There Are Nights When I Think Sal Paradise Was Right: 5 Songs Inspired by Books

This week's songs are from Nirvana, Sinéad O'Connor, Minutemen, Pearl Jam, and Alvvays

Anyone else trying to read more books this year?

I used to be a pretty strong reader. I would track books read with a list, and it took a couple of years, but I ultimately got to a “one book per week” pace, which I kept for a few years. Having kids will cut into that reading time.

But that thing that readers fantasize about—having nothing but time to read—came true with the pandemic. And yet, I could not focus on a book for the life of me. I had no interest in fiction and didn’t have the attention span to sit with a book and think of some other time or place—real or imaginary.

So to get myself back into the reading habit, I picked up books on musicians or music and it as a project—listening along to related music while I read. It took a few years, but it worked.

Here are 5 songs inspired by books.

“What he coveted was the odor of certain human beings: that is, those rare humans who inspire love.” - Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Nirvana - “Scentless Apprentice”

In high school, some friends and I shared the opinion that In Utero was Nirvana’s actual masterpiece. I’m still of that opinion. It executes their loud-quiet-loud dynamic on a larger canvas. It challenges you to love it, pushing listener away and away until it pulls you back in looking for sympathy, then pushes you away again, and then repeats the cycle two more times. Steve Albini’s recording techniques create a huge chasm between Cobain’s shrill guitar and vocals and Krist Novoselic’s thumping low-end bass that is filled with Dave Grohl’s colossal drums, delivering destabilizing rhythms that land like someone’s beating the shit out of you.

One of those friends learned that “Scentless Apprentice” was based on a German novel, which he found, read, and passed around the group. That’s how I ended up reading Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer while on a Jesuit retreat. It was deeply engrossing, but one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read—and I couldn’t talk to anyone about anything for days. In short: a baby is born with no smell, and is rejected by everyone—which is captured in the song.

Like most babies smell like butter
His smell smelled like no other
He was born scentless and senseless
He was born a scentless apprentice

Believing smell is the basis for human emotion, he becomes an apprentice in a perfumery and discovers the ultimate scent is female virgins, so he murders them to capture their scent. It only gets darker and wilder from there, by orders of magnitude. It’s the alienation—and the flimsiest of pretexts for social rejection—that Cobain seems interested in, with a pained refrain of “Go Away” that hits with a thud after an ascending chord progression that offers a hint of release from the stuttering and grinding of the verse. As inexplicable as social rejection can be, so too is an attraction to such intentionally abrasive material. Some people are lacking in pro-social qualities, others have a little bit more “fuck you” in them.

“Through this flesh, which is us, we are you, and you are us!” - Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family

Sinead O’Connor - “Mandinka”

There’s an Irish proverb: “There is no strength without unity.” I recently watched Braveheart and was reminded that the Irish helped Scotland fight for independence back in the 1200s. Ireland was vocal and active in its support for Palestine. As a long-oppressed people, they identify deeply with other oppressed people. Sinéad O'Connor first gained fame from “Mandinka”—a celebratory-sounding anthem inspired by Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family. O’Connor described her response to the chronicle of abduction and slavery as “visceral” and “it moved something so deeply in me.” She has also commented on her depth of feeling and how its driven her to sing:

“Singers by nature are people who have to feel everything 10 million times more than anyone else does, or they wouldn’t sing. They feel everything so much that they have to fucking sing about it.”

In “Mandinka,” O’Connor fully identifies with the “Mandinka”—West African people that were abducted into the slave trade. The song itself is an act of solidarity. It starts off like a theme song to a late 80s/early 90s sitcom that’s trying to appeal to those teens and their ripped jeans. Once the song takes off though, all is forgiven. Its huge, welcoming chorus—soaring vocals against a descending chord progression—gives the sense of an airplane taking off and leaving the ground behind. The amount of joy expressed when O’Connor sings “But I do know Mandinka” convinces you that the statements preceding it are also true:

I don't know no shame
I feel no pain
I can't see the flame

In no uncertain terms, she’s defining what freedom means to her, and her hope for others as well.

“What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.” - James Joyce, Ulysses

Minutemen - “One Reporter’s Opinion”

The Minutemen embraced an everyman quality—they were children of former Navy men, growing up in San Pedro public housing, near old WWII shipyards and docks, teaching themselves how to play instruments bought at a pawn shop. They spoke in a Southern California slang (“Pedro-speak”) that almost sounds like a foreign language.

“Pedro-speak is insular. It’s shorthand. Even pronouncing Pedro. If you say ‘Pay-dro,’ we know you’re not from here. It’s a test. It can be provincial. I was talking with Joey Ramone once, at RFK Stadium, at some big-ass jive thing. [He] said to me, ‘You know, I think punk is like a big hay wagon. If you’ve got something to offer, c’mon, jump on.’ I love that idea. I think of my vocabulary that way, too. You’ve got some good slang words? You creative? You wanna have some fun? That’s what it is. But it’s not exclusionary. When we go on tour, we’ve got our slang, but when we meet up with you, we wanna learn yours.” - Mike Watt

That working-class background, Pedro Speak, and the assumptions that come along with being a punk band, betrays an incredible intellectual curiosity and aptitude for picking up on artistic ideas, and reinterpreting them through their own experience.

A number of songs on Double Nickels on the Dime are a reaction to something, or the idea that they were in dialogue with other artists (and each other). The album title and cover art was a response to Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55.” Minutemen made a double album because they heard label-mates Hüsker Dü were making one. Songs were influenced by Umberto Eco (“Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth?”) and James Joyce’s Ulysses (“June 16th”), which Watt was reading while writing the album. I was surprised to learn this, but Double Nickels is a sprawling epic (45 songs over 80 minutes), a mixes styles, is self-referential, has free-associative and stream-of-conscious lyrics—of course it’s Joycean.

Unlike the other songs here, which take narrative elements from their sources of inspiration, “One Reporter’s Opinion” borrows structural and stylistic elements from Ulysses. Watt took Joyce’s approach to perspective, and write about himself in the third person. He also noticed the end of the book “got skeletal. He is doing question/answers.” So even though it’s D. Boon singing, the song is Mike Watt writing about Mike Watt and starts with the question:

What can be romantic to Mike Watt?
He's only a skeleton
His body is a series of points
No height, length or width

It starts as a jazzy puddle before tightening into a blast of funk and loose guitar interjections from Boon. And Joyce could learn a thing or two from Watt—it’s over in less than 2 minutes.

“There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will ACT like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Pearl Jam - “Do the Evolution (Live in Studio)”

Tracing my fandom back, Yield was my off ramp for Pearl Jam for a good decade. 13 year-old me lost interest. Lead singles “Given to Fly” and “Wishlist” felt a little lifeless. The month it was released, Blink-182’s “Dammit” touched the Top 10 and I had my on ramp into punk rock. I’ve written before about getting into punk at its creative nadir. I’m a bit loath to out myself as a Blink-182 fan, but what can I say, other than I was 13-16 right as they were taking off. At that same time, some of my favorites—like Pearl Jam—were slouching into mid career. Now that I’m slouching into mid career, I’ve grown to love Yield, and admit that I had it wrong. Pearl Jam wasn’t easing up; it’s got some real rockers on it (“Brain of J”, “Pilate”, “No Way”)—especially “Do the Evolution.” The sarcastic, cynical attitude; social critique; the energy; the yelling and distorted guitar riffs—the elements of punk are all there. If I was looking for something with more edge to it, it was right in front of me. But, Blink had dick jokes.

In Yield’s lyrics sheet, in place of actual lyrics for “In Hiding” is a Charles Bukowski quote, which relates to his practice of hiding out for days at a time to recharge his mental battery. But that could also be cover for the hiding Vedder himself did in the mid 90s.

"I had this house - not a giant house, but three or four nice rooms, and a jukebox. And it had this laundry room, and I would sit in there with an ashtray that I trusted. It was like the world couldn't get me in the laundry room.”

But “Do the Evolution” is pulled straight from Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. The book is a takedown of modern society and its impact on the natural world, with a man communicating telepathically with a gorilla. The song’s lyrics adopt the attitude of human supremacy, to a cartoonish degree:

I'm ahead, I'm a man
I'm the first mammal to wear pants, yeah
I'm at peace with my lust
I can kill 'cause in god I trust, yeah
It's evolution, baby, yeah

It’s a ridiculous attitude on paper, but sounds even more unstable in Vedder’s delivery and the topsy-turvy, persistent riff. Like the Beatles and “Helter Skelter,” here its Pearl Jam attacking the material to be as intentionally obnoxious as humanly possible. It’s a raw nerve. I’m sharing this live (in studio) version, because it comes with a little extra edge to it, and Pearl Jam as a live band > Pearl Jam as a studio band.

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- Chris Ware, Rusty Brown

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Alvvays - “Red Planet”

Chicago-based artist and graphic novelist Chris Ware’s images are fastidious, clean, and convey a slight coldness or removal, but his stories explore dark, emotional themes in complex structures. He’s sort of like a cartoonist version of Wes Anderson. Canada’s Alvvays' play a fuzzed out pop music—shoe gaze for people who enjoy sunshine and smiles. Aside from a vivid color palette, Ware and Alvvays don’t seem like natural partners. But Alvvays’ "Red Planet”, the closing track off of their 2014 self-titled album is inspired by a section of Ware’s Rusty Brown—the science fiction novels by the title character’s father. There are images and allusions to the narrative, but what the song does very well is capture the sense of distance—physical and emotional—the character in a story within a story is experiencing, the keyboards have a sci-fi feel to them, and the production quality captures that coldness of Ware’s images as well. It’s less the narrative and more the emotional experience of the story.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy listening.

Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs:

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