Sigh No More/Mumford & Sons

Congratulations to Mumford & Sons for their memorable joint performance with Bob Dylan and the Avett Brothers tonight at the 2011 Grammy Awards. We hope it makes up for being passed over in the two categories in which they were nominated (Best New Artist and Best Rock Song).

The London Evening Standard dubbed Mumford & Sons "The Bookshop Band" and wrote that their music, "like the best bookshops, is intimate, old-fashioned and filled with literary references." For our part, we hardly know where to begin with their debut album Sigh No More. Marcus Mumford told the paper that nearly half the songs on the album are inspired by authors.

Leading the pack is Timshel, inspired by John Steinbeck's East of Eden, published in 1952. The novel makes strong allusions to the Book of Genesis, particularly the story of Cain and Abel. A character named Lee, a Chinese-American domestic servant who spent years studying the Cain and Abel episode, translates the Hebrew word timshel as "Thou mayest"--meaning man is free to choose. Timshel becomes a key point of reference in the book. Lee says:

There are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win. . . . Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this--this is a ladder to the stars."

The song's lyrics distill this as: And you have your choices/And these are what make man great/His ladder to the stars. The repeated line As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand also resonates as the book focuses on two sets of brothers within the Trask family--Charles and Adam, and in the next generation Caleb and Aron--whose lives parallel those of Cain and Abel in significant ways.

Steinbeck's influence can also be felt in the track Dust Bowl Dance, an allusion to the milieu of his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Marcus Mumford even connects his favorite author's attitude to the experience of touring. "He talked about how a journey is a thing of its own, and you can't plan it or predict it too much because that suffocates the life out of it," he told the London Evening Standard. "That's kind of what touring is like. Even though there's a structure--you know what towns you're going to, and that you'll be playing a gig--pretty much anything can happen."

Other references: The album's title is a quote from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and the title track, Sigh No More, includes quotes from that play. Roll Away Your Stone paraphrases Macbeth (Shakespeare's For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires/Let not light see my black desires becomes Stars hide your fires/For these here be my desires). "You can rip off Shakespeare all you like; no lawyer's going to call you up on that one," Mumford observes. The Cave includes references to Homer's The Odyssey--as we've seen in previous posts, a favorite literary reference in popular music.

The band's devotion to books extends beyond their music: They took part in a campaign to help save Britain's struggling independent booksellers. And when Marcus Mumford isn't writing songs, performing, touring, or reading, he runs a book club on the band's website.

East of Eden (KindleEdition)
The Grapes of Wrath (Kindle Edition)
Much Ado About Nothing (Kindle Edition)
Macbeth (Kindle Edition)
The Odyssey (Kindle Edition)

Here Comes That Rainbow Again/Kris Kristofferson

This week Classics Rock! is observing Banned Books Week 2009 (September 26-October 3) by featuring songs based on frequently challenged books.

Kris Kristofferson's song Here Comes That Rainbow Again, released as a single in 1981, was featured on the album The Winning Hand--a collaboration with Brenda Lee, Dolly Parton, and Willie Nelson--and appeared on one or two live albums as well. It is currently available on The Essential Kris Kristofferson. The song is based on an episode from John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Set during the Great Depression, the novel follows the Joads, a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, who set out to escape the drought and desolation of the Dust Bowl to try to find work and a better life in California. The song is based on Chapter 15, a vignette set at a cafe on Route 66. A waitress named Mae takes pity on two 'Okie' children, telling them that the nickle-a-piece candy is actually two for a penny because she knows that's all the kids have to spend. After they leave, some truck drivers drinking coffee comment on Mae's generosity. "What's that to you?" she says. The truckers, in turn, overtip Mae when they get up to leave. When she tells them they have change coming, one says, "You go to hell." (Kristofferson's lyrics have the truckers repeating Mae's line: "So what's it to you?" they replied.) The refrain And the daylight was heavy with thunder/With the smell of the rain on the wind/Ain't it just like a human/Here comes that rainbow again seems to suggest that such acts of kindness will usher in better times. In his book Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny Cash said that this song "might be my favorite song by any writer of our time." [See this earlier post for another musical reference to The Grapes of Wrath.]

Alan Watts Blues/Van Morrison

The title of this song, from Van Morrison's 1987 album Poetic Champions Compose, refers to Alan Watts, an author and student of theology and comparative religion, who helped popularize Buddhism and other Asian philosophies in the West. Watts wrote dozens of books and articles, and the song makes a specific reference to one of them in the repeated refrain I'm cloud hidden/Cloud hidden/Whereabouts unknown. The last book Watts published before his death in 1973 was Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, a collection of essays on a variety of topics, most dealing with aspects of Eastern philosophy. It sounds as if the song's narrator has taken inspiration from the book and is planning some extended meditation time (I'm makin' some plans for my getaway/There'll be blue skies shining up above) but for the moment has settled for a pause in the countryside (Well I'm waiting in the clearing with my motor on/Well it's time to get back to the town again). Morrison also makes use of a familiar phrase that originated with Robert Burns and was immortalized by John Steinbeck: I'm tired of the ways of mice and men.

Submitted by RJ

The Ghost of Tom Joad/Bruce Springsteen

This song, from Bruce Springsteen's 1995 album of the same name, has a contemporary (mid-1990s) setting but depicts financial hardships that parallel those of the Great Depression as depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Springsteen makes the connection between the two eras by alluding to Tom Joad, the main character of the novel. In particular, the later verses paraphrase a speech by Tom that appears near the end of the book (Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy/Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries/Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air/Look for me Mom I'll be there..."). Springsteen was also inspired by an earlier Woody Guthrie ballad, Tom Joad, as well as by the 1940 film version of The Grapes of Wrath, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom. Bruce captures the character of Tom Joad in a five-minute song almost as well as Ford and Fonda did in a two-hour movie.

Submitted by Bob Davison