Lenny Bruce - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Bruce is pictured in the top row of the cover of the Beatles 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

• The clip of a news broadcast featured in "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night" by Simon & Garfunkel carries the ostensible newscast audio of Lenny Bruce's death. In another track on the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission)", Paul Simon sings, "... I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce, that all my wealth won't buy me health."

• Tim Hardin's fourth album, released in 1968 Tim Hardin 3 Live in Concert, includes his song Lenny's Tune written about his friend Lenny Bruce.

• Nico's 1967 album Chelsea Girl includes a track entitled "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce", written by Tim Hardin. In it she describes her sorrow and anger at Bruce's death.

• Bob Dylan's 1981 song "Lenny Bruce" describes a brief taxi ride shared by the two men. In the last line of the song, Dylan recalls: "Lenny Bruce was bad, he was the brother that you never had."

• R.E.M.'s 1987 song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" includes references to a quartet of famous people all sharing the initials L.B. with Lenny Bruce being one of them (the others being Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev and Lester Bangs.) The opening line of the song mentioning Bruce goes, "...That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane, Lenny Bruce is not afraid."

• Mentioned in the 1974 song "Broadway Melody of 1974" by Genesis off of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: "...Lenny Bruce declares a truce and plays his other hand."

• Mentioned in the song "La Vie Bohème" from the musical Rent by Jonathan Larsen: "...Lenny Bruce, Langston Hughes, to the stage"

• Mentioned in the song "On the Sly" by Metric from the album Grow Up and Blow Away