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I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Susan

http://mariahcareylyrics.net

And don't forget (although try and find...)
Triumvirat Spartacus! The whole concept album is about the story of the Roman slave revolt led by Spartacus.

One more band named from Burroughs' work: Steely Dan.

I'm done, I promise!

Why always Burroughs?

Perhaps because his style is so totally unique. He wasn't just good at what he did, he was the only one to do it, and AFAIK that remains true to this day. Which is very strange, because it really is very very compelling. I've always figured his is the style of some (hopefully not so distant) future.

The "Cities of the Red Night" trilogy might be the greatest books of all time.

several lit-music references come to mind, all of which sent me to the literary source to learn more about each title &author:
* John Lennon's "I Am The Walrus" derived from Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus & The Carpenter"
* Paul McCartney's "Rocky Raccoon" referencing "Giedeon's Bible"
* Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" references his life as being like "Verlaine" and "Rimbaud"
* Rod Stewart in the aptly titled "Every Picture Tells A Story" laments that he cannot quote any "Dickens, Shelley or Keats"
* J. Geils paid rueful homage to pop literature with their "Centerfold"
* but more than anything, here, in 2009, "I still wonder wonder who, do-oobie-oo, who wrote The Book of Love?" !!!

Oh yeah -- Joy Division song "Interzone", from... uh, you know.

I gotta stop this right now!

Let's not forget J.G. Ballard's "Crash".
The novel has inspired a ton of musicians.
A short list includes:
"Warm Leatherette" by The Normal (and Grace Jones' cover of same), "Always Crashing In The Same Car" by Bowie, "Miss The Girl" by The Creatures (Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie from Siouxsie and The Banshees), "Underpass" by John Foxx....

It was Amos Tutuola...
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, that is.

Dr. Zhivago, the Boris Paternak novel about the Russian Revolution, occasioned the movie for the David Lean movie.

Dr. Zhivago, the Boris Pasternak novel about the Russian Revolution, occasioned music for the David Lean movie.

The Alan Parsons Project 1st album, "Tales of Mystery & Imagination", was entirely about different E.A.Poe stories.

Joy Division's song, "The Atrocity Exibition", gets its title from J. G. Ballard's short story of the same name.

Two rock bands are named from Burroughs' work: The Soft Machine and Stiff Little Fingers.

Brian Eno and David Byrne's seminal work My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was inspired by and named after an novel by an african author whose name escapes me.

Also, Rush's Xanadu inspired me to read Samuel Colridge

...and let's not forget the Velvet Underground and Mott the Hoople, both who named themselves after novels, though far from classics.

A Spanish group is named "La Oreja de Van Gogh" or Van Gogh's ear

I hope you'll mention War of the Worlds, the seminal 70s production based on the HG Wells novel. http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/music_mars.htm

Also, my personal fave, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Mystery_and_Imagination Tales of Mystery and imagination, a complete prog rock album inspired by and referencing the writings of Edgar Allen Poe.

Sonic Youth have written a couple of songs based on William Gibson's works: "Pattern Recognition' on the album Sonic Nurse referencing the novel of the same name, "The Sprawl" on Daydream Nation referencing Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. Apparently Thurston Moore's a big fan.

I think Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens is one of the best love-letters to Virgil's Aeneid. Berlioz's father used to read him the Aeneid. It is clear what reverence he shows to Virgil's story, yet Berlioz has no fear in creating characters and cutting scenes to create a masterful opera.

Giuseppe Verdi's love of Shakespeare is well known. He never got to write his hoped-for King Lear opera, but his Otello is the one adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy that may well surpass the original as a masterful stage piece. (I think the play Othello reads very well, but I have found most productions of the play to drag.)

Metallica wrote "Call of Cthulhu" about one of H. P. Lovecraft's best-known short stories, "The Call of Cthulhu".

Yes's Close to the Edge was inspired by Hermann Hesse's book Siddhartha.

"The Sad Waltzes of Pietro Crespi" by Owen is a reference to "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Not a book, but I've always been curious to know if Led Zeppelin's song 'No Quarter' was inspired by Albrecht Durer's engraving from 1513, 'Knight, Death, and Devil'.

Pay attention to the lyrics while you're looking at the engraving and becomes a kind of sound track to this 16th Century masterpiece.

Here's a link to the image and another to the lyrics.

http://arttattler.com/Images/Archive/Durer/KnightDeathDevil.jpg

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/led+zeppelin/no+quarter_20082170.html

I like Kate Bush but John is spot on re her vocals Wuthering Heights.

I've heard that the Hindu story of "Laila and Majnoo" inspired Eric Clapton to write the "Layla" version of his own complicated love life.

And Patti Smith's "Horses" gate-wayed me to read Rimbaud.

In Spanish, the famous song "Penelope" by Joan Manuel Serrat, a Spaniard singer very popular in the 70s and 80s in Latin American (I'm from the Dominican Republic, was inspired in Homer's Odyssey

"Harry Crews"

Lydia Lunch and Kim Gordon's short lived band inspired by Harry Crews and his work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Crews_(band)

I read lolita because of the reference in "Don't stand so close to me" the Police - "...it's no use , he sees her - he starts to shake and call. Just like the - old man in - that book by Nabokov..."

When I was in high school Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" introduced me to the the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Not only songs, but elaborate works for stage, such as the perennial holiday favorite "The Nutcracker," based on a story by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (who changed one of his given names out of his reverence for Mozart).
And how many Fausts are out there?

i always suspected that paul simon's song "the boxer" was based on a hemingway short story called "the battler"

There is a Black Sabbath song, "Sabbath Bloddy Sabbath", that takes some made up words from two Anthony Burgess novels, "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Wanting Seed".

Don't forget Kate Bush's musical rendition of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv0azq9GF_g -- a Pat Benatar cover too.

A great example is the Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a nod to Vladimir Nabakov's "Lolita".

Also, how about the reverse? When a song influences a book or movie, i.e. "Ode to Billy Joe.

i love the ballad of Jack and neal by Tom Waits

totally inspired by on the road and darhma bums...classic

Yes' Star Ship Trooper
and You and I reference the Foundation Trilogy

the album animals by pink floyd was inspired by the book animal farm by orwell

I'm disturbed to see no other props to Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights". Though if you were to air a clip, please use the re-recorded version. Early Kate's vocals on her first single can be just…grating….

Kate Bush and "Wuthering Heights" is a case in point.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind inspired Scentless Apprentice by Nirvana. Did you mention this one already?

The Cure's "Killing an Arab," inspired by that sweltering, blinding beach scene from The Stranger.

not usually books, but propagandhi lyrics (propagandhi is a canadian band) will send you to wikipedia (or encyclopedias when they started out!) for every song.

a good song about the chuck palahniuk book, haunted, is Artificial Light by nakatomi plaza. ok, full disclosure, it's my band. we have quite a few litererary references though.

http://www.amazon.com/Ghosts/dp/B002H14WA4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1248113539&sr=8-1

mastadon....the record leviathan....the whole record is based on moby dick.

The Counting Crows song "Rain King" was based on Saul Bellow's novel "Henderson the Rain King." Great book, great song.

My band, Golden Bloom has a song on our upcoming album "Fan the Flames" inspired by Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and another inspired by John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".

The lyrics to Sympathy For The Devil were inspired by the novel, The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. Marianne Faithfull gave Mick Jagger the book.