The Coachella Music and Arts Festival has moved into my neighborhood for the next two weeks. The lineup of great live music got me to thinking about how music relates to my other great love — books.
Of course all art feeds off each other. Visual artists are inspired by musicians who are inspired by writers who are inspired by painters and so on. It’s the human centipede of art. Everything is digested by someone else eventually. But I feel like the link between music and writing is particularly strong — I know many musicians who feed off ink and many writers who are fueled by song. So I compiled a few great songs inspired by books.
This is by no means a comprehensive list. There are about five gagillion songs inspired by the Bible, so I didn’t even go there. I know Mumford & Sons have a couple Steinbeck-inspired tunes, but frankly, listening to Mumford & Sons makes me tired. And there’s a Kate Bush song about “Wuthering Heights,” but I hate it.
This is just a sampler of the bookish tunes I do like. If I missed one of your favorites, let me know in the comments!
The Song: Ramble On • Led Zeppelin
The inspiration: Lord of the Rings • J.R.R. Tolkien
Oh, total LOTR nerds, those Led Zep guys. Give Robert Plant a wedgie the next time you see him.
The song: Sympathy for the Devil • The Rolling Stones
The inspiration: The Master and Margarita • Mikhail Bulgakov
Marianne Faithfull gave Mick Jagger a copy of the book as a gift. I haven’t read it yet, but the character of the devil in the novel is apparently quite sophisticated, “a man of wealth and taste.”
The song: Killing An Arab • the Cure
The inspiration: The Stranger • Albert Camus
This is an exact retelling of “The Stranger” in just over two minutes, like musical Cliffs Notes. You don’t even have to read the book now. Seriously. I read it.
The song: Don’t Stand So Close to Me • the Police
The inspiration: Lolita • Vladimir Nabokov
Ah, the song that inspired me to pick up Nabokov at an inappropriate age. Music: Inspiring sex, drugs and reading.
The song: White Rabbit • Jefferson Airplane
The inspiration: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass • Lewis Carroll
Remember what the dormouse said: Feed your head! (Although the dormouse didn’t really say that, so don’t put that in your next English class essay.)
The song: All Along the Watchtower • Bob Dylan (But I’m linking the Jimi version, because I like it better and this is my website.)
The inspiration: Frankenstein • Mary Shelley
This one is a bit of a stretch. But other people on the internet say it, so it must be true.
The song: Hey Jack Kerouac • 10,000 Maniacs
The inspiration: On the Road • Jack Kerouac
I’m baffled by why there aren’t more beat-inspired songs, since the writing of that era was incredibly ripe with rhythm, experimentation and vitality. Or do these songs exist and I just don’t know them yet?
The song: How Soon is Now • The Smiths
The inspiration: Middlemarch • George Eliot
The Smiths have other songs that reference a bunch of dead writers. But this is one of my favorite songs of all time with some of my favorite lyrics of all time.
“I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar/I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular,” an adaptation of this line from Middlemarch, “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular.”
The song: Sylvia Plath • Ryan Adams
The inspiration: The poetry of Sylvia Plath
Beautiful and sad, just like Sylvia Plath.
The song: 1984 by David Bowie
The inspiration: 1984 • George Orwell
Apparently David Bowie wrote an entire, never-produced rock opera based on “1984.” Can someone please bring this to life for me? What do I have to do to make this happen? I picture it as dystopian dinner theater. “I’ll have the tofu and Big Brother, please.”
Song: Shadrach • Beastie Boys
Inspired by: J.D. Salinger
Inspired by Salinger? Not really. But one of the greatest lines of all time is, “I’ve got more stories than J.D.’s got Salinger/ I hold the title, and you are the challenger.”
If you want a song that was truly inspired by Salinger, check out “Bananafishbones,” based on one of my favorite short stories, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” And then you can go ahead and read all of Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” because it is a tremendous book.