Music
Link Wray's 1959 instrumental "Jack the Ripper" begins with an evil laugh and a woman's scream. These devices were also used in "Jack the Ripper" (1963), originally recorded by Screaming Lord Sutch and covered by The White Stripes, The Horrors, Black Lips, The Sharks and Jack & The Rippers.
Jack the Ripper: The Musical (1974), with lyrics by Ron Pember and music by Dennis DeMarne, influenced Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984) features a vignette in which the band discusses the possibility of composing a rock opera about Jack the Ripper's life, called Saucy Jack. In 1996, a rock opera entitled Yours Truly: Jack the Ripper with lyrics by Frogg Moody and Dave Taylor was performed and, in a break from recent practice, portrayed the Ripper as an ordinary everyday man.
Metal bands are particularly keen to associate themselves with the "bloodshed and sleaze" image of the Ripper. Songs entitled "Ripper" were recorded by Judas Priest in 1976, and Praying Mantis in 1979. American deathcore band Whitechapel derived its name from the inner-city district Whitechapel in London, the location of the Jack the Ripper murders. Accordingly, the band's debut album The Somatic Defilement is a first-person narrative concept album based on Jack the Ripper. The Texan metal group Ripper went for a more direct choice of name, and vocalists with the groups Meridian and Sodomizer adopted the names Jack D. Ripper and Ripper, respectively. Gothic metalcore sextet Motionless in White released a song entitled "London in Terror" as a single from their debut album Creatures. Californian death metal band Brain Drill have a song titled "Nemesis of Neglect".
Songs inspired by the Ripper were recorded by artists as varied as Morrissey, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Legendary Pink Dots, Thee Headcoats, The Buff Medways and Bob Dylan. Radio Werewolf's album The Fiery Summons features "From Hell" which uses words from the letters attributed to the Ripper.
The band Screech Owls released a song called 'Jack The Ripper' on their first EP 'Jacknife' in 1994.
Read more about this topic: Jack The Ripper In Fiction
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