Next month the unlikely duo of Son Volt’s Jay Farrar And Death Cab For Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard will release One Fast Move Or I’m Gone: A Tribute To Big Sur, a collection of twelve songs that were inspired by Jack Kerouac’s legendary 1962 novel Big Sur and will accompany an upcoming documentary of the same name. That got us thinking about other tributes to musical and literary icons, so here’s a quick list of some of the artists who came to mind. If you’ve got any additions, feel free to post them below in the comments section since we just finished our summer reading list.
Billy Bragg & Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue Volumes I & II: The Mermaid Avenue albums are composed of previously unreleased lyrics by folk troubadour Woody Guthrie that were set to music by songwriter Billy Bragg and the genre-defying rock act Wilco. However while Guthrie favored three-chord folk songs to spread his message of freedom and liberation, Bragg and Wilco infused their intrepretations of these words with their own respective musical styles to craft a collection of tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place on either artists’ respective albums. However maybe more impressive is the cohesive way that these two huge musical monoliths were able to collaborate with each other—and songs like “California Stars” and “Hoodoo Voodoo” have become show staples for Wilco and simultaneously helped Guthrie’s lyrics live on for an entirely new generation of listeners.
Lou Reed’s The Raven: From Transformer to Metal Machine Music, Lou Reed has never shied away from ambitious albums, so it makes perfect sense that in 2003 the proto-goth rocker would release The Raven, a tribute album that composed of recited short stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe. Featuring guest vocals from artists like Steve Buscemi, The Blind Boys Of Alabama and David Bowie, the album is a haunting musical tribute to one of the most famous horror fiction writers of all-time and “The Tell-Tale Heart (Pt I & II)” and “I Wanna Know (The Pit And The Pendulum)” are creepy even by Reed’s own standards—and when you look back on his career trajectory, that’s saying a lot.
Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions: Bruce Springsteen is one of the world’s biggest musical icons, so it was a huge deal when he decided to release his first album of non-original material, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions in 2006. Comprised of thirteen songs popularized or written by folk troubadour Pete Seeger, the result was an old-timey bluegrass-inflected album that proved that Springsteen hadn’t last an ounce of vigor or versatility and in many ways the disc was reminiscent of his 1982 landmark acoustic recording Nebraska. Admittedly The Seeger Sessions are a far cry from “Born In The U.S.A.,” but without the songs Springsteen paid homage to on this disc there’s a good chance that the Boss’ later output never would have existed.
Iggy Pop’s Préliminaires: Iggy Pop may be known more for his rock-hard abs than for his intellectual prowess, but the Stooges frontman’s latest disc Préliminaires was inspired by writer Michel Houellebecq’s novel La Possibilité d’une île (The Possibility Of An Island). Correspondingly the album sees Pop trading the raucous rock he ‘s become known for in favor of a New Orleans jazz sound that’s surprisingly adept and, maybe even more surprisingly, sees Pop singing in French on the jazz standard “Les Feuilles Mortes” (Autumn Leaves). Oh and if the artwork looks familiar it’s because it was created by graphic novelist ad film director Marjane Satrapi who is best known for the film and graphic novel Persepolis, proving that when people look back on his musical career Pop’s brain may ultimately be his defining attribute.