Songs about authors and the like

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Having recently heard for the first time Moxy Früvous's "My Baby Loves A Bunch of Authors" and danced around to it in my head a little, I'm curious as to what other songs name-drop literary figures or are about them. Not inspired by books, mind you, just the authors themselves.

― shanecavanaugh (shanecavanaugh), Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Not sure if it counts, but in the early 90s, Lydia Lunch and Kim Gordon were two thirds of a "supergroup" (the drummer was some wrestler chick named Sadie, i believe) who named themselves HARRY CREWS.....after the writer. And like the writer, they were terrible.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:15 (twenty-one years ago)

The Wonder Stuff had a b-side called "A Great Drinker" that was about Bukowski.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mellowship Slinky In B Major (Bukowski)
Police - Don't Stand So Close to Me (Nabokov)

― VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Sting's "An Englishman in New York" is about Quentin Crisp.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:16 (twenty-one years ago)

the Moaners do a song about Flannery O'Connor on their latest album.

John Cale did "Graham Greene" on "Paris 1919."

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:32 (twenty-one years ago)

ABBA's "The day before you came" mentions Marilyn French. Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring" alludes to Zelda Fitzgerald, and a bunch of their other songs take their titles from various books (though that's not what you want): "Can You Forgive Her?" (Trollope), "Jack the Lad" (Sinclair Lewis), "Up Against It" (Joe Orton).

― brittle-lemon, Saturday, 7 May 2005 03:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Squeeze's "Pulling Mussels from a Shell" mentions a "Harold Robbins paperback"

― ken taylrr (ken taylrr), Saturday, 7 May 2005 06:37 (twenty-one years ago)

"European Son" by the Velvets = Delmore Schwartz
then there's "Raymond Chandler Evening" by Robyn Hitchcock
---and a million others but I'm tired and the new Four Tet album has pleasantly erased most of my brain.

― Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Saturday, 7 May 2005 06:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Didn't John Cale also have one about John Milton?

― Dee Xtrovert (dee dee), Saturday, 7 May 2005 07:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Sonic Youth, "Stereo Sanctity" (Philip K. Dick)
X, "Adult Books" (Jacquie Susann, kinda)

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Saturday, 7 May 2005 07:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, since they composed books -- in essence they can be considered authors -- Scritti Politti's "Jacques Derrida" and I think it was The Magnetic Fields who did a song with a title like "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure"?

― Ian Riese-Moraine does not need to compromise his principles! (Eastern Mantra), Saturday, 7 May 2005 14:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The Pogues' "Streams of Whiskey" mentions Brendan Behan.

― ailsa (ailsa), Saturday, 7 May 2005 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Tori Amos mentions Neil Gaiman in a bunch of her songs. I hear they're good friends.

― Roz, Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Indochine - "Des Fleurs Pour Salinger"

― Seb (Seb), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:16 (twenty-one years ago)

modest mouse - "bukowksi"

he seems to be the frontrunner..

― dapes, Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Belle and Sebastian's "This is Just a Modern Rock Song" mentions both Dostoevsky and Twain.

― ailsa (ailsa), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Also "Le Pastie de La Bourgeousie" by B&S namechecks Judy Blume.

― ailsa (ailsa), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:21 (twenty-one years ago)

"down" by pearl jam steals a title from howard zinn for a line "you can't be neutral on a moving train..."

seeing zinn join the band onstage in boston before this tune was a wonderfully odd moment.

― dapes, Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:22 (twenty-one years ago)

This is like the 18th variation on this thread we've had!

― nabiscothingy (nory), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:23 (twenty-one years ago)

(Bourgeoisie - I seem to have lost my ability to spell)

― ailsa (ailsa), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Frank Black - "The Cult of Ray" (Ray Bradbury)

The Fall - "Spectre vs Rector" (M.R. James)

― Dr. Gene Scott (shinybeast), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

seven years pass...

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - sebastian (Oscar Wilde)

― meisenfek, Wednesday, 29 August 2012 10:40 (thirteen years ago)

The Divine Comedy – "The Booklovers"

― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Wednesday, 29 August 2012 12:06 (thirteen years ago)

Two of the verses in Nick Cave's "There She Goes, My Beautiful World":

John Willmot penned his poetry
riddled with the pox
Nabakov wrote on index cards,
at a lectem, in his socks
St. John of the Cross did his best stuff
imprisoned in a box
And JohnnyThunders was half alive
when he wrote Chinese Rocks

Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles
while writing Das Kapital
And Gaugin, he buggered off, man,
and went all tropical
While Philip Larkin stuck it out
in a library in Hull
And Dylan Thomas died drunk in
St. Vincent's hospital

― Eyeball Kicks, Wednesday, 29 August 2012 12:20 (thirteen years ago)

van morrison has a song that goes "torn down a la Rimbaud" or something

― Iago Galdston, Thursday, 30 August 2012 17:12 (thirteen years ago)

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