It's Only Rock & Roll

Editor at large: Jarvis Cocker of Pulp (Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS)

Last week, there was a rumour that Bob Dylan was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature  (which, to be fair, was quickly dismissed by anyone who had actually read past the first two lines of his 1966 stream of consciousness tome Tarantula). Yesterday we heard that Jarvis Cocker has been appointed editor at large at Faber & Faber. Britpop’s favourite speccy geek’s “broad commissioning role” in the publishing company will commence with an annotated collection of his lyrics, entitled Mother, Brother, Lover. Sadly, there are no plans to give him his own Pulp Fiction imprint, but he will be encouraged to help Faber “continue to build a reputation as the home for exciting and original writing on music.”

Has rock and roll gone literary? There is a lot of excitement in the publishing industry about rock star authors at the moment. But, as editors snap up every old guitarhero with literary pretensions, hoping to emulate the runaway success of Keith Richard’s autobiography ‘Life’, there are three crucial points that need to be made:

It was Keith Richards.
He’s lived more life than almost anyone else.
He didn’t actually write the book himself.

Next year, we can look forward to autobiographies from Pete Townshend, Billy Idol, Morrissey and Greg Allman. Good luck with the last one. I interviewed Mr Allman this year. He’s certainly lived quite a life, the problem is he was drunk and stoned for most of the interesting stuff, and doesn’t seem to remember any of it.

Rumour is that a whole host of other rock stars are currently putting pen to paper, or at least chatting with a trusted confidante over drinks and telling them to fill in the blanks. And fair enough, when it comes to the genre of celebrity autobiographies, overstuffed with models, footballers, chat show hosts, comedians and last year’s X Factor winners, at least rock stars have usually got a few interesting stories to tell about their dissolute lives on the road. Who knew until Sammy Hagar published his autobiography this year that the heavy rock guitarist had been abducted by aliens? (Although his book fails to answer the crucial question, why didn’t they keep him?).

As a published author myself, I would, however, sound a note of caution to any musicians thinking that, with music revenues collapsing, knocking out a quick book might be the answer to falling record sales: there is even less money in modern publishing than in the modern music business. As I sometimes tell writing students: writing is a vocation not a job. Start with the assumption that you won’t get paid, then every cheque is a windfall. It’s usually at around that point that half the class walks out.

Of course, if they are a songwriter, they can always go for the quick fix of that other great staple of a rock star’s literary career: the collection of lyrics. This is usually a very bad idea, since put down in stark black and white without melody, rhythm, intonation and that weird autotune effect the producer added at the last minute while you were down in the rec room playing pool, most song lyrics sound stripped to the point of banality. Being a great lyricist is not the same as being a poet, where each word has to carry its own weight. Not that songwriting is a lesser thing, but its definitely a different thing, and even Bob Dylan can sound flat on the printed page (although I would, actually, have given him the Nobel, because I think the language of his songs have shaped the modern world more than any other wordsmith of our times. But that’s another story).  As for Paul McCartney. Oh dear. All I can say is that I actually possess a copy of his little tome, Poems and Lyrics 1965-1999, and while I consider him an absolute genius of popular music, I respectfully tender that Ob-la-di Ob-la-da loses a little something when declaimed as blank verse. But life goes on, bra.

Mr Cocker is taking this dangerous route however. And good luck to him. I love many of Jarvis Cocker’s songs. I think Common People is one of the undisputed masterpieces of the modern age. But I love his timing, his delivery, the insistent melody, the transition from dry humour to rage that is translated by the tempo and the growing hysteria of the arrangement. As for Sorted For E’s and Wizz, a 90s classic that perfectly nails Ecstasy culture, imagine the following lines recited without a whirl of synths, strummed guitars, and Cocker’s ironic ”ooh”s  and “ahs”…

In the middle of the night

It feels alright

But then tomorrow morning

Oh

Then you come down

Just keep on moving

If rock stars really want to get literary, they should take the plunge and write a proper book. Bob Dylan and Patti Smith have produced memoirs as rich and poetic as their songs but surprisingly few of our great songwriters have pushed on, to create long form fiction. Nick Cave has done it extraordinarily well, with And The Ass Saw The Angel and The Death of Bunny Munro, richly imagined novels that arguably make him the leading literary rocker. Leonard Cohen wrote a couple of dense and slightly abstract novels before turning to songwriting, for the prosaic reason that he realised there was more money in it. A few less celebrated but highly gifted American singer-songwriters have established a prose sideline.  Kinky Friedman has a series of amusing detective novels in which he himself is the protagonist, and I’ve recently enjoyed Simone Felice’s beautiful and poetic little novel , Black Jesus, and  Steve Earle’s You’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, in which his main character is haunted by the ghost of Hank Williams. But really, when you consider how much praise and attention is heaped on lyric writers, its astonishing how rare it is for any of its great exponents to try to dig a little deeper (or at least ramble on a little longer) than a three minute pop song allows.

I have a theory about this. It’s a pretty simple one. I think writing books is just too much like hard work.

There is one literary genre, however, in which songwriters have shown a willingness to throw caution to the wind and explore their talents as writers : the children’s book. Paul McCartney (High In The Clouds), Madonna (The English Roses), Paul Simon (At The Zoo), David Byrne (Stay Up Late), Judy Collins (My Father) and Carly Simon (Amy The Dancing Bear) are all best selling children’s authors.

These books all have one thing in common. Lots of pictures.

Good luck, Jarvis