Cultural Depictions of T. S. Eliot - Songs

Songs

• The lyrics to the Genesis song "Cinema Show" (from 1973's Selling England by the Pound) are an adaptation of the typist and young man scene from "The Fire Sermon" section of The Waste Land. Compare "Home from work our Juliet clears her morning meal" (Genesis) to "The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast" (Eliot); "weekend millionaire" (Genesis) to "Bradford millionaire" (Eliot), etc.
• The Rush song "Open Secrets" (from 1987's Hold Your Fire) includes the line "That's not what I meant at all" (cf. "That is not what I meant at all" from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock").
• The Manic Street Preachers song "My Guernica" includes the line "Alfred J. Prufrock would be proud of me".
• Frank Turner's second album 'Love Ire & Song' features the song 'I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous.'
• The Simon and Garfunkel song "The Dangling Conversation," famously covered by Joan Baez, is in some ways a reinterpretation of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
• The band Crash Test Dummies released a song called "Afternoons & Coffeespoons" from the album God Shuffled His Feet in the early 1990s. This song, too, borrows from and pays homage to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
• "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was also referred to by Chuck D of the seminal rap group Public Enemy, in Niggativaty, Do I Dare Disturb the Universe, on his solo album The Autobiography of Mistachuck.
• The band Circle Takes the Square uses lines from several Eliot's poems in many of their songs, i.e. Patchwork Neurology ("Do I dare disturb universe" from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock") or A Crater To Cough In ("I who have sat by Thebes below the wall and walked among the lowest of the dead (to Carthage then I came)" from The Waste Land).
• Liverpool poet Adrian Henri included "Poem in Memoriam T. S. Eliot" in the best-selling 1968 anthology The Mersey Sound.
• In Bob Dylan's song "Desolation Row", Ezra Pound and Eliot fight in the captain's tower.
• In Melbourne band TISM's song "Mistah Eliot - He Wanker," there are numerous references to Eliot. One such line is; "T. S. Eliot lost his wallet when he went into town/Serves him right for hangin' round with the likes of Ezra Pound."
• London rock band Million Dead's album A Song to Ruin was greatly influenced by The Waste Land, especially the 14 minute closer to the album, "The Rise and Fall".
• Canadian singer Sarah Slean wrote a song about T. S. Eliot, simply entitled "Eliot."
• Tori Amos's song Pretty Good Year from 1994's Under The Pink album features the lines, "I heard the Eternal Footman/Bought himself a bike to race". The Eternal Footman comes from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", where it symbolises death.
• In the song "Time Waits For No One", the 1970s/'80s pop band Ambrosia uses the line "With decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".
• In the song "The Chemicals Between Us", the British alternative rock band Bush makes reference to "The Hollow Men" in the line, "we're of hollow men we are the naked ones".
• Norma Jean's song Disconecktie is literally a reworded rendition of Eliot's "Choruses from the rock"
• Leeds rock band The Third take their name from the stanza in The Waste Land beginning "Who is the third who walks always beside you?". They often use a recorded reading of this by Scottish poet Johnny Solstice over an electronica piece as introductory music to their live sets.
• The Allman Brothers Band possibly titled their well-known 1972 album Eat a Peach from the line "Do I dare to eat a peach?" from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". This was also a reference to their Georgia roots.
• East River Pipe, a musical project of Fred Cornog, has a song titled "What Does T. S. Eliot Know About You?" on his 2006 Merge Records release What Are You On?
• The screamo band Circle Takes the Square directly quote The Waste Land in "A Crater To Cough In", and reference the poem many times throughout their full-length As the Roots Undo.
• King Crimson's "The Deception of the Thrush" takes its title from the Eliot Poem "Burnt Norton" and the lyrics are sampled from a reading of The Waste Land. There are no set selections from the poem, however, because it changes every night. It tends to be from part one, The Burial of the Dead.
• Lead singer Andrew Schwab of the Christian rock band Project 86 was heavily influenced by Eliot and wrote the song "Hollow Again", which includes, among others, the repeated line "This is how the world ends..." from Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men".
• Van Morrison mentions Eliot, along with William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and James Joyce in his song, "Summertime In England."
• The opening line of Eliot's poem The Waste Land, "April, the cruellest month" was used by the British band Hot Chip as the first line of the song 'Playboy' on their Coming On Strong album.
• The lyrics of Bayside's "Talking of Michelangelo" are based on "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock".
• 'Biomusicology' by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists contains the line "Oed' und leer das Meer" from Tristan und Isolde, which Eliot also quotes in The Waste Land.
• The punk band Ecoabios released a semi-improvised musical interpretation of The Hollow Men
• The song "Frozen Laughter" (1966) by The Rising Storm quotes from "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock"
• The progressive rock group Gentle Giant has an album entitled "Eat the Peach", their answer to the question in "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock"
• Sibylle Baier references 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' many times in her song 'Says Elliott' from her album 'The Colour Green'