(I know it’s been a while; I apologise. If it helps, I’ve been neglecting YouTube as well. It probably doesn’t.)
One of my pet subjects, as you may be aware, is the study of song lyrics. Recently, following a comparison in an English seminar (more on which later), I started to consider the drawing of such cross comparisons between luminaries of the art of songwriting, and those in other spheres of literature; in terms of content, influence or otherwise. Having given the matter some thought, I present some examples. I’d rather like to expand on these at some point, but let this be a start.
Leonard Cohen and W.B. Yeats
This is a rather easy one, since the resemblance is unmistakeable. Both gained a reputation early on as poets of the heart, fascinated by capricious love and by elements of the supernatural (though Cohen has never been as, to use the technical term, batshit crazy as Yeats on that front). Both are extremely self-aware; Cohen’s new album begins “I love to speak with Leonard”, while Yeats gave plans for his own burial place in one of his final poems: “Under bare Ben Bulben’s head/In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid”. Both gained a new lease of life in their late fifties, acquiring a new direction, and their later work has been acclaimed as their finest in both cases (spearheaded by, in a curious coincidence, Yeats’s poem ‘The Tower’ and Cohen’s song ‘Tower of Song’, both of which are like manifestoes, or at the least examinations of the poet’s position). Indeed, Cohen himself has acknowledged Yeats’s influence on him; in a recent interview he quoted Yeats’s late poem ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’, while in 2010 he gave a special concert at Lissadell House in Sligo, where Yeats spent a great deal of time (I was there; it was remarkable). Both are often seen as late Romantics, adjusting to address the times, but never changing radically in form in the manner of their respective contemporaries Ezra Pound or Bob Dylan. Finally, both are giants in their fields, viewed with a reverence (and, sometimes, a reactionary scorn) afforded to few others.
(It’s worth mentioning that Cohen has published numerous volumes of poetry, and a couple of novels, though I’m mainly considering his musical output.)
Bruce Springsteen and William Carlos Williams
This is the one that started it all off; it struck me suddenly as I sat peacefully in a seminar on Williams, simultaneously amusing and impressing the seminar leader. Biographically, of course, the two seem worlds apart; Springsteen has been a bona fide rock star for almost four decades, while Williams laboured in relative obscurity for much of his life. Yet in terms of content, there’s a great deal of similarity to be glimpsed. What really gave me this idea was the sense of movement for both. Many of Williams’s poems involve cars, or highways or some such; the concept of the poet as transient witness. For Springsteen, the road represents escape; not necessarily escape to anywhere in particular, but the sense of running for the sake of running, as it were (hence the title of his most famous album). On a deeper level, I was struck by Williams’s poem ‘To Elsie’; its empathy with “devil-may-care men” and “young slatterns”, who lack “peasant traditions” to give them character. I daresay this is what Springsteen is trying to do as well; to provide a voice for this voiceless caste, the lower class of a classless society, lacking even the prospect of prospects. While Springsteen’s political activism shines through on this front (his new album looks to be very much in this vein), it’s a feature of a great deal of his work, and, I believe, of Williams’s too.
Nick Cave and T.S. Eliot
I admit, I struggled a little with this one. Eliot always made me think immediately of Bob Dylan; ‘The Waste Land’ always reminded me of ‘Desolation Row’, in its appropriation of characters from western mythology into a simultaneously mundane and apocalyptic landscape. What escaped my notice was that Cave does something rather similar. Consider his tongue-in-cheek version of the myth of Orpheus, for example. In fact, Cave, like Eliot, draws on a great deal of poetic and mythic tradition throughout his work; a casual reference to the Sword of Damocles, a re-envisioning of a Biblical parable or various irreverent references to literary luminaries (including, notably, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls). Not to mention, of course, that Cave has created enough apocalyptic landscapes himself; a song like Straight to You is full of such Waste Land-esque imagery. Religion is another shared obsession; although, as with Cohen and Yeats, the older poet is by far the more esoteric. In fact, the similarities deepen with examination; to take a rather superficial one, Eliot’s “I am Lazarus, come from the dead” (from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’) is expanded into Cave’s ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig’ (you’ll note from that video that Cave probably has the edge when it comes to dancing). Admittedly, Eliot probably wouldn’t have written anything like ‘Stagger Lee’, but that’s probably something about which literature classes around the world can be relieved.
Richey Edwards & Nicky Wire and Sarah Kane
Oddly enough, this is one in which the influence goes the other way. I understand, via Nicky (and anything Nicky says needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt), that Kane was a Manic Street Preachers fan, and particularly a fan of Richey. In fact, the premiere of her debut, Blasted, corresponds quite nicely with both the release of the band’s seminal album The Holy Bible in 1994 and Richey’s disappearance (and presumed suicide) in February 1995. Even putting aside the obvious biographical echoes, I’ve always felt there were remarkable similarities. In particular, Kane’s final (posthumously premiered) play 4.48 Psychosis, with its concentration of despair into a kind of eloquent incoherence, has always reminded me of the first three Manics albums. It has the misanthropy of ‘From Despair to Where’, the personal entropy of ‘Life Becoming a Landslide’ and the general loathing (self- and otherwise) of ‘Yes’ (whose deliberately messy, crowded lyrical structure it also resembles). Even a look at the relative layouts of the Manics’ lyrics, especially for The Holy Bible, and 4.48 or Crave will reveal a marked similarity; the words are laid down with the most arbitrary of regards for punctuation or line breaks, lying bare on the page. Uniquely on this list, Kane was a contemporary of Wire and Edwards; indeed, they were similar ages, and thus they were dealing with the same issues – the Manics have always been outspoken on political and social (a rather good example being the delightfully-titled ‘ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart’ or ‘Little Baby Nothing’, about the objectification of women by both sexes), while Blasted (almost literally) brought the horrors of faraway wars to Britain.
I have a number of other examples, but these are the main ones; also, I appear to have inadvertently spent almost two hours at this, so I should probably stop and have a lie-down. Some notable songwriters, such as Ian Curtis and Tom Waits, completely elude comparison, while others, most notably Bob Dylan, are too chameleonic to be tied down to a single personality. Thus, my work at this will continue. Please do enjoy.
