Helen and Cassandra/Al Stewart

 

Two recurring figures in these pages are Al Stewart, a literate and literary songwriter, and Homer, the shadowy poet of ancient Greece who is credited with writing two of the foundational volumes of Western literature, The Iliad and The Odyssey. They intersect in Stewart's song "Helen and Cassandra," which appears as a bonus track on a 2007 reissue of his 1988 album Last Days of the Century.

Stewart focuses on the events of The Iliad  and, as Suzanne Vega did in her song Calypso, he approaches Homeric themes from the perspective of female characters. The first part of the song deals with the abduction of Helen, queen of Sparta, by Paris of Troy, the event that precipitated the Trojan War. Key figures from the epic make appearances--the warrior Achilles and Agamemnon, king of Mycenae--but the focus always returns to Helen, who is depicted as a seductress (She could have turned the head of Paris/With the gentle sway of her hips).

In the second part of the song, Stewart focuses on Cassandra, who stands in stark contrast to Helen. The god Apollo granted Cassandra the ability to see the future, but for spurning his advances he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her warnings. Stewart presents her as a tragic figure, powerless to prevent the destruction she knew was coming (Gazing at the ruined city/That your warnings could not save/Oh Cassandra, so still and so grave).

Stewart also acknowledges the author of the source material:

It's funny how the story lingers
It's probably a myth of course
A whisper in the ear of Homer
Perhaps there never was a horse

The last line is, of course, a reference to the Trojan Horse. Technically this episode does not occur in The Iliad, but is mentioned in The Odyssey.

The familiar and repeated line Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships derives from Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, published in1604 but performed much earlier. In the play Faustus, with the help of the devil, conjures up Helen of Troy and, upon seeing her, says: Is this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

For other songs that reference the works of Homer, see these previous posts.

For an additional musical reference to Homer, visit our new companion blog Classics Rock! The Sequel.

A Wasteland Companion/M. Ward

 

"April is the cruellest month," according to the first line of T.S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land, but that's when M. Ward of She & Him chose to release his new solo album A Wasteland Companion. While it would be a stretch to say that the album was inspired by Eliot's poem, Ward says Eliot wasn't far from his mind. "I'm a huge fan of T.S. Eliot," Ward told Austinist, "and I probably first heard of that 'wasteland' idea reading T.S. Eliot in high school; to me, it's a pretty useful term, because it can be applied to someone or something in many different situations."

Ward recently told the New York Times that in addition to Eliot, his favorite writers include Virgil, Homer, and Dante. "I’ve been reading The Inferno for a long time," he says. "I’m a huge fan of that book."

For more music influenced by The Waste Land and other works by T.S. Eliot, check out these previous posts.

Boats Against the Current/Eric Carmen

The last line of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel The Great Gatsby--

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

--provides the chorus and the title of Eric Carmen's song Boats Against the Current, as well as the title of the 1977 album it appeared on. The song wasn't directly inspired by the book, however, but by a falling out Carmen had with his record producer.

On his website, Carmen describes the origins of the song:

It came, music and lyrics, at four in the morning out of a sound sleep. I wrote it down as fast as I could. It came all at once—the first two verses were completely written. The lyric was originally inspired by the breakup of myself and Jimmy Ienner, my producer. It was written about a friendship that had reached a point where we both knew we had to go our separate ways for a time....As is sometimes the case with me, my very best song will come last, when I don't need it anymore. I just happened to be finishing The Great Gatsby the day I had written the verses of "Boats Against The Current," and that one paragraph was exactly about what the song was about. So I sat and read it and I thought, "Tomorrow, we'll run a little bit faster, tomorrow…" I was on that last page when I said, "Here's the chorus and the title of my album."

Carmen describes "Boats Against the Current" as "my favorite song that I've ever written."

In Memory of Harry Crews: The Gospel Singer/Harry Crews, and More

Novelist Harry Crews died last week at the age of 76. In an obituary in the New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote that Crews's novels "out-Gothic Southern Gothic by conjuring a world of hard-drinking, punch-throwing, snake-oil-selling characters whose physical, mental, social and sexual deviations render them somehow entirely normal and eminently sympathetic. . . . Despite their teeming decadence, or more likely because of it, Mr. Crews’s novels betray a fundamental empathy, chronicling his characters’ search for meaning in a dissolute, end-stage world. His ability to spin out a dark, glittering thread from this tangle of souls gave him a singular voice that could make his prose riveting."

Crew's novels include The Gospel Singer (1968), Naked in Garden Hills (1969), Car (1972), A Feast of Snakes (1976) and The Knockout Artist (1988), among other works of fiction. He also wrote a celebrated memoir called A Childhood: The Biography of a Place (1978).

Crews and his work have been embraced in various corners of the music world:

The  website for the band Men Without Hats features a quote from Crews's story The Hawk Is Dying: "Find what was real in the world and touch it, that was what a man ought to do." The band's 1991 album Sideways includes a track called "Harry Crews," but, the website states, "the links between Sideways and the author run even deeper. Like Crews, the album is characterized by this search for what is real and meaningful, and is bound to real places, people and memory, offering a new perspective to those who think they know Men Without Hats…. Sideways is a testament to a way of life championed by the Bukowskis and the Crews of the world--that is, the idea of living life and music by the moment." Lead singer Ivan Doroschuk sums up Crews's writing style by saying, "He's really real. . . . He wrote a lot of things for Playboy magazine and Esquire and he's just real--like Bukowski's Barfly."

Season to Risk has a song called Snakes on their self-titled first album, released in 1993. The song is inspired by the Crews novel A Feast of Snakes, which centers on the bizarre ritual of the annual Rattlesnake Roundup in a small Georgia town. Another band, Drag the River features a song called Mr. Crews on their 2006 album Its Crazy. The lyrics begin: I was a gospel singer feasting on rattlesnakes, and continue with a grab bag of Crews references. The song also captures the spirit of Crews's work with the lines: I never seen this kind of beauty before/Mud, blood, lost love, liquor, guns, whores.

In 1989, Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth), Lydia Lunch, and Sadie Mae formed a band called Harry Crews and released one album, a collection of live performances, called Naked in Garden Hills after Crews's novel. As Spin Magazine points out in a review, "lyrics to some of the songs—notably 'The Knockout Artist,' 'The Gospel Singer,' and 'Car'—are inspired by Crews's stories, though the connection is loose, a sort of Cliff's Notes/free-association combo. Once in a while the lumbering brake-shop squall of the music suggests something of Crews's stories…."

If Spin did not embrace the album--"The stated good intentions of the project (promoting Crews's work and reading in general) count for something, but more effort should have gone into composition and execution"--Crews himself was even more dismissive: "Anybody that thinks this album in any way illuminates my work or is somehow related to my work except in instances lifted out of my books—my reaction is that whoever thinks that, they have misread me," Crews told Spin. "I wish [the band] well. But my feeling is, if you want to do something with your life, that's great, but don't jack around in mine."

One other related note: Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon's Sonic Youth band mate and husband, provided a blurb for Crews's short novel An American Family: "God bless Harry Crews, America's best writer. He'll break your heart but he'll always bring you love. They just don't make 'em like this anymore."

A Classics Rock! Exposé: Highway 61 Revisited Revisited

WHY ARE VETERAN ROCK STARS RETHINKING, REWRITING, 

OR RENOUNCING THEIR CLASSIC SONGS?

One night not long ago Elton John awoke in a cold sweat, shaken from slumber by an alarming revelation: his 1976 song Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word got it all wrong. In a moment of crystalline insight, Elton realized that the hardest word is, in fact, "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis." He vowed to correct the lyrics and record a new version of Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Seems to Be the Hardest Word later this year (for a free download, visit www. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.com).

A few days later, Paul McCartney heard Live and Let Die on his car radio and was "stunned" by the lyrics. "All this time I thought it was 'Live and Let Live,'" said McCartney, who has been performing the song for the last 39 years. "'Live and let die' is not the kind of message I want to send to young people today," he told friends, who assured him that young people don't listen to his music. But he was dumbfounded when pressed about the Beatles song Happiness Is a Warm Gun. "You sure about that?" he said.

Meawhile, Paul Simon was at work updating his 1973 hit Kodachrome. "The advent of the digital camera has rendered it an anachronism," Simon said. "I'm changing the title to 'Mem'ry Card,' so now the fade-out goes:

Mama don't take my mem'ry card 

Mama don't take my mem'ry card 

Mama don't take my mem'ry card awa-a-a-ay 

"I'm still stuck for a rhyme for 'pixel,' though."

These incidents, seemingly unrelated, proved to be harbingers of an inexplicable and disturbing trend that has shaken the music industry to its core, as growing numbers of veteran rock stars rethink, rewrite, or renounce their classic songs.

Gene Simmons, lead singer of Kiss, was next. Simmons was studying his tongue in a mirror when it occurred to him that the band should stop performing their signature tune Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day). "Such a schedule is unrealistic," he said. "It doesn't allow for sufficient sleep, an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. Nor does it leave time for other rewarding activities, such as reading, gardening, and spending time with friends."

Bob Dylan came forward to reveal that his classic album Highway 61 Revisited is a lie. "I've never even been on Highway 61. It's all been a sham," Dylan told Rolling Stone. The magazine, being inanimate, just lay there on the coffee table and didn't respond.

Considered individually, these incidents don't amount to much. When viewed as part of a larger pattern, it becomes clear that the cumulative effect is potentially devastating for rock and roll.

"This type of second-guessing is typical of artists in middle-age," said Dr. John, Counselor in Residence at the Mr. Mojo Risin Center for Getting Your Head on Straight, Man at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. "It reflects an unconscious desire to remain relevant--to be what Freud called 'hep' and what Jung referred to as 'with it.' B.F. Skinner preferred 'fly,' but these are merely clinical terms for what you and I would call 'cool.' Underlying this desire, of course, is a repressed fear of mortality."

This last theory was borne out by a panel of aging rock stars who appeared on "Piers Morgan Tonight" to discuss why musical icons would disavow their own work.

•  • Blue Oyster Cult's Eric Bloom told Morgan why he no longer performs Don't Fear the Reaper: "I'm a lot older now. Man, I'm terrified." 
•  • Roger Daltrey expressed similar sentiments about the Who standard My Generation: "I never really wanted to die before I got old. Also, I don't stutter." 
•  • Bruce Springsteen admitted he had second thoughts about his iconic hit Born to Run: "I get winded pretty easily these days, so I’m reworking it as 'Born to Mall Walk.'" 

The program offered no easy answers, and concluded on an ominous note when Robert Plant explained his decision to retire Led Zepplin's The Song Remains the Same: "Obviously, it doesn't."

Extravagant Gestures/Dionne Warwick

People Magazine described Extravagant Gestures as "the only song in recent memory to have been penned as a theme for a novel."

Extravagant Gestures is the closing track of Dionne Warwick's album Friends, released in December 1985. But it was first recorded as a limited edition single earlier that year by lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, who co-wrote the song with then-husband Burt Bacharach. Sager composed the song as a promotional tool for her first novel, also called Extravagant Gestures.  

People covered the glitzy publication party, held at the Tiffany Boutique in Beverly Hills and hosted by Sager's good friend Elizabeth Taylor. Noting the A-list celebrities in the crowd, People's writer observed: "When they leave, they take copies of Extravagant Gestures—the record, not the book." When Sager appeared on TV to promote her novel, she would often perform the song live. [Full disclosure: We may have had something to do with organizing the publicity tour for the book.]

Sager's novel is about a glamorous pop psychology author writing bestsellers about the mother-daughter relationship, who must come to terms with her own estranged mother, a larger-than-life Auntie Mame figure who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. According to an interview in the Washington Post:

Sager said she decided to write a novel because she felt "constricted" by the 36 bars of a song's lyrics, having to make things rhyme and so forth. She started out to write a screenplay, but that was constricting too. "You make your own form in a novel," she says..."My goal was to write something from me, that turned me on, that told a story. And I didn't even know what that story was until I was well into writing it," she said. "It was a growth experience for me. As a collaborative being, a person who has spent 20 years writing lyrics for composers, this was the first time I felt I could do something alone."

The year after Sager's novel was published, another industry insider, entertainment lawyer Freddie Gershon, published Sweetie Baby Cookie Honey, a roman à clef about the music business. [Sager's publisher, Arbor House, also published Gershon's novel. Full disclosure: We may have had something to do with this book too.] Like Sager, Gershon produced a promotional record to publicize his novel at book industry events and other venues. The Los Angeles Times noted: "One of the many dark themes running through Gershon's book is that pop stars are now worth more dead than alive, which he sees as symbolic of the music industry's greed and cynicism." In 2009, when Michael Jackson's sister La Toya suggested publicly that her brother was murdered to increase the value of his music catalog, Sweetie Baby Cookie Honey became part of the conversation. Around that time Gershon himself weighed in on the novel and its themes on his blog.

Christmas Bells/John Gorka

John Gorka's 1990 song "Christmas Bells," available on the Windham Hill compilation A Winter's Solstice III, is based on the poem of the same name, written on Christmas Day in 1864 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and published in February 1865. The poem is available in many Longfellow collections, including Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings

Brought low by the death of his wife and the wounding of his son in the Civil War, Longfellow welcomes the bells of Christmas and their message of peace on earth in the poem, but then despairs that there is no peace on earth: Hate is strong/And mocks the song/Of peace on earth, good-will to men. In the end, the bells win him over:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Longfellow's "Christmas Bells" consists of seven stanzas, including some that make specific reference to the Civil War. Gorka uses four of the stanzas in his song, which is just one of several musical arrangements of Longfellow's poem that have been done over the years.

The story behind the writing of the poem is told in the 2009 book I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by Lloyd & Karmel Newell, and illustrated by Dan Burr.

Merry Christmas!

The Classics Rock! Halloween Playlist

 
If you're looking for something besides The Monster Mash, Ghostbusters, and Thriller to provide the soundtrack for your Halloween, then the songs below can help get you started. Some are obvious, others probably less familiar, but each one is appropriate to the season, either for exploring spooky subject matter or creating an eerie mood. In keeping with our mission at Classics Rock!, some even have literary sources, as noted below. We'd love to see this list grow--suggestions are welcome!

This Is Halloween - Danny Elfman

Theme from Halloween - John Carpenter

The Voice - The Alan Parsons  Project

One Stage Before - Al Stewart

Fear Of The Unknown - Martin Briley

Moon Over Bourbon Street - Sting (literary source)

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revivial

Ave Satani (Theme from The Omen) - Jerry Goldsmith

(Don't Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

Eye Of The Zombie - John Fogerty

The Legend Of Wooley Swamp - The Charlie Daniels Band

Life In Dark Water - Al Stewart

Walking With A Ghost - Tegan and Sara

Hurry Sundown - The Outlaws

The Raven - The Alan Parsons Project (literary source)

The Ghost Who Walks - Karen Elson

Charlotte Corday - Al Stewart

Invisible Man - Joe Jackson

Curse Of the Mummy's Tomb - World Party

Miss Ghost - Don Henley

Spooky - The Classics IV

Season Of The Witch - Donovan

Witchy Woman - The Eagles

Ghost in the Attic - Dave Nachmanoff

Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo

Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive - Men at Work (literary source)

Goodnight Moon - Shivaree

Tombstone - Suzanne Vega

Moondance - Van Morrison

Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) - David Bowie

Scentless Apprentice - Nirvana (literary source)

The Resurrectionist - Pet Shop Boys (literary source)

At The Mountains Of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft (literary source)

Happy Halloween!