Quote:
Originally Posted by Lalwendë
If bands want to be really cool then they reference someone like JG Ballard or Nabokov or Illuminatus!, not Tolkien, because Tolkien still isn't really what you'd call 'cool' - and that's part of the appeal for many of us  |
Hmmm...but I think Tolkien transcends coolness/noncoolness in many instances. After all, when Lord of the Rings references appear in lyrics by such Rock Godz as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath (the song 'Wizard' was inspired by Gandalf, according to the semi-comotose Ozzy Osbourne, and Geezer Butler is an ardent LotR fan), then Tolkien acquires a patina of legitimacy, at least among the 'glitterati' (in the glitter rock sense), but not so the 'literati' (in the constipated academic sense) -- that is where one finds the clearest condemnations of Tolkien.
But then, I think that literary, classical music and art references were de rigeur in the late 60's/early 70's, particularly with English bands. In addition to Led Zep and Sabbath (who also reference HP Lovecraft's 'Beyond the Wall of Sleep'), we have Pink Floyd's 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' (from a chapter title in Grahame's 'Wind in the Willows'), Jethro Tull quoting Robert Burns as well as lifting Bach's 'Bouree', King Crimson describing Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' in song, Emerson, Lake and Palmer revising Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition', and the Beatles citing or referring to Kahil Gibran, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe and snippets of King Lear.
This often is derided as pomposity and pretension by critics, but I think it was genuine love of the source material by the bands, and the music plays on long after the pens lie stiff and cold in the critic's rigor-mortised hands. Later on we have The Police referring to Nabokov, The Waterboys doing an absolutely enchanting version of WB Yeats' 'The Stolen Child' and REM rattling off a host of cultural and literary references in 'It's the End of the World as We Know It'.
So, cool or not cool? It's in the eye (or in this case, the ear) of the beholder. But I think the majority of Tolkienites could give a rat's hairy patoot about critics in any case.