What famous musicians would your favorite writers be?

[mortalterror]

About two years ago, I had a discussion with someone on these boards where I compared The Beatles and Rolling Stones to Hemingway and Faulkner and The Velvet Underground to James Joyce. Most people like The Beatles and Stones more but The Velvet Underground were very avant-garde and influential. The comparison has stuck with me and so this morning I tried to see what other comparisons I could draw from writers to musicians. Who would they be? This is the brief list I came up with.

Mozart=Shakespeare
Bach=Dante
Beethoven=Milton or Homer
Wagner=Goethe
Beatles=Hemingway
Velvet Underground=Joyce
Bob Dylan= Fitzgerald
Rolling Stones=Faulkner
Johnny Cash=Steinbeck
Edith Piaf= Virginia Woolf
Frank Zappa=Borges
Janis Joplin= Flannery O'Connor
Pink Floyd or Creedence=Nabokov
Nirvana=Beckett

It's not very scientific, but it is fun. And I invite the rest of you to share your own ideas. I still don't have an Elvis or a Sinatra. Kafka, Calvino, and Marquez weren't fitting with Hank Williams or anywhere else I tried to put them. Would Chopin and Mendelssohn go well with Keats and Wordsworth, and is Tchaikovsky a better fit for Tolstoy or Dostoyevski?

[Calidore]

I have to say that your list is probably the only time I will ever see Pink Floyd and Creedence given similarity.

In general, I think the reasoning behind a list makes it more interesting than just reading a bunch of names, so I'd like to read what you see as the parallels in your groups.

[Alexander III]

I like this, tonight when I have time I shall participate

[Desolation]

Awesome topic! I was just thinking about this.

Re-figuring a lot of the same musicians/writers that you already used, I'd go with:
Bob Dylan = James Joyce, for pure force of words, inscrutability, changing the game, and being larger-than-life forces that cast a shadow over their fields.
Townes Van Zandt = William Faulkner, for mixing Southern stoicism with more sensitive poetics.
The Velvet Underground = Thomas Pynchon, for avant-garde ethos. Also, bananas.
The Beatles = F. Scott Fitzgerald, for fluid sensitivity.
The Rolling Stones = Ernest Hemingway, for manliness and deceptively simple minimalism.
Television = William Gaddis, for being the most talented, innovative, and unappreciated among their peers.
Patti Smith = Marcel Proust, because the night belongs to lovers.
Leonard Cohen = Fyodor Dostoevsky, because life is pain and suffering yields to redemption.
The Clash = Albert Camus, because everyone else has given into nihilism and they refuse to give up hope for true revolution.
The Sex Pistols = Jean Paul Sartre, because nihilism is the answer.
The Stooges = Friedrich Nietzsche, because one must live dangerously.

[Des Essientes]

Charles Bukowski would be Lemmy but with niether the tweaking nor the Britishness. Pure Cailfornian drunken poetry.

[Dark Muse]

Muse = Edgar Allan Poe: Both are dark, moody, gothic, with a sense of sensationalism or the melodramatic.

Vivaldi = Wordsworth: The Four Seasons makes me think of Wordsworth's nature poetry. They body create an idyllic feeling, and since of Romanticism.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

H.P. Lovercraft = Gorgoroth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Za2PVVDcI&feature=youtube_gdata_player)
William Faulkner = 16 Horsepower (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_LruBVWNk&feature=youtube_gdata_player)
Thomas Pynchon = Naked City (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PynbhqRlsbc&feature=youtube_gdata_player)
Herman Melville = Mastodon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy8NdJTOR9E&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

[Ohmyscience]

Hmm this is not easy since music doesn't convey anything concrete. My picks with some elaboration.

Arvo Part - Borges. both seem old and fresh at the same time
Prokofiev - Nabokov. Playful and serious.
Shostakovich - Beckett. Long works with small variations in language. Also depressing and must be taken in small doses.

[Gregory Samsa]

Radiohead - Haruki Murakami
David Bowie - Kurt Vonnegut
Woody Guthrie - John Steinbeck
Pink Floyd - Franz Kafka
Bob Dylan - Louis-Ferdinand Céline

[KCurtis]

I have to say that your list is probably the only time I will ever see Pink Floyd and Creedence given similarity.
.

Agreed- I don't see any similarity here.

[KCurtis]

Awesome topic! I was just thinking about this.

Re-figuring a lot of the same musicians/writers that you already used, I'd go with:
Bob Dylan = James Joyce, for pure force of words, inscrutability, changing the game, and being larger-than-life forces that cast a shadow over their fields.
Townes Van Zandt = William Faulkner, for mixing Southern stoicism with more sensitive poetics.
The Velvet Underground = Thomas Pynchon, for avant-garde ethos. Also, bananas.
The Beatles = F. Scott Fitzgerald, for fluid sensitivity.
The Rolling Stones = Ernest Hemingway, for manliness and deceptively simple minimalism.
Television = William Gaddis, for being the most talented, innovative, and unappreciated among their peers.
Patti Smith = Marcel Proust, because the night belongs to lovers.
Leonard Cohen = Fyodor Dostoevsky, because life is pain and suffering yields to redemption.
The Clash = Albert Camus, because everyone else has given into nihilism and they refuse to give up hope for true revolution.
The Sex Pistols = Jean Paul Sartre, because nihilism is the answer.
The Stooges = Friedrich Nietzsche, because one must live dangerously.

THIS IS PERFECT !!! I love it !!! Thank you for mentioning Television and the Stooges, with Television truly being the unappreciated. I won't argue with the Beatles one, can't think of a better-and I love the banana reference!

[ShadowsCool]

Awesome topic! I was just thinking about this.

Bob Dylan = James Joyce, for pure force of words, inscrutability, changing the game, and being larger-than-life forces that cast a shadow over their fields.



Casting a shadow over the Beatles? Are you kidding me? I bet you're one of those young whipper snappers who don't go back that far. That's a joke!

No one could hold a candle to the Beatles, not then, not now.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Casting a shadow over the Beatles? Are you kidding me? I bet you're one of those young whipper snappers who don't go back that far. That's a joke!

No one could hold a candle to the Beatles, not then, not now.

Word.

[dfloyd]

Jack Benny - Aristophanes

[Desolation]

Casting a shadow over the Beatles? Are you kidding me? I bet you're one of those young whipper snappers who don't go back that far. That's a joke!

No one could hold a candle to the Beatles, not then, not now.

When I said that Dylan casts a shadow over his field, I mostly meant singer-songwriters and solo acts. The Beatles, as a band, wouldn't fall into that category.

It's still impossible to argue that Dylan had a pretty substantial influence on the Beatles, though. Much like James Joyce had a pretty substantial influence over F. Scott Fitzgerald.

If I was really to break down their relation to each other, it would look like this:
Dylan's early folk material = Joyce's Dubliners
Dylan's Bringing it all Back Home = Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde = Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
The Beatles early pop material = This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned
Rubber Soul through Sgt Pepper = The Great Gatsby
The Magical Mystery Tour = Fitzgerald's short stories
The White Album and Abbey Road = Tender is the Night
Let it Be = The Love of the Last Tycoon

Or, the Beatles/Fitzgerald started out doing pop material, and then Dylan/Joyce came along and inspired them to create some of the most meaningful and largely appreciated material ever made.

See what I mean?

[ShadowsCool]

When I said that Dylan casts a shadow over his field, I mostly meant singer-songwriters and solo acts. The Beatles, as a band, wouldn't fall into that category.

It's still impossible to argue that Dylan had a pretty substantial influence on the Beatles, though. Much like James Joyce had a pretty substantial influence over F. Scott Fitzgerald.

If I was really to break down their relation to each other, it would look like this:
Dylan's early folk material = Joyce's Dubliners
Dylan's Bringing it all Back Home = Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde = Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
The Beatles early pop material = This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned
Rubber Soul through Sgt Pepper = The Great Gatsby
The Magical Mystery Tour = Fitzgerald's short stories
The White Album and Abbey Road = Tender is the Night
Let it Be = The Love of the Last Tycoon

Or, the Beatles/Fitzgerald started out doing pop material, and then Dylan/Joyce came along and inspired them to create some of the most meaningful and largely appreciated material ever made.

See what I mean?

The Beatles started out doing pop music because that was the only way to break in that scene back then. If you were a group you had to be pop. As they begun to shy away from making pop they made fantastic artsy songs. As for Dylan's influence, I'd say you're correct, on John Lennon. But he even broke away from Dylan with Pepper. And I'm not putting Dylan down at all. But I do know what you mean anyway.

[Iteration]

Liking the mentions of Gorgoroth and 16 horsepower, nice taste.

I'm thinkin'

Cocteau Twins - Franz Kafka
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Emily Bronte
Stars of The Lid - Basho

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Liking the mentions of Gorgoroth and 16 horsepower, nice taste.



Thank you! I'm glad someone else is making interesting choices around here.

[JuniperWoolf]

Jim Morrison is compered to Arthur Rimbaud a lot. I have a book about Morrison which mentions Rimbaud on the back cover, and I also have a book about Rimbaud which mentions Morrison in the description.