ROCK ‘n’ roll is supposed to be big, dumb fun but someone always has to come along and ruin it by adding a reading list. None of these acts are as smart as they think:
Manic Street Preachers
‘Libraries gave us power’ sang the Manics. Fifteen albums of sixth-form communism later and the closure of public libraries seems forgivable. The band’s real bookworm vanished decades ago, leaving Nicky Wire to pen rants about how despicable everyone and everything is with quotes from Marx and Camus.
Lyric inspired by books: ‘I am nothing, but should be everything.’
Lyric they came up with themselves: ‘No water tastes like lemonade, slowly slowly it starts to fade.’
The Doors
Taking his band’s name from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, Jim Morrison was an avid reader and an even more avid drug user. After devouring the work of the beat poets, Morrison mistook his own severe chemical imbalance for genuine insight and, inspired by his hero Jack Kerouac, just started making up any old shit as he went along.
Lyric inspired by books: ‘There’s a killer on the road, his head is squirming like a toad.’
Lyric they came up with themselves: ‘Come on, come on, come on, come on now touch me, babe.’
The Divine Comedy
Neil Hannon is rarely more than two lines away from a literary allusion and even wrote a song called The Booklovers, in which he paid tedious tribute to the titans of classic literature. The general public preferred the one about the woodshed. That’s a literary reference too? Oh, do piss off.
Lyric inspired by books: ‘Happy the man and happy he alone who in all honesty can call today his own.’
Lyric they came up with themselves: ‘On the National Express there’s a jolly hostess selling crisps and tea.’
Led Zeppelin
For a band who invented cock rock and the mudshark incident, Led Zeppelin had the literary tastes of D&D nerds. Several of their songs explicitly reference The Lord of the Rings with mentions of the Misty Mountains and even a shout-out for Gollum. At least they never forced a groupie to read The Silmarillion.
Lyric inspired by books: ’T’was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair.’
Lyric they came up with themselves: ‘Squeeze me, babe, ‘til the juice runs down my leg.’
Steely Dan
Named after a dildo in William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, Steely Dan are referred to as hyper-literate. Which means they take all their best lyrical ideas from books and pretend to be intelligent. You’ll be forgiven for missing their canny references to The Demolished Man in Deacon Blues because their jazz-rock fusion has forced you to leave the room.
Lyric inspired by books: ‘This is the day of the expanding man, that shape is my shade, there where I used to stand.’
Lyric they came up with themselves: ‘He takes all my money, he’s not very funny.’
Vampire Weekend
Preppy pricks who started their career with a song about grammar. Oxford commas, however, are relatively mainstream for Vampire Weekend. Their song Everlasting Arms cites the Book of Deuteronomy. Nobody reads the Bible for pleasure; this is nothing more than incredibly irritating academic masturbation.
Lyric inspired by books: ‘I hummed the Dies Irae as you played the Hallelujah.’
Lyric they came up with themselves: ‘Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.’
