Both Sides Now/Joni Mitchell

 

Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now appeared on her 1969 album Clouds (though Judy Collins's hit recording of the song was released the previous year). Clouds provide the central image in the song, particularly in the line I've looked at clouds from both sides now.

The song has literary origins, but the exact nature of them is a little, well, cloudy.

In one version, the song was inspired by Henderson the Rain King, a 1959 novel by Saul Bellow. The protagonist is a successful middle-aged man, Eugene Henderson, who suffers a crisis of spirituality and travels to Africa in search of answers. Through a series of misadventures, he is named the Rain King of the Wariri tribe. Early in the novel, Henderson is on a plane flying to Africa when he looks out the window and muses about the clouds below him:

And I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides, as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily.

In an interview conducted just days after she'd written the song in 1967 (excerpted on her website), Mitchell said:

I was reading a book, and I haven't finished it yet, called Henderson the Rain King. And there's a line in it that I especially got hung up on that was about when he was flying to Africa and searching for something, he said that in an age when people could look up and down at clouds, they shouldn't be afraid to die. And so I got this idea 'from both sides now.'

She repeated the story in a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times:

I was reading Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song.

However...

In 1967 Joni was an avowed fan of J.R.R. Tollkien's The Lord of the Rings, thanks to her then-husband, folk singer Chuck Mitchell. "Joni had picked up Chuck's ardor for The Lord of the Rings," writes Sheila Weller in Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--and the Journey of a Generation. "Both were swept up in the world of Middle Earth." (In fact, reports Katherine Monk in her book Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell, "The two formed Gandalf Publishing together, a nod to their shared Lord of the Rings fascination; the name was formally approved by the famed author after the Mitchells made a request in writing.")

Weller writes that Mitchell "once said that 'Both Sides Now' was inspired by The Lord of the Rings (she'd begun to write a children's fantasy based upon it)." In an interview in 2000 with Hot Press, Mitchell elaborated on the fairy tale she was working on, and Tolkien's influence:

It was called Mythology, and focused on a place that had two kingdoms. It was kind of like childhood Zen. The kingdom of Fanta and the kingdom of Real. Fantasy, reality. And 'Both Sides Now' came out of that mythology, from Sequan, the queen of that mythology. It was a children's story! And yet people say it's narcissistic because I'm referring to myself. But it was the queen of the kingdom of Fanta singing. And the whole idea probably came from my reading Lord of The Rings. That was a direct influence.

So which author inspired the song--Bellow or Tolkien? Perhaps both did. In any case, we're glad to have given you the opportunity to consider the question from both sides now.

Odes to Literary Volcanoes: The Consul at Sunset/Jack Bruce, and More

When news broke that a giant ash cloud caused by the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull was disrupting air traffic throughout Europe, the first thing we thought of was Jimmy Buffett's song Volcano.  For all those publishing folks who are now grounded and will not be able to attend the London Book Fair, which starts today, the lyrics I don't know where I'm a gonna go/When the volcano blow seemed quite apropos.  However, there's no book associated with Buffett's ditty (though he himself is an accomplished author), and since we deal in songs about books, we thought we'd see if we could find any songs that were inspired by works of literature that feature volcanoes.

"The Consul at Sunset," from Jack Bruce's 1971 album Harmony Row, was inspired by Malcolm Lowry's semi-autobiographical novel Under the Volcano, published in 1947.  The book focuses on an alcoholic British ex-consul in Mexico and a group of characters that includes the consul's ex-wife, his half-brother, and his childhood friend.  The action takes place in 1938 on the Mexican Day of the Dead (November 2nd) in a small Mexican town dominated by two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Ixtachihuatel (or Ixta).  The lyrics portray the debauched consul--He's been going too far in his drinking/Running a little too fat/Eyelids becoming so heavy, sadly/But he tries not to sleep while he's living beneath the volcano--and there's also a reference to the date: It's the Festival of Death.  A band called the Young Fresh Fellows also did a song inspired by the novel, Back Room Of The Bar, from their 1987 album The Men Who Loved Music. As the title suggests, the emphasis is on the main character's drinking--And the storm clouds hide the volcanoes/But they shall never find me here/Where I torture myself with the memories/That stay clear through tequila and beer--and again there is an allusion to the date: Now I drink to Death on this Day of the Dead/And only wish it could be quickly done.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii spun a fictional tale around the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that destroyed the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. No less a figure than John Philip Sousa--the March King himself--was so taken with the book that he composed an entire suite around it in 1893. In the book Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America, Neil Harris writes: "Sousa's Last Days of Pompeii drew on Bulwer-Lytton's novel, and the program notes included lengthy quotations.  Indeed, these descriptive numbers were all accompanied by extended program comments enabling the audience to follow the narrative."  The final movement of the suite, The Destruction of Pompeii and Nydia's Death, is a dramatic musical evocation of the volcanic eruption. According to Naxos.com, "Sousa often referred to the suite as his finest composition and programmed it more often than any of his other suites." A more recent composition inspired by Bulwer-Lytton, Michael Smith's witty song Last Day of Pompeii, available on his 1992 self-titled album, portrays some citizens of the doomed city who, foreseeing their fate, imagine how they might have lived their lives differently by doing the things they'd always meant to do:  And when Vesuvio came to call/Arrivaderci I'd've had a ball [I'd've had it all].   A song on Nova Mob's 1991 album The Last Days of Pompeii borrows Bulwer-Lytton's title, but takes the point of view of Pliny the Younger, who left the only known written eyewitness account of the destruction of Pompeii. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, a Roman naval commander, died in the eruption.  Woke up, I got dressed and went to Herculaneum/With no idea what the future deemed it would become/My uncle, he is an admiral, as for me I have no trade/My  name is Pliny and these are observations I have made/These are the last days in the city of Pompeii....

With so many references to J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy masterpiece The Lord of the Rings in Led Zeppelin's songs [see our earlier post about Ramble On], we're surprised they never got around to writing one about Mount Doom, perhaps the most famous volcano in fiction. Also known as Orodruin and Amon Amarth in other tongues of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Mount Doom is the ultimate destination of the Fellowship of the Ring--the only place where the Hobbit Frodo Baggins can destroy the One Ring in order to bring about the fall of the evil Dark Lord Sauron.   A composition entitled Mount Doom can be found on the 2003 compilation The One Ring: Music Inspired by The Lord of the Rings by Kevin Pearce and James Prior, and another Tolkien-inspired track of that title, this one by Torog, can be found on the 2008 dance/electronica compilation Out of Time. Swiss pianist and composer Sylvia Courvoisier recorded a piece called Orodruin, which appears on the 2003 album Abaton.  AllAboutJazz.com calls it "an obliquely conceived transportation to J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional universe." The metal bands Orodruin and Amon Amarth take their names from Tolkien's volcano; the latter features a song called Amon Amarth on their 1998 album Once Sent From the Golden Hall.

Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth features not one but two volcanoes:  the dormant volcano Snæfellsjökull (in Iceland, no less), where Verne's heroes begin their trek, and Stromboli in Italy, where they emerge at the end of their journey.  Rick Wakeman's 1974 concept album Journey to the Centre of the Earth retells Verne's story using a combination of music, song, and narration.  In the album's first part, The Journey, the lyrics describe the beginning of the excursion:  Roped as one for safety through the long descent/Into the crater of volcanic rock they went.  In the final part, The Forest, Wakeman's narration describes the conclusion of the journey: "Trapped in the shaft of an active volcano they rose through the ages of man to be finally expelled out on a mountainside riddled with tiny lava streams. Their journey was completed and they found themselves 3,000 miles from their original starting point in Iceland.  They had entered by one volcano and they had come out another."  Or, in one caldera and out the other, as it were.  [In 1999 Wakeman took it upon himself to produce the sequel that Jules Verne never wrote, with an album called Return to the Centre of the Earth.]

By disrupting the London Book Fair, the angry volcano in Iceland could have an impact on the future of literature that's impossible to anticipate but which could be quite significant. So if anyone comes up with a song about it, we'll be happy to feature it here on Classics Rock! No doubt tunesmiths are already asking themselves: What rhymes with Eyjafjallajökull?

Under the Volcano (Kindle Edition)
The Last Days of Pompeii (Kindle Edition)
The Lord of the Rings (Kindle Edition)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Kindle Edition)

Be sure to test your knowledge of literary volcanoes with The Guardian's recent Volcanoes in Literature Quiz.

Rivendell/Rush

J.R.R. Tolkien and Ayn Rand make for odd literary bedfellows, but Rush's 1975 album Fly by Night features songs based on the writings of both authors (for the Rand reference, see our previous post about Anthem). The title of the song Rivendell refers to the home of the Elves in Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle Earth. Rivendell features in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, most notably as the site of the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring. The song captures the sense of peace and serenity that visitors to Rivendell always feel, and travelers long to return to: Elven songs and endless nights/Sweet wine and soft relaxing lights/Time will never touch you/Here in this enchanted place. It is also identified as A place you can escape the world/Where the Dark Lord cannot go--a reference to Tolkien's übervillain, Sauron. Tolkien's writings are also said to have influenced another Rush song, The Necromancer, though the references are less direct.

Ramble On/Led Zeppelin

J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings is said to have influenced a number of Led Zeppelin songs, including The Battle Of Evermore, Misty Mountain Hop, and Bron-Y-Aur Stomp. The references are most specific in this song from the band's 1969 album Led Zeppelin II, particularly in the lines: Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair/But Gollum and The Evil One crept up/And slipped away with her. Those familiar with Tolkien's emphatically male-oriented world may well wonder: Who's the girl? Some speculate that it's a reference to the Ring of Power carried by Tolkien's hero, Frodo Baggins.