William Blake in Popular Culture - Music - Popular

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With the emergence of modern popular music in the 1950s and 60s, Blake became a hero of the counter culture. Dylan's songs were compared to Blake. Dylan also collaborated with Allen Ginsberg to record two Blake songs. Ginsberg himself performed and recorded many Blake songs, claiming that the spirit of Blake had communicated musical settings of several Blake poems to him. He believed that in 1948 in an apartment in Harlem, he had had an auditory hallucination of Blake reading his poems "Ah, Sunflower," "The Sick Rose," and "Little Girl Lost" (later referred to as his "Blake vision").

The lines "Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night" from Blake's poem "Auguries of Innocence" are quoted by Jim Morrison in the song "End of the Night" from The Door's debut album.

The Fugs set several of Blake's songs, and performed a "Homage to William and Catherine Blake," celebrating their sexual freedom. Atomic Rooster used Blake's painting "Nebuchadnezzar" for the cover of their 1970 album, Death Walks Behind You.

English progressive rock group Emerson, Lake & Palmer included "Jerusalem" as the first track on their 1973 album Brain Salad Surgery.

Van Morrison mentions Blake in the song "You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River" on his 1974 album, Veedon Fleece. Blake is also mentioned, along with T. S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth, among others, in the lyrics of "Summertime in England," a song loosely based on Blake's poem, "And did those feet in ancient time" and from Morrison's 1980 album, Common One. The 1984 album, A Sense of Wonder, includes "Ancient of Days," possibly referencing Blake's famous painting. On the same album, the song "Let The Slave" incorporates Blake's 1797 poem, "The Price of Experience." Morrison also mentions Blake in his song "Will I Ever Learn to Live in God?" from his 1989 album, Avalon Sunset, and "Golden Autumn Day" from his 1999 album, Back on Top.

U2's The Joshua Tree album was originally intended to open with a track entitled "Beautiful Ghost," in which Bono recites "Introduction to Songs of Experience" over a sombre instrumental; the song was ultimately cut from the final album, but appeared seventeen years later as an unreleased and rare track in The Complete U2 set on iTunes. Daniel Amos performed the song William Blake on their album Vox Humana in 1984. Manchester group The Fall had a track on their 2000 album The Unutterable entitled "WB," a song about Blake's visions, taking several lines from his work. Singer Mark E. Smith had expressed his admiration for Blake on many occasions previously. The Fall also recorded a version of "Jerusalem" on their album I Am Kurious Oranj.

A number of musicians have identified Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience as being of special importance. Greg Brown released an album of selections from the Songs of Innocence and Experience (1986), and several Blake songs were included in Tangerine Dream's album Tyger (1987). The American progressive-rock band Mastermind released a song called "Tiger! Tiger!", which uses the poem "The Tyger" as lyrics, in their third album "Tragic Symphony" (1994). Finn Coren's two albums of "The Blake Project" sets his songs, as does Jah Wobble's album The Inspiration of William Blake. Loreena McKennitt used lines from the Poetical Sketches in her song Lullaby. On two separate albums, composer, conductor and musician David Axelrod interpreted Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Swedish experimental/industrial band The Protagonist has a song called "The Sick Rose" (based on the poem) on their album Songs of Experience.

British jazz pianist and composer Mike Westbrook began his work for the theatre with Adrian Mitchell's "Tyger", a celebration of Blake staged by the Royal National Theatre in 1971. This became a vehicle for Westbrook's Brass Band of the 70's and 80's and the album "The Westbrook Blake - Bright As Fire" followed on in 1980, essentially a jazz interpretation of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. A revised and expanded version of the work was re-recorded in 1997 and named "Glad Day".

Bruce Dickinson's solo album The Chemical Wedding draws inspiration from the works of Blake. In fact, many songs on it, such as "The Book of Thel," have the same titles as poems by Blake. The black metal/experimental music group Ulver released Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in 1998, setting large portions of the poem's text. The name of metal band The Human Abstract is taken from Blake's poem of the same name.

Enrique Bunbury from Spanish band Héroes del Silencio was influenced by Blake's work, with songs like "El Camino del Exceso (The Road of Excess)," "Los Placeres de la Pobreza (The Pleasures of Poverty)," "Deshacer el Mundo (Unmake the World)" and "La Chispa Adecuada (The Right Spark)". Il Trono dei Ricordi have released an album, setting passages from The Book of Urizen and Visions of the Daughters of Albion.

Patti Smith was heavily influenced by Blake, referring to him in her song "My Blakean Year" on her album Trampin' and also reciting his poetry before some of her songs. It can be heard, for instance, on the Land compilation, where she recites "The Lamb" before breaking into the song "Boy Cried Wolf".

The Verve's lyricist Richard Ashcroft has written a couple of lyrics which echo poetry by Blake. "History" from the 1995 album A Northern Soul begins "I wandered lonely streets/Behind where the old Thames does flow/And in every face I meet", referencing Blake's "London". Similarly, each line of the second verse begins "In every...", mirroring the device used by Blake in the corresponding stanza of the same poem. The band's 2008 comeback single "Love Is Noise" is clearly influenced by the poet's "And did those feet in ancient time", commonly known as "Jerusalem," with its "Will those feet in modern times/Walk on soles that are made in China?" and allusion to "Bright prosaic malls" instead of "dark Satanic mills".

Coil performed a song called "Love's Secret Domain" that quotes Blake's "The Sick Rose", they also allude to Blake in "The Dreamer is Still Asleep" on Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 1. Thee Majesty, a later project of Genesis P-Orridge, performed a song called "Thee Little Black Boy" loosely based on Blake's poem "The Little Black Boy".

Singer/songwriter M. Ward references Blake's poem set "Nurse's Song" on his 2009 album Hold Time in the song "Blake's View." Ward also opens the same song with a nod to Blake's "Death's Door" art series commissioned by Robert Cromek as a graphical representation of Robert Blair's poem "The Grave."

Ska Band Five Iron Frenzy references Blake in a line from "Every New Day", from the album Our Newest Album Ever - "When the stars threw down their spears, watered Heaven with their tears."

Philadelphia indie rock band Milton and the Devils Party takes its name from Blake's comment in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that John Milton was "a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it." Singer-songwriter-bassist Daniel Robinson is a professor and scholar of Romantic poetry at Widener University.