Stuck Between Stations/The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady's 2006 album Boys and Girls in America takes its name from the opening lyrics of a song on the record called Stuck Between Stations:

There are nights when I think Sal Paradise was right
Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together

The lyrics, in turn, allude to an incident in Jack Kerouac's classic 1957 novel On the Road.  Following an unsatisfying sexual encounter with a waitress, the book's narrator, Sal Paradise (a thinly fictionalized version of Kerouac himself), muses:

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk.  Not courting talk--real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment precious.

The line Boys and girls in America is also repeated on another track from the album, First Night.

["Stuck Between Stations" features a second literary reference, unrelated to On the Road, which we'll cover in our next post.]


On the Road (Kindle Edition)

One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Music From Kerouac's Big Sur/Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard

Jay Farrar of Sun Volt and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie were asked to provide original songs for the film One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, a documentary about Jack Kerouac and his 1962 autobiographical novel Big Sur. The book is based on several visits Kerouac made to a cabin in Big Sur, California, seeking time alone to deal with the stress of his fame and with his alcoholism. Farrar and Gibbard had never met before but enjoyed working together on the songs they created for the film and shared a mutual interest in Kerouac's work (Gibbard had even stayed in the same cabin Kerouac writes about in Big Sur when he was composing songs for Death Cab For Cutie's album Narrow Stairs). They decided to keep the collaboration going and expand it into an album-length project, One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Music From Kerouac's Big Sur, released last month. Farrar did the lion's share of the writing, taking the lyrics for all of the songs directly from Kerouac's novel. He also derived several songs (Low Life Kingdom, Sea Engines, The Void) from the poem "Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur," which was included at the end of the book.

The Persecution & Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On the Road)/Aztec Two-Step

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

Aztec Two-Step's song The Persecution & Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On The Road), from their 1972 self-titled album, is an homage to Jack Kerouac's 1957 beat classic On the Road, and specifically to the character of Dean Moriarty. Although the book is classified as a novel, it is essentially autobiographical, based on road trips Kerouac made over a period of years and describing incidents involving such friends and fellow writers as Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. Kerouac used real names in his original manuscript (which he typed out on a 120-foot continuous scroll of paper) but his publisher insisted that the names be fictionalized. So, Kerouac became Sal Paradise, Ginsberg became Carlo Marx, Burroughs became Old Bull Lee, and Cassady became Dean Moriarty. "With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road," Kerouac writes in the book's opening paragraph, and Moriarty is very much the catalyst for what follows. The song depicts Moriarty as almost alarmingly free-spirited and unpredictable: Look at him running don't he know how to walk/He's just too damned cunning you can tell by his talk/You can tell he is rude, like a typical dude/If you want my opinion he belongs under lock. However, it ends on an admiring note: So relax for a moment as you would for your hobby/His beauty abounds in his mind and his body/He’s like the setting sun’s hues, or the dust on his shoes/He’s living he’s naughty, he’s Dean Moriarty, yeah.

Hey Jack Kerouac/10,000 Maniacs

A song about the Beat Generation writers--"the San Francisco beat boys," as the lyrics have it--from 10,000 Maniacs' 1987 album In My Tribe. Jack Kerouac is front and center, but also featured are Allen Ginsberg (Allen baby, why so jaded?/Have the boys all grown up and their beauty faded?) and William Burroughs (Billy, what a saint they've made you/just like Mary down in Mexico on All Souls' Day). Howl!