Influenced by Music They Hadn't Heard

It’s fascinating when musicians are inspired to write music, not by listening to it, but simply by reading or hearing about it. You get an odd game of telephone sometimes:

– Paul McCartney read Pete Townsend’s announcement that The Who were working on a new song, “I can see for miles,” that he declared to be the biggest, loudest, nastiest rock ‘n’ roll song ever recorded. Challenge accepted! thought Sir Paul, who then proceeded to write “Helter skelter.“ Needless to say, he was a bit surprised when he heard the actual Who track.

– Jerry Casale went on a fact-finding trip to New York City, and came back and told the other guys in Devo that these New York groups are playing really fast, why don’t we try that? Since, as he put it, most of their songs were rather dirge- like. He didn’t specify which groups he saw, but I’m assuming it must’ve been the likes of the Ramones, or the dead boys. So, apart from Casale, the rest of Devo were making music inspired by what they thought New York groups were like.

– Brian Eno and the Talking Heads read about Joy Division, and proceeded write a song that they imagined Joy Division sounded like. The result was “the overload.“ Which I think is kind of funny because it sounds nothing like joy Division!

There must be others?

I'm not sure of the accuracy of this story or if I'm remembering it correctly, but Pylon were being interviewed for some publication and the journalist commented they thought Pylon had dub-like qualities. One of the members - I think either Randall Bewley or Michael Lachowski - responded "We eat dub for breakfast," while in reality having no clue at all what dub actually was. This resulted in the song "Dub," with Pylon attempting a song that matched their understanding of dub sounded like - the opening lyrics of which are "I don't know what you're talking about" and the chorus consisting of the breakfast boast.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2025 02:07AM by breno.

Another version of this is when a rock critic confidently asserts an artist's influences that the artist later denies any familiarity with. (Then there are the copyright challenges...) Sometimes that's just nonsense, but I'm sure a lot of times it's absolutely true.

This may not be quite the same thing, but Jeff Beck allegedly got upset to the point of tears when Jimmy Page played him the tapes for the first Led Zeppelin album, shortly after finishing the recording. The Zep debut includes a cover of Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me" -- a song that Beck also had recorded for his very-soon-to-be-released solo debut Truth. Beck was pretty pissed that his former bandmate had encroached on "his territory," however unintentionally ... although I don't know if he went so far as to ask Page to omit that song and replace it with something else.

Twenty years later, Robert Plant offered his point of view in a Rolling Stone interview, to the effect of: "Sure, we did 'You Shook Me.' And it wasn't really a coincidence that Jeff did 'You Shook Me.' The Yardbirds had done it, John Mayall had done it, the Stones had done it. We were all doing 'You Shook Me.' It was more popular in England than 'God Save the Queen' at the time."

I think I do this everytime I read an article about an unfamiliar band…in my head I try to guess what they sound like. Certainly did this a lot in the TP magazine days.

Likewise I’d do it when thumbing through records and you’d try to guess their sound from the album cover.

That would be an interesting topic, bands who sound nothing like (or most like) their cover art….

I’ve likely mentioned it before but I grew up in Podunk and had only read about Rodney on the ROQ. I imagined him to be a raucous DJ playing wild LA punk.

When I heard an old broadcast of him, I was really taken back by how subdued he was, almost uncomfortable to be on the air…

In TP 88, Peter Buck commented on R.E.M .'s alleged influences, and at least one influence that he felt had escaped notice. He downplayed comparisons to The Byrds ("I probably listen to people that stole from The Byrds more often than The Byrds. The Byrds are okay, but none of us ever paid much attention to them") and The Cure ("I can see the comparison a little bit on 'Boys Don't Cry' and 'Jumping Someone Else's Train.' But then I got their second album, Seventeen Seconds. We don't sound like that a bit -- a nihilist in a leather jacket moaning over a blah tempo").

In the actual influences department, he said, "Nobody compares us to the Velvet Underground, and that's probably the one group we all love. I think a lot of the things we do sound like the Velvets -- not to the extent of the Dream Syndicate, but a lot of my guitar parts are real Velvety."

Apparently, they'd been compared to The Beau Brummells as well. Michael Stipe commented, "I don't know if that's a man or a band."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2025 06:18AM by Delvin.