Pulling out the papers
From the drawers that slide smooth
Tugging at the darkness
Word upon word
Confessing all the secret things
In the warm velvet box
To the priest, he's the doctor
He can handle the shocks
MARK JUDGE: Mercy Street: When Rock and Roll made you read books.
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of Synchronicity, the great record by the rock band the Police. 2023 is also the year when the British rockband the Cure is touring to sold-out venues around the world. And David Bowie’s 1979 concert film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars is being reissued.
What do these things have in common? These are all rock and roll acts whose music is steeped in literature. The artists are from a time when pop music often led fans to books, and often not easy ones, to understand the music. Taylor Swift, arguably America’s biggest pop star, is praised for her “self-confessional” songs about boyfriends and fame. Swift is a clever lyricist, yet she lacks the literary depth of previous music stars.
In 1983, my senior year in high school, Sting inspired me to read the novel The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky, about three American expatriates in the Sahara desert, is a dour and depressing read. I read it when I heard “Tea in the Sahara,” a song that Sting wrote that was based on Bowles’s novel. Further, Synchronicity the album was named after a concept explored by both Carl Jung and Arthur Koestler, whose anti-communist masterpiece Darkness at Noon I had also read in high school.
Yes, the lyrics to rock songs were much more informed and interesting back in the day. But Stanford apparently never got that message: Students expecting a ‘fight to the death’ to get a spot in Stanford’s new Taylor Swift class.