{"id":276,"date":"2019-08-09T10:49:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T09:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=276"},"modified":"2019-08-09T11:08:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-09T10:08:29","slug":"authors-and-books-filed-under-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2019\/08\/09\/authors-and-books-filed-under-song\/","title":{"rendered":"AUTHORS AND BOOKS FILED UNDER \u00b4SONG\u00b4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Track\nListings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catcher In The Rye \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 by Sammy Walker <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five Get Over Excited            by\nThe Beautiful South<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Whom The Bell Tolls      by\nThe Bee Gees<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemingway\u00b4s\u00a0 Whiskey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0by Kenny Chesney<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Islands In The Stream\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lady Writer                           by\nDire Straits<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Autobiography                by\nJanis Ian<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Biography                      by\nVan Morrison<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rave on, John Donne            by\nVan Morrison<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Back Pages                       by\nJohn Stewart & Darwin\u00b4s Army<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paperback Writer                   by\nYhe Beatles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my final four or five years of\nliving in the UK I was privileged to serve as host and interviewer at Rochdale\nLiterature And Ideas Festival. In its first five years of existence, which\ncoincided with my last five years of living in the Borough, the list of\nbest-selling novelists, auto-biographers and biographers, dramatists and poets\nwho appeared at the event was hugely impressive. With Willy Russell\u2019s plays and\nthe autobiography of BBC dj Liz Kershaw and the travel writing of her brother,\njournalist Andy Kershaw, and the Dr. Who books, written by Tommy Donbavand, the\nshelves of Number One Riverside Library could probably be fully stocked with\nonly the works of local and visiting writers who have appeared at the Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also creative writing\ngroups meeting regularly all across the Borough, with the Library Services\nlending them support. When I lived in Rochdale there was, at the least,\nTouchstones cwg, Weaving Words and Langley Writers. From within their ranks\nthey produced writers of their own, including Robin Parker with his collection\nof The Edenfield Scrolls and Lorraine Charlesworth with a beautiful\nbiographical tale called For Love Of Bahrain. There are emerging writers, too,\nsuch as Louis Brierley, who like Martin Peters was on a football field, is\nprobably ten years ahead of his time yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can\u2019t all be (Stephen) King,\nperhaps, but we can all be paperback writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
authors and books filed under song<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, it might be argues that the\nwriters of perfectly disposable three minute pop songs have contributed to the\nbest of British literature.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Many readers of our Sidetracks and Detours\nblog and those of you who also write your own blogs will be aware of a\nrelatively new and verdant genre of fiction that is enjoying big sales,\nattracting new authors and seducing previously successful authors in other\ngenres to try their hand in this little-explored territory. Young Adult\nfiction, it might be argued, began when Catcher In The Rye by J D Salinger was\npublished in 1951 for the traditional adult market. However, its references to\nteenage angst and feelings of disenchantment and disenfranchisement soon\nattracted a teenage audience, too. Holden Caulfield, the novel\u2019s central\ncharacter, has been held ever since as a perfect example, good or bad depending\non which side of the generation gap you are, of teenage rebellion. The novel\nstill regularly appears on variations of Top Reading lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether or not Sammy Walker was ever\na disaffected youth the music critics of the seventies labelled him unfairly as\n\u2018the new Dylan\u2019 rather than explore his individuality. It is true that he\nrecorded a slew of Woody Guthrie songs early in his career but I have several\nof his tracks on my i pod that demonstrate his unique song-writing talents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catcher In The Rye is a title,\namongst those, that I would recommend to any new listener,\u2026 or reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many bookworms, all across the arts<\/em><\/strong> and\ndown the ages, will have been avid readers of one or more of the series of\nworks by Enid Blyton. Most of us remember stories of Noddy and Big Ears, and\nThe Secret Seven and maybe all of us remember at least one adventure of The\nFamous Five. I remember Five On A Treasure Island and Five Go To Billycock\nHill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if I found Julian a bit too\nstudious I always felt Dick was a real mate. Anne was the sort of good girl I\nwouldn\u2019t have dated in later life, but at the age I was reading these she and\nGeorge (ina<\/em>) seemed the kind of girls\nI might have knocked about with. Even Timmy the dog was good fun. It seemed\nevery time somebody threw a stick he fetched back something much more\ninteresting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure Enid Blyton ever wrote\nanything in the series with a title of Five Go To The Beautiful South, but that\ndidn\u2019t stop The Beautiful South recording Five Get Over Excited, which to be\nfair, the five very often did. Lead Singer, and\nwriter, Paul Heaton. demonstrated some lovely lyrical flair, with \u2018Daddy\u2019s own\nbeer\u2019 being paired with \u2019Abba\u2019s Mama Mia\u2019 as a perfect example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bee Gees chimed out loud at\nnumber four in the UK pop charts in 1993 but all those of us who endured \/\nenjoyed (delete as applicable) a nineteen sixties secondary education knew that\ntitle of For Whom The Bell Tolls had been \u2018nicked\u2019 by The Gibb Brothers from a\nnovel by Ernest Hemingway. My generation were all familiar with Hemingway for\nother works too, such as A Farewell To Arms and The Old Man And The Sea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure we learned at school\nthat Hemingway had also borrowed the title from writing we school-kids would\nthen have considered arcane and obscure. The line is developed from a reference\nto funereal tolling in a 1624 piece of writing by metaphysical poet John Donne,\nmore specifically from Meditation XV11 in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair to Hemingway, he selected\nthe line very specifically to call men to duty and to suggest the Spanish Civil\nWar, a major concern at his time of writing, mattered not only to the Spanish\nbut to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemingway\u00b4s name is writ large\nacross more than one song that pays homage to his writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemingway once suggested that we\nshould \u2018never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey,\u2019 the\nkind of profound advice that made me become a writer ! \u2018Cigarettes and Whiskey\nand wild, wild women\u2019 seem companions of choice for most male fiction writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemingway\u2019s Whiskey thus became the\ntitle track of the twelfth album by country artist Kenny Chesney. Of the song,\nwritten by Guy Clark and Joe Leathers, Chesney says, “a friend had given me Guy’s\nalbum, which had just come out. Hemingway\u2019s Whiskey talks about living life to\nits fullest, being a man about your responsibilities and not compromising. As\nsoon as I heard it, I knew I had to cut it — and call the album that —\nbecause it says everything about the way you live your life, and what life can\nbe if you refuse to buy into limits, which, as someone who’s read all his\nbooks, is everything Hemingway’s novels revolved around.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Islands In The Stream was a song\nthat revived UK interest in the individual careers of two huge selling artists\nwho collaborated to record it. The number one single, composed and later\nrecorded by The Bee Gees, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, was initially a\nmassive hit for country stars Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. The accompanying\nvideo of a sequin gowned Dolly and a tux and bow Kenny showed them obviously\nenjoying the song<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether The Bee Gees lyric is an\ninterpretation of the Hemingway novel from which it takes its title, however,\nremains a matter of on-line debate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book, written to revive Hemingway\u2019s\nreputation after negative reviews of Across the River and Into the Trees, was\nwritten through 1950\/51. This, \u2018rough but seemingly finished\u2019 work, was only\nlater found by Mary Hemingway from among 332 different works Hemingway left\nbehind after his death. Islands In The Stream encompassed three stories to\nillustrate different stages in the life of its main character, Thomas Hudson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bee Gees\u2019 song was also a later\nComic Relief number one for Rob Bryden and Ruth Jones after their characters,\nUncle Bryn and Nessa, memorably performed it in the comedy series Gavin And\nStacie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When creating an i pod Side-tracks\nAnd Detours playlist to guide us all across the arts, the title of Lady Writer\ncannot be resisted. Along with all Dire Straits\u2019 recordings, and those of their\nlead singer – guitarist Mark Knopfler, it is a song regularly blared out from\nmy car speakers. The track was first released on their second album,\nCommunique, in 1979, but the vocal is one of those that Knopfler often\ndelivered as a mumble down a long tunnel. Nonetheless its opening line of \u2018lady\nwriter on the tv\u2019 is an instant hook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The female author in question was\nnot a creative writer of fiction but, according to several books about Mark and\nthe band, was Marina Warner, whom Knopfler was impressed by when seeing her on\na tv chat show. She was a broadly educated essayist and, in 1976, had published\na well-researched and argued book about \u2018the cult\u2019 of the Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, a song about a Lady Writer it\nmost certainly was but like so much rock n roll, it was, too, a song about a\nlove unrequited, with a physical likeness to one of Knopfler\u2019s former flames\nbeing the reason behind some stinging lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janis Eddy Fink might not be a\nfamiliar name to include in our Side-tracks And Detours playlist about writers,\nbut her stage-name of Janis Ian certainly is. With her song about female\nteenage angst and how she \u2018learned the truth At Seventeen\u2019, and the\nautobiographical Society\u2019s Child topping the charts in her early career, Janis\nIan was a high profile member of the sixties and seventies pop culture.  She is still performing today, and recently\ntoured the UK, making an appearance at the Lowry, and throughout her career has\nmixed beautiful love songs with others that address arguably weightier topics,\nas a 21st century album title, God And The FBI, might testify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perfectly qualified for inclusion in\nour \u2018hall of fame\u2019, Janis Ian is also a columnist and science fiction author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was on her 2006 album, Folk Is\nThe New Black, that she recorded My Autobiography. Like many of her songs it\nworked on several levels, deliberately reminding us that many autobiographies\nare, like hers when she speaks of \u2018sleeping with Kennedys,\u2019 really just works\nof wild fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addressing a similar topic, Van\nMorrison recorded New Biography, savagely attacking under-researched and\nagendised work about \u2018celebrities\u2019 undeserving of the title \u2018biography.\u2019 Of\nfriends who contribute to such life stories, Van reminds us that \u2018we\u2019ve got to\nquestion where they\u2019re coming from\u2019 and suggests they are simply nobodies,\nplaying \u2018the fame game,\u2019 as he growls his way through the acerbic lyrics of\nthis song on his 1999 album Back On Top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notwithstanding his distaste for the\ngenre, Morrison has been the subject of a number of biographies.  Can You Feel The Silence? – Van Morrison, A New\nBiography<\/em><\/strong>, collated by rock biographer Clinton Heylin in 2004, details\n\u2018the breakdown of Morrison’s marriage, the creative drought that followed, and\nhis triumphant re-emergence.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publisher claimed their writer\nwas \u2018seeking to understand the forbidding aspects of Morrison’s persona, such\nas paranoia, hard drinking, misanthropy, as well as why, in the words of his\none-time singing partner Linda Gail Lewis, Morrison’s music “brings\nhappiness to other people, not him.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morrison himself also paid his\nrespects to other writers, including to a metaphysical poet, with his song  Rave On John Donne. However it seems that\ndespite, or because of, his perceived ravings the fifteenth century poet\ncouldn\u00b4t hanf on to a good line if he tried. Almost five hundred years after\nDonne had penned the line, Perry Como had a hit song, with the hook line of \u00b4catch\na falling star and put it in your pocket\u00b4 echoing a John Donne work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many music fans of my generation\nmight look back, as I do, on that wonderful nineteen sixties explosion of a new\npopular culture. I wonder, though, what our older and surely wiser and perhaps\nmore cynical selves think when we listen today to Dylan\u2019s line that \u2018I was so\nmuch older then, I\u2019m younger than that now\u2019? My wonky knees and failing eyes\nremind me how old I\u2019ve grown, but could it be true that in the last forty years\nI have somehow grown younger too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Dylan\u2019s line comes from My Back\nPages, which he, of course recorded and The Byrds covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favourite version of the song,\nthough, comes from a later recording by John Stewart and Darwin\u2019s Army on an\nalbum released in 1999, which included not only this Dylan number but also\ntitles by Merle Haggard, Paul Simon and Tim Hardin.  Stewart is accompanied here by his wife,\nBuffy Ford and long-time musical buddies Dave Batti, John Hoke and Dennis\nKenmore with the record\u2019s  production\nvalues serving John even better than do some of his solo albums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Back Pages teaches us more about\nourselves, but the lessons don\u2019t come any easier with age !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will eventually be almost 150\ntracks in our Side-tracks And Detours listings guiding all across the arts\nscene and, had we wanted, we could have made all of them Lennon and McCartney\ncompositions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, we now look at a Beatles\nrecording, Paperback Writer, written in 1966 when Lennon\u2019s name was always the\nlead in the partnership credits. The lyrics are not quite the saccharin sweet\nwe normally associate with Paul McCartney but even during the fall out about\nwhether their songs should be, instead, attributed as McCartney & Lennon,\nJohn seemed to attack to defend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I might have helped with the\nlyrics,\u2019 he said in a later interview, \u2018but it was definitely Paul\u2019s tune.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song topped the charts all over\nthe world, though in the USA two weeks at number one were interrupted by Frank\nSinatra\u2019s Strangers In The Night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to subsequently disgraced\ndj Jimmy Saville, McCartney\u2019s Paperback Writer was penned in response to an\naunt\u2019s request for a single \u2018not about love.\u2019 Seeing drummer Ringo Starr reading\na book McCartney hit on the theme of his song. (note to all local creative\nwriters, \u201cwrite what you see.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCartney later claimed, however,\nthat he wrote it after reading an interview with author Martin Amis in The\nDaily Mail, surprisingly perhaps, the regular paper of John Lennon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Track Listings Catcher In The Rye \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 by Sammy Walker Five Get Over Excited            by The Beautiful South For Whom The Bell Tolls      by The Bee Gees Hemingway\u00b4s\u00a0 Whiskey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0by Kenny Chesney Islands In The Stream\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton Lady Writer                           by Dire Straits My Autobiography                by Janis Ian New Biography                      by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}