If Elbow were an author ...

Don't know whether I had too much time in the sun yesterday, but I got to thinking last night about how certain novelists evoke vivid images and emotions. And I then tried to bridge the imaginery gap between music and literature (ultimately I may have fallen down the chasm of intellectual dimwittery but there you go ...). Some musicians directly quote novelists or namecheck characters - thinking Morrissey with Billy Bud and numerous other 'characters'; Kate Bush with Wuthering Heights ... the list is endless.

However, as far as I know Elbow does not participate in this practice. Great Expectations is a fab title but when I listen to it I don't immediately think of Miss Haversham, Pip or Magwitch. Having said that, Garvey definitely has a novelist's sensibility and that knack of creating memorable phrases and 'episodes'.

But to cut to the chase ... in finishing John Irving's 'Last Night At Twisted River' it dawned on me that a lot of the emotions I felt when reading the novel were pretty damn similar to those I got when listening to Elbow. The themes are wildly disparate. Irving obsesses about bears, Garvey seems to be a bird-fancier. They are both undoubtedly sentimental and both tend to dwell on recurring themes. I just can't make head nor sense of it. Perhaps I'm suffering a mild form of synesthesia (link to definition).

Anyways ... if Elbow were a novelist (for arguments sake) who in your mind would they be?

Okay .. that went down like a lead balloon. Maybe a change of tack is required.

So .. if Elbow were a packet of crisps, what crisps would they be? I'm going for cheese n' onion. Depth of flavour, deep tang ... stays in the gob/mind for ages after eating/listening.

Novelists that immediately came to my mind...you can decide for yourself why those choices.
Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver, Thomas Hardy, J. D. Salinger

lucky with disease wrote:

Novelists that immediately came to my mind...you can decide for yourself why those choices.
Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver, Thomas Hardy, J. D. Salinger

Completely get all of them except Raymond Carver whose work I'm not familiar with. Excellent choices mon ami. Bravo!

mmm, not sure about comparison to authors - probably don't read enough
or remember much of what i have read. I'd definately put them in there with some poets
though, ones who can paint a picture of a situation so well. Philip Larkin ?


oh and i almost forgot the crisps... Walkers "Sensations" - Thai Chili flavour. ;-

My favourites, great quality, very moreish with a subtle kick in the mouth that grabs you when you least expect it.

in fact definatley Larkin- just re aquainted myself with a few courtesy of google.
Audabe, Ambulances, love songs in age etc etc

Takes a while, but we get there in the end, Cozzer!

Surprised no-one's mentioned Alan Bennett yet: Isn't he one of Guy's favourites, which is most likely an influence for the keen observation & 'poetry from the ordinary'?

mrswoman wrote:

Takes a while, but we get there in the end, Cozzer!

Surprised no-one's mentioned Alan Bennett yet: Isn't he one of Guy's favourites, which is most likely an influence for the keen observation & 'poetry from the ordinary'?

Oh yes ... Alan Bennett. Fantastic choice mrswoman.

I was thinking the other day how Grounds For Divorce reminded me in a rather perverse way of Sin City (the movie).. disjointed images, lots of ghouls and geeks, threats of violence. Would anybody object to a bit of Frank Miller being thrown into the pot?

Cozzer wrote:

I was thinking the other day how Grounds For Divorce reminded me in a rather perverse way of Sin City (the movie).. disjointed images, lots of ghouls and geeks, threats of violence. Would anybody object to a bit of Frank Miller being thrown into the pot?

Not at all; Miller would fit with some AITB themes too - spot on! Cheers, Cozzer.

Hmm... I'm not sure if I could come up with an author, but I will add Frank O'Hara into the mixing pot. It ended up being a game of, "Whose prose could be sung by Guy Garvey?" and some of Frank's poetry fits right into Guy's lyrical content. An example:

ANIMALS
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days
[1950]

I wonder if Guy will ever consider releasing a book of poetry.

Difficult to compare the band to a specific novelist, but regarding them name-checking literature, the original Seldom Seen Kid was a Damon Runyon character. His stories are well worth reading, great fun. I wonder if The Fix is more than a little influenced by Damon Runyon, too.

Glendarian wrote:

Difficult to compare the band to a specific novelist, but regarding them name-checking literature, the original Seldom Seen Kid was a Damon Runyon character. His stories are well worth reading, great fun. I wonder if The Fix is more than a little influenced by Damon Runyon, too.

Nice bit of elbow trivia Glendarian
The Seldom Seen Kid was a character in Runyon's book "Money From Home", a story about a gambler who agrees to fix a horse race to pay off his debts to the mob.
The book was released as a film in 1953 starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin with Robert Strauss playing TSSK

That's where the similarity ends, but you can imagine how books, films, nicknames and tales of fixed horse races were all thrown into the mix when Guy's dad was a lad and eventually passed on to Guy when he was growing up.

As you can see, I had a bit of time on my hands last night

lucky with disease wrote:

Novelists that immediately came to my mind...you can decide for yourself why those choices.
Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver, Thomas Hardy, J. D. Salinger

Excellent list. I'd just like to add John Steinbeck to it.

An occasional and recurring theme in Guy Garvey's lyrics is the idea of involuntary memory; that a sound or a smell can trigger memories and take you back to a particular time or place; 'Scattered Black and Whites' being a prime example. The opposite to this idea, voluntary memory is used in 'Switching Off'; can a memory be deliberately 'saved' and called upon 'in extremis?

The idea of involuntary memory is a concept made famous by Marcel Proust in his novel "À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu" and is sometimes referred to as Proustian memory.

I haven't tackled "À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu" myself, but I wonder whether Guy has?

I so get that memory thing - I can think back to childhood memories
and the smells are there with me now. Particularly things like wild chives in a wood we used to play in,
Hot Dog / Candy Floss stand at a travelling fair that used to come every summer,
my first girlfriends hairspray (of all things) etc etc.
(not sure if they are involuntary or voluntary though)

but its that type of thing that seems to draw me to elbows songs, the lyrics put pictures and colours and smells in my head.

Its a bit like Synesthesia - some people particlarly with autistic disorders can see colours and actually feel words for example being spiky or soft. My son's mood is reflected in the colours he sees - e.g when he literally sees Red - he could be at meltdown point, and he has own spectrum of colours and talks about blue days or green days.