington, DC in the early 1990s named Kilgore Trout, after the character in several Kurt Vonnegut novels.

 

I appreciate the vote of confidence, Norm, but as usual, I find my mind going blank when I try to think of this kind of stuff ... but let's see if I can get something started:

The Police via Sting:
"Ghost in the Machine" is from a book by Arthur Koestler of the same name
"Invisible Sun" alludes to Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial
"Message in a Bottle" is the title of a collection of essays by Walker Percy
"Synchronicity" is from Jung, I think. Sting's reading a book on the cover that contains the title, IIRC

Sting:
"Nothing Like The Sun" is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 130
"Ten Summoner's Tales" puns on Sting's last name and nods to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Genesis:
"Cinema Show" is framed in part in terms of T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."

Steely Dan is named after a dildo in William Burrough's "Naked Lunch"

"Tomorrow Never Knows" comes from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead by way of Timothy Leary

There's some sidelong allusions to Paradise Lost in Jethro Tull's A Passion Play

I'm pretty sure the "If I was a man, I'd come on your stump" from a Robyn Hitchcock song I can't recall the title of just now comes from a Flannery O' Connor story called "Good Country People" (my wife and I gave Robyn a copy of FoC's short stories in the mid-80's, so I may just be wishing for a connection--but I think it's there)

"A Rose For Emily" (from the Zombie's Odessey and Oracle is based on the short story of the same name by William Faulkner

Bruce Springsteen has talked about how much he's been influenced by Walker Percy, especially the essay "The Man On The Train," though I can't think of a particular place it shows up. There's also the John Steinbeck connection in The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Bob Dylan's full of literary stuff, too much to itemize (at least for me).

The Mekons used to publish bibliographies after each of their high-minded left-wing songs. (Sorry, that's too harsh, though I do find their pride a little tiring.)

Peter Gabriel dedicated "Mercy Street" to poet Anne Sexton.

Kate Bush did a song called "Wuthering Heights" based on the Bronte novel.

There's lots more I'm sure, but that'll do for starters.

 

Another Police one is Don't Stand So Close to Me ("that famous book by Nabokov" (Lolita))

Bruce states in the liner notes to The Ghost of Tom Joad that it was the Houston movie he referenced rather than Steinbeck's book.

He did talk about a book on Woody Guthrie written by Joe Klein on the Live 1975-1985 set.

 

The Alan Parsons Project did a whole LP based on Poe.

Sean

 

"I Am The Walrus" takes its signature phrase (goo goo g'joob) from Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" has a lot of Tolkien imagery, which seems especially apropos nowadays.

 

What about The Doors and Deep Purples Book Of The Talisman Gardo?

Wish I knew details, but unfortunately I don't.

 

Not a song, but Piper at the Gates of Dawn is taken from a chapter title in The Wind in the Willows

 

If it is a Talisman, it should be Santa Esmeralda, not Deep Purple (I wonder if anybody remembers what Santa Esmeralda is)

Now, The Book of Taliesyn - that was Deep Purple... more on Taliesyn here

More on Sting: On Ten Summoner's Tales, he makes a reference to the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and the movie The Magnificent Seven (not exactly a literary homage, but anyway), and on Mercury Falling - to the concept of La Belle Dame Sans Merci that was used in old Romanic/French epics, and also by the poet John Keats. Incidentally, this also happens to be the only half-decent song on the album, IMO

And even more on Sting: in the liner notes to The Dream of the Blue Turtles, he mentions the novel Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice that inspired the song Moon Over Bourbon Street... (and a film w/ Brad Pitt)... that guy (Sting, not Pitt) obviously reads a lot

 

The Doors take their name from a book by Aldous Huxley called The Doors of Perception. Good catch, Dave!

Dunno about the Deep Purple one.

Glad to know about the Huston film, jbohdan.

As long as the Alan Parsons Project is on the table, I Robot is the title of a collection of robot stories by Isaac Asimov, and Eve obviously alludes not only to the Bible but to John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Bill Buford has a track on the album One of a Kind that quotes from Alice In Wonderland, "Fainting In Coils."

Of course there's a bit of King Lear in "I Am The Walrus."

 

Paul Simon did this a few times. Two I remember off the top of my head are "Richard Corey," the title, and even the basic plot, of which was lifted from a poem by E.A. Robinson, and "The Dangling Conversation," with its line "And you read your Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost."

And the ol' Bard, William Shakespeare -- how many times are Romeo and/or Juliet mentioned in popular songs?

 

Well, there's always "Romeo and Juliet" off Dire Straits' Making Movies.

Here's another: The Pretenders, in "The Message of Love," quote Oscar Wilde's line, "We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

 

Another literary allusion from Simon and Garfunkel:

I knew a man, his brain was so small,
He couldn't think of nothing at all.
He's not the same as you and me.
He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no culture,
But it's alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.

 

More on the Doors:

The title of and refrain of "End of the Night" alludes to Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night," and the song's central quatrain, "Realms of bliss, realms of light/Some are born to sweet delight/ Some are born to sweet delight/Some are born to the endless night" are a cop (with the first line changed and last line slightly changed) of lines 121-4 of Blake's "The Auguries of innocence:" "Every morn and every night/Some are born to sweet delight/Some are born to sweet delight/Some are born to endless night."

I ended up studying literature because Morrison led me to Blake (who ended up leading me to Milton).

I'll chime in later as more of these things occur to me. There are lots of them.

L.

 

As Gardo said, there are tons of allusions, echoes, and quotations in Dylan, but it would take weeks just to catalogue the ones that show up in, say, an album like *Highway 61 Revisited*. If we're talking about literary characters, for example, Romeo, Ophelia, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and probably about a dozen others show up in "Desolation Row" alone.

Dylan was "very well read, it's well known...." Though, he certainly knew what was happening.

L.

 

Thinking of a song on the Airplane's "After Bathing at Baxter's," even its title (rejoyce) gives one a hint that they're paying tribute to Ulysses:

Mulligan stew for Bloom
The only Jew in the room...

Leon Russell also paid tribute to Heinlen's book, titling one of his songs (on Carney, I think) Stranger In a Strange Land. Another song on the album, Roll Away the Stone, takes its reference from the Bible, of course.

 

And of course "Romeo he loved his Juliet/ Juliet she felt the same" (in "Fever," but I think only in the Peggy Lee version, not the original Little Willie John--I'll have to check--but does it get more deft and funny than "Julie, baby, you're my flame"?).

They also show up in "Don't Fear the Reaper," Lou Reed's "Romeo had Juliet," and God only knows how many other places. Could be a thread all its own.... In fact, it's so common that these allusions are almost not really literary allusions at all, but allusions to a cultural commonplace or myth. Even Shakespeare was adapting the story from earlier versions.

L.

 

On the light side, "just like romeo and juliet" by micheal and the messengers included on the Nuggets comp. Heavier references include "The Sun Also Rises" and "Catcher in the Rye" by Fever Tree and of course, straight from the Bible, "Turn Turn Turn" by the Byrds. Steely Dan , mentioned earlier, even took their group name from a literary source which I will not elaborate on since it might offend some browsing this site.

 

From the 1960s' master of parody, Allan Sherman:

"And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses"

 

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!

 

Speaking of *Ulysses*, Kate Bush's "The Sensual World" is built from phrases taken from Molly Bloom's final monologue.

yes! Yes!! YES!!!

L.

 

Nancy Griffith used to put her current special book somewhere in the cover photo of her albums. Does she still do that?

 

Here's another one:

My man, Leonard Cohen is another big source for literary references. Here's a recent one that I find particularly compelling:

Cohen’s "Alexandra Leaving" is an adaptation of an episode from Plutarch, which he gets to through Shakepeare’s *Antony and Cleaopatra* and a lyric by the late 19th, early 20th-century Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, who used the episode to create a beautiful meditation on exile and loss (his poem is about his having to leave the city of Alexandria). Cohen uses the story as he finds it in Cavafy), to make a love song about the failure of the singer to live up to an ideal and therefore keep a woman who is in any number of ways far better than him (and the scope of whose life exeeds him and his).

Here are the lyrics to Cohen’s song, followed by the Cavafy:


Alexandra Leaving

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
The god of love preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine.

It's not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust -
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,
Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.
Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.
Your firm commitments tangible again.

And you who had the honor of her evening,
And by the honor had your own restored -
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;
Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked -
Do not choose a coward's explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect.

And you who were bewildered by a meaning;
Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed -
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

===================

And here's the Cavafy:


The God Forsakes Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive-don't mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen-your final delectation-to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

With thanks to www.leonardcohenfiles.com for the poem and lyrics.

L.

 

Van Morrison has a song called "Tore Down a la Rimbaud," alluding to the French Symbolist poet.

Now that I'm thinking Morrison, I'm thinking that he's got some other literary allusions out there too.... Back to work!