Mark's songwriting

[dmg]

Les Boys is just a rewrite basically, lyrically anyway of Sultans.  A bad cabaret act against a bad jazz band, setting moved from London to Munich but still mentioned in the lyrics.  Setting of a bar, both recalling a situation - very similar.

[Jackal]

I think his songs range from close to literary masterpieces to downright schmaltz. Telegraph Road being an example of the former

Hehe, not strange at all, because those lyrics were written by Knut Hamsun, and he recieved the Nobel Prize in litterature for them

Well ... There's not much of 'Growth of the Soil' in Telegraph Road, except the theme is the similar. The book and its theme inspired Mark, but to say that Hamsun "wrote" the lyrics is a bit of stretch. I haven't read Thomas Pynchon's 'Mason & Dixon', but I'd suspect Sailing to Philadelphia to be much closer to that book than Telegraph Road is to 'Growth of the Soil'.

One reason I like Telegraph Road a lot is that it is both cinematic and it makes real so amazingly well the feeling of being unemployed and living in a society where everything is going down the drains (for instance Detroit these days - car factories closed and whole residential areas just abandoned). These days I feel Mark is telling really good stories, but they are more difficult to connect or relate to (Border Reiver and So Far from the Clyde for instance).

[superval99]

Read this on Guy's page:

http://straitjacketmusic.co.uk/

Had to look to see if it's April 1st!     

[Rollergirl]

Read this on Guy's page:

http://straitjacketmusic.co.uk/

Had to look to see if it's April 1st!     

Yes I saw that too! Hilarious. He really needs one (a straightjacket!)

Please friends, let's resist the urge to comment on his blog, that's all he wants (I even suspect he's the one who posted the link on Guy's forum). We should ignore him!

[Fletch]

"walking thirty miles with a sack on his back..."   A bad blemish on an otherwise faultless song.

I've always been fascinated by Marks references to common themes - knives, sailors... And I don't see what's so bad about angel of mercy, the opening lines are pure gold.

How about this for pure poetry?

"she don't care about your window box,
Or your garden gnomes..."

Is it really, button holes?? Seems wrong.

[Fletch]

Does anyone know what became of the Sucker for Punishment lyrics? As read in the arena doco. They're terrific!

[Love Expresso]

"walking thirty miles with a sack on his back..."   A bad blemish on an otherwise faultless song.
 

I think this line is really great, because it sounds naive and "simple", like from a tale from time out of mind, so I am sure MK had a certain intension: The story starts in a very optimistic, innocent way of storytelling. Also the narrator marks the change in the mood/spirit when he comes in with the line "and my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze...". From this point on everything goes down the toilet,  sort of.  Just my two cents.

LE

[jakehadlee]

I'm always fascinated by the songwriter's journey. You see it time and time again that great songwriters in their early career create lyrics that talk about the human condition in a way that we can all understand and yet which says something new to us.

As their careers progress, they come to live in a bubble of stardom that is so far removed from the day-to-day experiences of everyday people that they can no longer draw from the well of common experience in their lyrics and either start to directly write about being a rock star (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd etc) or try to latch onto big issues that they think will give them some common ground with ordinary people (U2, Sting etc). Ultimately, they end up sounding detached and unreal and there are no songwriters who improve once they leave the human race and become stars.

What I admire about MK is that he has accepted this and is open about writing "story" lyrics rather than personal lyrics. He builds with the words of other writers (Telegraph Road, Sailing to Philidelphia etc) or creates situation songs which are about the simple narrative rather than anything more profound. He's essentially positioned himself as the modern equivalent of a medieval minstrel - telling other people's stories or relating the news in song.

He's not as good a songwriter as he was when he was writing stuff like Tunnel of Love or Romeo and Juliet - but he's also not being a sad old bugger like Bono or David Gilmour still trying to be contemporary rock stars when they look like Jeremy Clarkson, and write lyrics like him too.

[Love Expresso]

I'm always fascinated by the songwriter's journey. You see it time and time again that great songwriters in their early career create lyrics that talk about the human condition in a way that we can all understand and yet which says something new to us.

As their careers progress, they come to live in a bubble of stardom that is so far removed from the day-to-day experiences of everyday people that they can no longer draw from the well of common experience in their lyrics and either start to directly write about being a rock star (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd etc) or try to latch onto big issues that they think will give them some common ground with ordinary people (U2, Sting etc). Ultimately, they end up sounding detached and unreal and there are no songwriters who improve once they leave the human race and become stars.

What I admire about MK is that he has accepted this and is open about writing "story" lyrics rather than personal lyrics. He builds with the words of other writers (Telegraph Road, Sailing to Philidelphia etc) or creates situation songs which are about the simple narrative rather than anything more profound. He's essentially positioned himself as the modern equivalent of a medieval minstrel - telling other people's stories or relating the news in song.

He's not as good a songwriter as he was when he was writing stuff like Tunnel of Love or Romeo and Juliet - but he's also not being a sad old bugger like Bono or David Gilmour still trying to be contemporary rock stars when they look like Jeremy Clarkson, and write lyrics like him too.

Great post! Thanks for that. Your conclusion comes very close to the question I had in mind when starting this thread, only the right words were missing...  I like the "equivalent of a medieval minstrel" very much. As I read in one of your other posts you are a journalist, so thanks for your professional rating. And a big  welcome also from me by the way!

LE

[superval99]

Welcome to this forum, Jakehadlee!    I'm really enjoying your posts!   

[Jackal]

I'm always fascinated by the songwriter's journey. You see it time and time again that great songwriters in their early career create lyrics that talk about the human condition in a way that we can all understand and yet which says something new to us.

As their careers progress, they come to live in a bubble of stardom that is so far removed from the day-to-day experiences of everyday people that they can no longer draw from the well of common experience in their lyrics and either start to directly write about being a rock star

What I admire about MK is that he has accepted this and is open about writing "story" lyrics rather than personal lyrics. He builds with the words of other writers (Telegraph Road, Sailing to Philidelphia etc) or creates situation songs which are about the simple narrative rather than anything more profound.

I like this analysis. As I wrote earlier, I don't feel that connected with Mark's songs these days as they indeed are story songs, nice ones as such, and very much from an observer's viewpoint, whereas the earlier songs were more heartfelt and personal. Never considered the fact that stardom do indeed, or at least can, limit the topics to write about without sounding hypocritical, but of course this is right. For Mark to write about struggling financially, being unemployed, and what have you, wouldn't ring very true ... However, even though life is more comfortable for him than for most of us, he still is a human being, he's a father, husband, he's involved in charity, etc. Being the great writer he is, I'd love for him to get a bit more personal, to get beyond that which is merely interesting and into the stuff that is a bit painful maybe.

[jakehadlee]

Thanks for the welcome everyone - can't believe I hadn't found this forum before!

[Pottel]

lol, they keep saying that....
thanks, and yes, a warm welcome indeed!

[mr2bur]

Good discussions here. 

Does anyone know of a comprehensive listing of MK songs that were inspired by literary works? It would be nice to have all the references in one place. I searched this forum but don't see one thread that contains what I'm after. Anyone have a lead on where this information might be available?

[Love Expresso]

No, I haven't, although I remember it was a topic now and then. There are some obvious books of course, like Mason & Dixon for STP, I am sure you are aware of that. But sometimes it is just a line that inspired the song: Heavy Fuel for instance contains the line "You gotta run on heavy fuel" which is from the novel "Money" by Martin Amis. Reading the lyrics again you can surely say that this song is inspired by the book. The Fish and The Bird is from a line in the book "The Time of your singing" by Richard Powers, the line is "The bird and the fish can fall in love, but where can they make their nest?"

Another one is True Love Will Never Fade, inspired by The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall as Mark told us on the Hay On Wye festival in 2007...

In the liner notes of Shangri La Mark tells us which title inspired him to write "Song For Sonny Liston", I think it was "The Devil and Sonny Liston" from Nick Tosches. The same with Boom, Like That: Kroc himself wrote a biography called "Grinding It Out". I think MK had a lot of time to read during his convalescence after his motorbike addident, time to read and time to google a bit, I sometimes have the feeling a lot of "Shangri-La" comes from Googling... Great, nevertheless!

He also mentioned the Patrick O'Brian novels as an example for a lot of historical novels that he read and that got him the idea for Done With Bonaparte.

Interesting enough, he says in the STP press-kit that Junkie Doll was inspired by a book being part of a trilogy by "Edward Snorburn", which is an author I was not able to clarify...

So these are only the book-song-relations I am aware of, I think there are many more. And who knows, sometimes it might not be so obvious so we cannot be sure about it. Maybe somebody else around here can add some more stuff?

Or maybe we should open a new thread about books and Knopfler songs? I thought there was one already but I am too lazy to do the research...

LE