Its 1977 and I am about 15. I like a song that I see on TOTP and hear on the radio. I have no idea its based on a book which was made into a film in 1969. Nevertheless a few weeks later the film is on TV and I watch it, its really good, the credits refer to a writer called Horace McCoy. I go to the library and i order it because its not excatly in high demand. A few eeks later it arrives and i read it in about 2 hours (if that, its very short). 40 years later I’m chatting to my daughter about economic depression and the interwar years (because I am interested, because I studied it and because I don’t know anything about the Kardashians or Love Island). We get the dvd and the book, I read the book again and it makes me angry and sad all over again. We watch the film, its still good.
Before we had the internet you had to dig around a bit to find stuff out, a lyric here, an interview in the NME there and if you wanted to you could find out some interesting and marginal stuff which not only wins you pub quizzes but which also teaches you how to find out interesting stuff thats not readily available. Music was one of the crucial routes into so many of the things i like now.
They Shoot Horses is hardly a cultural highpoint but it is very good indeed.
Anyone else found a path to a work of art through the medium of song (any answers which refer to “that book by Nabokov” and “shaking and coughing just like the old man in ” will be ignored).
Barry Blue says
Released the year before I started doing French A level (for which L’Etranger was a set text). Parfait timing.
Moose the Mooche says
A song on the first Adam & The Ants album encouraged me to find out about the Futurists.
They sound like pretentious arseholes, not to mention useful idiots for the rise of Fascism, but hey.
Innumerable black heroes namedropped by Chuck D made it onto my reading list. Some of them, like the Nation of Islam lot, turned out to be villains. But would I have been interested in reading Huey P Newton otherwise? maybe not.
makem.ken says
“You know what happened to Winston” sang Paul Weller on the track Standards from The Jam album This Is The Modern World. No Paul I don’t, was my puzzled response to this enquiry, with me wondering what exactly could have befallen Churchill enough to provoke Weller’s concern. After discussing further with a friend I was enlightened that the Winston in question was not the esteemed wartime leader, but instead a fictional character who decides to buck the system. I decided to investigate further by reading 1984, and after that everything else that Orwell wrote. So thank you Paul
Moose the Mooche says
I’m sure Mr Bowie turned a lot of folk onto the works of the Animal Farm Hitmaker.
Carl says
I did buy the book What Happened In History? by V. Gordon Childe after reading a reference to it in the sleeve notes to Roy Harper’s album Lifemask.
I had it for years intending to read it, but when I finally decided to do so, I couldn’t find it anywhere. One of my life’s mysteries as to what happened to it.
So I’m halfway to to the original proposition.
hubert rawlinson says
I too bought What happened in History for the same reason and read it, alas so long ago cannot remember it.
There were other books listed too IIRC.
Vincent says
The hip older brothers/ sisters of music before the Internet shaped me greatly. Bowie and Brian ferry, Eno, Zappa, – they curated popular and high culture, and opened me up to things you didnt get easily otherwise. Of course, people read a lot more then, also. im thinking of life before video recorders and albums costing two paper rounds. The NME was a lifeline to a bigger world, and not just music.
Black Celebration says
There is the other side of this too – I was inspired to read Wuthering Heights thanks to Kate and I didn’t get it at all. Found it really dull. But then I read Albert Camus’ The Fall thanks to Mark E Smith and really liked that one.
dai says
Don’t think Kate read it. I believe she saw a TV adaptation.
Tiggerlion says
I read Ulysses because of Steely Dan’s Home At Last. I think I made the mistake of choosing Joyce over Homer.