Songwriting & Storytelling:
Songwriting & Storytelling:
Exploring the Cross-Pollination of Literature & Music.
The worlds of music, poetry and literature have crisscrossed throughout time, a pollination of influence for music artists, writers, poets and authors.
Let me bring this to life, beginning with an example from this week’s new releases.
Literature’s influence on music.
On Thursday 26th of September The Cure gave the world their first new song for sixteen years, Alone arrived as the debut track from their first and only album since 2008’s 4:13 Dream – Songs of a Lost World will be released November 1st. Alone had featured as the opening song on The Cure’s last world tour and will open their much delayed new album, promised since 2019 and throughout 2022 into 2023 as The Cure toured extensively under a billed Shows of a Lost World tour – the album tour without an album. The lyrics to Alone bare heavy influence from Ernest Dowson’s poem Dregs, published posthumously in 1902. Literature has played a key influence on The Cure’s work since the 1979 debut single Killing An Arab inspired by Albert Camus’s L'etranger. Penelope Farmer’s 1969 novel Charlotte Sometimes influenced The Cure single and its video of the same name. The Cure’s The Drowning Man from 1981’s Faith album drew influences from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, and so on, the literary influences continued. Dowson’s Dregs has references throughout to the consciousness of mortality, the English poet himself was dead by 32. The poem’s themes and use of language are highly evident on new song Alone. For The Cure and Robert Smith specifically, these are themes that cross-over from 2000’s Bloodflowers album, as Robert Smith approached his 40th year, featuring lines such as ‘I've run right out of thoughts. And I've run right out of words. As I used them up’ and ‘the fire is almost out’, such a theme is heavily reflected on Alone and acts as a closer reflection of Dowson’s poem Dregs. ‘The fire is out’ is the poems opening line. Robert Smith’s first lyric on Alone is ‘This is the end of every song that we sing’. ‘This is the end of all the songs man sings’ is the closing line of Dowson’s poem. There is certainly a close association between the song and the source of influence, perhaps one of the closest I recall across The Cure’s output. One can imagine that Robert Smith has been an admirer of Dowson’s work for several years.
The Cure most often play to their strengths with a powerful sense of beautiful melancholy, with love, sex and romance present - found in great depth at the pinnacle of The Cure’s greatest moment, the Disintegration album from 1989. New album Songs of a Lost World already promises more greatness, acting as a fitting way to perhaps bow out in Smith’s 65th year, but never say never. With more music to follow in November, Endsong was played live throughout The Cure’s last tour and is simply stunning, immense in its grandeur, the closing song on the forthcoming album. These two songs together will bookmark what is likely The Cure ‘s last album, Smith has commented both songs set the theme for writing the rest of the album. Smith has been declaring the next Cure album as the band’s last since at least 1989, but this time it’s more probable. This Cure record may have taken sixteen years to arrive, but we can be sure it will be one of their fans most treasured in perhaps three decades, since The Cure’s finest work in that most cherished 1979 to 1992 golden age period.
Music has often taken influence from works of literature and poetry. Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights based on Emily Bronte’s novel took her to no.1 in 1978.
On Nirvana’s Scentless Apprentice from 1993’s In Utero album there is the presence of Patrick Suskind’s brilliant 1985 novel Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. The song offers up the quotation: "I promise not to sell your perfumed secrets. There are countless formulas for pressing flowers.”
David Bowie’s 1984, took influence form the George Orwell novel, as did the dystopian totalitarian society theme across the 1974 Bowie album Diamond Dogs. Bowie was a frequent reader; Bowie’s Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life by John O’Connell gives further insight into the book shelves of one of the greatest music stars of all time.
Joy Division’s Colony sees influence from Franz Kafka’s The Penal Colony. J.G Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition published in 1970 is the name of the opening track on Joy Division’s final album Closer (1980), there are notable Ballard references in Ian Curtis lyrics. Nikolai Golgol Dead Souls published 1842, is also the name of a Joy Division song.
Manic Street Preachers b-side to 1993’s La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh), is Patrick Bateman, and the name of the psychotic protagonist in Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho novel published two years prior. Brett Easton Ellis himself, a writer often bringing music to the pages of his novels.
There are of course countless examples of literature’s influence on music writers and lyricists. So how about music’s influence on literature?
Music’s influence on literature.
What can music inspire, express, and evoke for writers of literature? How do both forms intertwine?
Leonard Cohen pursued a career as a poet and novelist during the late 1950’s into the mid 1960’s and did not begin his music career until 1966. Moving from Montreal he bought a small house on the Greek island of Hydra to become a semi recluse and write. Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964), and the novel The Favourite Game (1963), an autobiographical Bildungsroman about a young man who discovers his identity through writing. The 1966 novel Beautiful Losers was his last publication at this stage of his career as his musical career took over. "I decided I'm going to be a songwriter. I want to write songs," he told CBC TV in 1966. His first studio album of fifteen in his discography, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, was released in 1967 featuring the likes of Suzanne and The Sisters Of Mercy. He later returned to writing literature throughout his music career. His novel A Ballet of Lepers was published posthumously in 2022.
Music, sound and audio comes into the world of literature to help characters express themselves, music sets moods, emotions and feelings of scenes, sets a stage, sense of place, music supports dialogue and narratives, music can define and propel inciting moments and drive the story forward. In both a subtle and literal sense, music and literature enjoy a close relationship. In a structural sense, authors rely on rhythm and tone for their writing. Writers write to beats, and talk of ‘beats’, beats that move the story forward rhythmically. Music within the written word can act as a vehicle for a sensory connection between the reader and the story, its characters and scenes.
Steven King often bashed out his bestsellers while listening to rock music, including AC/DC, King himself plays guitar. Music by Paul McCartney, Neil Young, The Doors, and Bruce Springsteen, among others, appear in his work. Music, sound and audio play as key elements in story telling. From Batman comics and ‘Biff, Pow, Wham’ speech bubbles to the soundtrack of novels like Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, whose protagonist Patrick Bateman often comments on the slick commercial 80s music he listens to.
‘Do you like Huey Lewis and The News?’ Patrick Bateman asks Paul Allen who replies they are ‘okay’. Bateman continues; ‘Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically’. He proceeds to play its ‘Hip To Be A Square’ from the album Fore! in his apartment very loud as the scene turns sharply into sheer violence as the mass market commercial pop song plays in the background. Not only is the scene shocking, but the perverse contrast between the violence and the extremely cheesy cheery pop being listened to.
As well as King, many writers play instruments. Jane Austen played the piano, possibly other instruments. Some readers consider music as a character in Pride & Prejudice. In Jane Austen’s day the piano and harp, were considered most suitable for genteel young ladies of the time. Jane Austen heroines are familiar with instruments such as the violin, English horn, flute and three-stringed double-bass and play piano too. They danced English country dances to music played by rural troubadours to full chamber orchestras. Beethoven’s music appears in EM Forester’s Howard End. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony features in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Sherlock Holmes of course often played his cherished violin in moments of contemplation or relaxation in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of the genius sleuth.
“There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen’ Sherlock Holmes tells Watson in The Five Orange Pips.
‘A well-played violin is a treat for the gods’ remarks Doctor Watson in A Study In Scarlet. The violin playing, amongst Holmes’s many skillsets and expertise; whether in criminology, of scientific insight or artistic ability, establishes him further as a polymath, a creative, an intellectual and overall, as a genius, as he turns his hand to many things and finds success. His characterisation deepens for the reader.
From momentary dalliances to lives spent with music, great examples of music featuring amongst the written word is found in the work of Joan Didion, Viv Albertine, Kevin Barry, Amy Liptrot, Douglas Coupland, to name just a few, alongside the musical rhythmic flow of poetry from Dylan Thomas to Mary Oliver.
Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone is notable for its depiction of a fictional account of John Lennon leaving New York and travelling across country to a remote small island off the coast of Ireland in the late 1970s. Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity brings musos, a record shop and music to life in literature with its 60’s to 80’s retrospective tones. Music influences characterisations and dialogue in Irvine Welsh’s work and with the larger-than-life Iggy Pop in 1993’s novel Trainspotting. Both High Fidelity and Trainspotting were adapted for the big screen following both novel’s success. Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life plays a key part in building the energy of the opening scene. In a full loop, the Trainspotting movie and soundtrack became a cultural landmark of the mid 1990’s, an influence on writers, artists and filmmakers. The soundtrack’s most notable track Born Slippy (Nuxx) by Underworld become a huge hit - all this from a novel using local slang dialogue and set in Leith, Scotland.
Final thoughts
I think there’s an extensive cross-pollination between music and literature, both worlds intermingle. Both are vital ingredients for culture and society throughout time.
Both worlds start with the writer, most often a solitary writer. The writer of song and the writer of narrative, verse and prose. Some writers work in both avenues, across music and literature. Nick Cave and Patti Smith as contemporary examples.
Most importantly, without the written song, the performer is useless, while every film and play in existence began with a writer. The creative process gives life to the purest form of expression. Something is produced that in the course of time, to varying degrees, has impact on people’s lives, across culture, society, for audiences regionally and globally.
Music features very heavily in my forthcoming memoir. Music is brought to life in these pages, not only live shows, clubs, and song, but the creators, the musicians, the artists, the producers, the business of music and its people. Such people fuel the ecosystem from rehearsal rooms to studios, to stages, to nightlife basement clubs and festival fields. The music world is a living entity of many parts. The soundtrack to my life is precious, it forms a key part of who I am, and in turn it holds a multitude of influences on what I produce myself as a writer and artist - where its presence persists as a writer of words, sown into narrative, dialogue, and characterisation, whether subtly or as an overriding theme. Music is always there for me.