by Julia H. Jackson
Last fall, Death Cab for Cutie musician Ben Gibbard and Son of Volt’s Jay Farrar released an album entitled “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Music From Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.” The duo wrote 12 songs inspired by Kerouac’s 1962 novel after creating the soundtrack for an accompanying documentary. The two musicians gave new life to Kerouac’s celebrated stream-of-consciousness storytelling by creating a new sound from his Beat rhythm. The album and film have gotten good press, in part because Gibbard and Farrar are skilled composers, and also because they are continuing the tradition of recreating stories in song. Perhaps, when a story is shared in one medium, and then reinvented in another a generation later, perhaps that is when the story becomes legend. Just what do we mean? Take a look at Artists for Literacy, a nonprofit that promotes literacy through artistic learning tools, and also happens to host an entire catalog of songs inspired from books. Today we bring you 5 Songs Inspired by Literature, and you’d be surprised by how many you’d recognize.
5.
“Ghost World,” by Aimee Mann
Book: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes, which later became the 2001 film of the same name
Daniel Clowes’ 2000 graphic novel follows the story of Enid and Rebecca, inseparable high school graduates who don’t know how to approach impending adulthood. Instead, they first mock and then befriend an older man, who slowly pushes them further apart. Aimee Mann’s album Bachelor No.2 came out the same year, and her song of the same name captures the listlessness of shared adolescence: “So, I’m bailing this town, or– / tearing it down, or — / probably more / like hanging around.”
4. “All Along the Watchtower,” by Bob Dylan
Book: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s 1818 breakthrough novel Frankenstein is a cult classic; its blend of gothic and romantic tones, combined with its epistolary format and chilling humanity, give it a weight that few books have. It has been reincarnated many times, in many ways, but perhaps none quite so unique as Bob Dylan’s 1967 recording of “All Along the Watchtower.” The song, which like many of Dylan’s most famous, is usually attributed to parables from the Bible, but according to the Artists for Literacy project, there is a link between the song and the famous monster novel. Think about it: a cold 
winter evening, and two lost souls consider a dark horizon: “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. / But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate, / So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” And, just as the evening is coming to a close, “two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.” Creepy…
3.“The Ghost of Tom Joad,” by Bruce Springsteen
Book: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Bruce Springsteen earned the name “Boss” for a reason; not only is he heralded as the epitome of an American rock star, but his literary influences are just as American. Steinbeck’s 1939 novel follows the Joads, a family of sharecroppers from Oklahoma who go searching for a new life in California. Springsteen’s style is fitting for this archetypal American dream story; his interpretation of the working class struggle is almost as powerful as the journey of Joads: “Got a one-way ticket to the promised land /You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand.”
The Ghost of Tom Joad, by Bruce Springsteen
2) “1984,” David Bowie
1984, George Orwell
Few things speak to the dystopian world of George Orwell’s Oceania in 1984 than the unnerving style of a young David Bowie. The 1949 novel is ruled by the totalitarian regime of The Party, which uses mind control and public surveillance to slowly destroy human civil liberties. What better way to recognize the book’s horror, and perhaps dark truth, than with Bowie’s macabre lyrics: “They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air / And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care.”
1.“Sleep to Dream,” Fiona Apple
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Fiona Apple has taken one of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues from one of his most famous plays, and given it a throaty twentieth century twist. Hamlet, the Danish prince, asks the question “To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.” And while Apple is not contemplating murder, she does conjure up the emotion and power of a timeless moment: “I got my feet on the ground and I don’t go to sleep to dream. / You got your head in the clouds and you’re not at all what you seem. / This mind, this body, and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways. / So don’t forget what I told you, don’t come around, I got my own hell to raise.”
The relationship between music and books goes back a long way, perhaps even to the days before printing presses and publishing houses, when the act of storytelling was a vocal enterprise. Once you start to dissect popular music, you’ll see how many popular songs, and even albums, are based on great novels or devoted to well-known writers. Remember Green Day’s cult hit, “Basket Case?” Doesn’t that sound a bit like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye? How about The Roots’ “Act Won: Things Fall Apart,” which is clearly a reference to Chinua Achebe’s most famous work? And for you rock fans—the Iron Maiden repertoire is replete with literary references: “The Lord of the Flies,” “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Brave New World,” “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.”
What do you think about this link between books and music? What’s missing from our list? Let us know what you think!
