A somewhat different relationship existed between some musicians and literature at the end of the UK ‘seventies. Consider the context. No screens other than TV and cinema. Sundays with nothing to do. Few distractions. But a state still funding young people on the dole making it viable to ‘bludge’ (my friend, when asked what job he’d most like by the DHSS rep, replied ‘Shepherd’). Add to this, strong investment in public libraries, the same cachet round secondhand bookshops that now pervades Melbourne op shops, and the widespread availability of cheap paperbacks. Combined, this created the necessary preconditions for a generation of post-punk lyricists.
And thus we get Mark E Smith and Ian Curtis, Paul Haig and Howard Devoto. A unique confluence of talent, predilection and circumstance, in which, for the first and possibly last time, the lyric was prioritised over the music. Stuart Murdoch heroically attempted to resurrect this tradition in the mid ‘90s - but he had years in bed with nothing to do, other than to read and write. In each case, books were the main weapons these dispossessed owned.
Some of it is obvious as when ‘Crime and Punishment’ becomes ‘The Kill’. But ‘A Song from Under the Floorboards’ has the distinction of setting ‘Metamorphosis’ to music - and it works. ‘Citizens’ I’ve always admired. It takes the first page of Camus’ ‘La Peste’ and creates a mini-absurdist masterpiece. (The other classic Camus song, based on ‘L’Etranger’ I’ve avoided. The title’s always made me uneasy and since the song was recorded it sounds even more wrong).
Mark E Smith was once president of the Arthur Machen Society, devoted to preserving the reputation of the eccentric Welsh writer of ghost stories, by the way.
The tradition continues with Salinger, Vonnegut, Kerouac, Lee and Huxley inspiration for artists such as P J Harvey, The Noisettes, The Strokes, Mercury Rev and Phantom.
In due course there’ll be another episode devoted to books, libraries and reading.
Tracklist:-
The dark is rising, Mercury Rev (Susan Cooper)
The house that Jack Kerouac built, The Go Betweens (Jack Kerouac)
Atticus, The Noisettes (Harper Lee)
Citizens, Josef K (Albert Camus)
Theme from Shaft, Isaac Hayes (Ernest Tidyman)
A song from under the floorboards, Magazine (Franz Kafka)
The Kill, Joy Division (Fyodor Dostoievsky)
Soma, The Strokes (Aldous Huxley)
Kisses, Phantom (Kurt Vonnegut)
Junger cloth, The Fall (H P Lovecraft)
Angelene, P J Harvey (J D Salinger)
Now my heart is full, Morrissey (Graham Greene)
Cemetery gates, The Smiths (John Keats, W B Yeats, Oscar Wilde)