Forum: Author Hangout

My short story and novel, both called "Last Kiss," are inspired by the song "Last Kiss" by J Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers (remade by Pearl Jam).

What got me started on Variation on a Theme was a chance listen to Bruce Springsteen's 'Atlantic City' at the right moment - particularly the lines:

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact.
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

The initial scene is set in Atlantic City for that reason.

Some other elements have been inspired by songs at one point or another. I've got an idea kicking around for a shorter (not connected) story that's song-inspired, but it's too vague to write from. Either it'll fill in the blanks or it won't. We'll see.

Do you ever get a song in your head and have it drive your writing?

Actually, I have done that twice now. Both were short stories I had set in a fictional bar-club in El Paso.

The first was "Won't Get Fooled Again", off of the classic song by The Who, about two people that end up fooling each other.

Then another called "I Got It From Sally", based with different people at the same place from a Tom Lehrer song.

But it is not unusual for me to have music running through my head as I write. Specifically, when I wrote "River Party" I was thinking of "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell. Which is why I tried to incorporate that sense of loss in seeing what the narrator saw as "Paradise", and replacing it with a "parking lot" (or in this case a sterile urban park).

And in a very specific manner, the ending of my "Country Boy, City Girl story was purposefully dragged out in order to allow me to place "Linger" by The Cranberries into it as "their song".

I often listen to music while I write. While I am writing particular scenes, I imagine particular songs playing in the background, or even loudly blaring during the scene!

I have considered mentioning some of those songs in my stories, but for the most part I have not.

When I was a young Cavalry Scout and Paratrooper in the 1980's we used to enjoy going for a ride with the Air Cav. The "Old" Warrant Officers (helicopter pilots) in their Thirties (or even Forties) who were veterans of Vietnam were preferable to the young WOs barely older than us. They often had a car cassette deck or 8-track player jurry-rigged so that we could hear music wearing our CVC helmets (similar to the Aircrew helmets) as we could jack-in.

Classics such as Magic Carpet Ride, Run Through The Jungle, or Paint It Black or Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Relax, or Lagrange by ZZ Top as we zoomed along NOE (Nap of the Earth) with are boots brushing the treetops!

From the 1990's no song is more powerful to me than Barra Barra by Rachid Taha from the Blackhawk Down soundtrack.

Post September 11th 2001 the Angry American by Toby Keith, or "Have You Forgotten" by Darrell Worley, "A Country Boy Can Survive" by "Ole Bosephus" (Hank Williams Jr.), or "What Do I Know" by Robert Counts; when I remember my comrades "I Drive Your Truck" by Lee Brice or "Zombie" by Delores O'Riordan and the Cranberries both nearly always cause me to cry.

Due to MP3 players and such, we could each have "Our Own Soundtrack" in combat. In particular, we were being held while they cleared our request to cross a unit boundary into another AO (Area of Operation), we were punch-drunk exhausted, so when our medic started singing along to Toby Keith and Willie Nelson "Whiskey for My Men, and Beer For Our Horses" we were all singing that song as we received clearance and rolled into combat singing!

I have many driving songs, such as Radar Love, Utah Saints, and The Boondocks by Little Big Town.

When I was writing about two of my protagonists driving a pickup truck in the Sierra Madres of easter Sonora, I was playing Mexican Radio.

Writing combat scenes I often play bagpipe music.

When writing the aftermath of battle I sometimes play "The Mansions of the Lord" (from the end of the movie "We Were Soldiers"

Music is very powerful, but even with lyrics, it is usually much more subjective that stories.