I NEVER went to university but a lot of my friends did, so I managed to pick up some second-hand uni learnin' from them, usually while out at the pubs.
One of the things that I remember from those late nights was the term 'ekphrasis', which I understood to basically mean "a work of art about another work of art".
Apparently there's more to it than that, but what would I know - I didn't go to uni.
Anyway, self-indulgent intros aside, this week's column is about songs inspired by other works of art, in particular paintings, as well as the artists themselves. And if nothing else, we've all learnt a new word this week.
Vincent - Don McLean
PERHAPS the best known song about an artist, this pretty ballad does a great job of distilling so much of Vincent Van Gogh's life and work into a four-minute pop song. Strangely, many know the song by its opening line "starry starry night", so much so that Van Gogh's painting The Starry Night is oft-mistitled by people as Starry Starry Night. With neat turns of phrase, McLean details both Van Gogh's landscape and portraiture work but also delves deeper into the artist's mental state and eventually suicide, as well as the legacy he left behind. Musically, it's a subtle piece that flows as McLean slows and speeds the tempo in his trademark delicate finger-picking and tempered vocal delivery, which "pays homage to the stop-start brush strokes of its subject" according to an interview with McLean in UK paper The Telegraph earlier this year. "I was sitting on the veranda one morning, reading a biography of Van Gogh, and suddenly I knew I had to write a song arguing that he wasn’t crazy," the American songwriter revealed. "So I sat down with a print of Starry Night and wrote the lyrics out on a paper bag."
Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me) - Paul McCartney & Wings
THIS strange chop-and-change number from the awesome Wings album Band On The Run barely mentions Picasso's works (other than saying there's some on the wall) but it does include Picasso's actual last words - "drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore", which McCartney was told about by Dustin Hoffman. Picasso himself was entertaining friends at home before he died and said his final words as he bid them goodnight and headed for bed, to a sleep he never awoke from. The song is not much of a tribute to Picasso, aside from a nice line that seems to be directed to Picasso's wife, with the artist saying he'll be waiting in heaven for her. But then the song heads back into passages of Jet and Mrs Vanderbilt (from earlier in the album) and features a couple of sections in French that seem to be from an audio guide for tourists. Perhaps a better song about the Spanish-born artist is Blue Period Picasso by Peter, Bjorn & John, which uses Picasso's work circa 1901-1904 as a springboard for a song about heartbreak and love, whereas McCartney uses Picasso's last words as a springboard for a drunken singalong and some musical self-referencing.
Four teen Black Paintings - Peter Gabriel
DURING a tour of the US, Peter Gabriel's guitarist David Rhodes took the former Genesis singer to Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas - a non-denominational chapel/art work/meditation area. The 14 black-ish (they each have slight colour to them) paintings inspired this song from Gabriel's 1992 album Us, which yielded hits in Digging The Dirt and Steam. The droning, almost mystical-sounding track pays homage to civil rights with its simple-yet-poignant six lines of lyrics: "From the pain come the dream/From the dream come the vision/From the vision come the people/From the people come the power/From this power come the change". Gabriel's not the only one to pen a song inspired by the chapel and its artwork - indie songwriter David Dondero released Rothko Chapel in 2007 on his album Simple Love and the late experimental composer Morton Feldman also wrote a piece that came out the same year the chapel was completed (1971). Sadly the artist Mark Rothko died in 1970 and didn't see the completion of the chapel or hear any of the songs it inspired.
Mona Lisa - Nat King Cole
RECORDED in 1950 for the mostly forgotten Alan Ladd-starring post-war drama Captain Carey, USA, this track has stood the test of time (unlike the film it was penned for). Not only did it win an Oscar for best song, but it also spent eight weeks atop the Billboard charts, giving Cole his first big hit, which he followed with his signature tune, Unforgettable, a year later. In the song's lyrics, the narrator likens the object of his affections to Leonardo Da Vinci's famed painting, particularly her mystic smile and the mystery behind it. It's that smile, mentioned as having a certain "strangeness" to it in the song, that is a major part of the mythology surrounding what is arguably the best-known painting in the world. The song has been covered many times over the years by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, Shakin' Stevens, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, Conrad Twitty, Harry Connick Jr and gimmicky punk covers band Me First & The Gimme Gimmes, while the painting's name has also been appropriated for the titles of songs by Britney Spears and All-American Rejects. But no one can hold a candle to Nat King Cole's version.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - The Beatles
NOT inspired by a well known work of art, but inspired by a painting nonetheless, John Lennon's psych-pop masterpiece came about thanks to a mini-masterpiece by his son Julian. The younger Lennon came home from school having painted a picture of his friend Lucy O'Donnell titled Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. Rather than just stick it on the fridge like a normal dad, Lennon senior began penning the song with Julian's painting and the imagery of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland in mind. Naturally the initials of the song - LSD - and the trippy lyrics sparked the suggestion the track was about dropping acid, and it's questionable as to whether Lennon could have written such a trip (with a little help from Paul McCartney) if neither of them had taken LSD before. "It's not an acid song... it was purely unconscious that it came out to be L.S.D.," Lennon told Rolling Stone in September 1980, just three months before he was assassinated. However, McCartney told the Daily Mirror in 2004 that it was obviously about drugs. And for the record: McCartney came up with the lines about "newspaper taxis" and "cellophane flowers" and was the first Beatle to admit to the press he had taken LSD.
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