You mean Johnny Cash didn’t shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die? I’m so disappointed.
I devoured all the James Herriot books as a kid; read them many times, in fact. As I got older, I realized that they were a little too polished to be the absolute truth. However, I was very disappointed later on when I read Herriot’s biography…heck, that wasn’t even his real name! And of course, events and characters in the books really weren’t quite that wonderful. Since then, I don’t care for biographies.
Johnny Cash says in the VH1 Storytellers recording he did with Willie Nelson that a lot of guys come up to him and tell him that their dad was in prison with him. He’s never been to prison (served a little jail time for misdemeanors), but people sure do remember him being there!
I’ve got some bad news for you about Dr. Seuss…
Thanks for all the replies, from the thoughtful ones to the silly ones.
Obviously, we all KNOW that fiction is, by definition, not real. And 99% of the time, that doesn’t bother anybody. Bits and pieces of Samuel Clemens’ childhood undoubtedly worked their way into “Huckleberry Finn “ and “Tom Sawyer,” but nobody would be upset to find out that, say, young Sam Clemens never really helped out a runaway slave or attended his own funeral.
We can read and enjoy a Stephen King or Tom Clancy story, not caring for a moment that King has never really slain a vampire and Clancy has never really commanded a submarine.
But some books or songs or movies strike a unique chord with fans. Countless teenagers have read “The Catcher in the Rye” and thought, “That’s ME he’s writing about! That’s exactly what I’VE been thinking and feeling! Salinger is the one and only person in the world who really gets me! Surely, he’s been in my shoes and has lived a life just like mine!” I suspect that such a teen who ever met the real J.D. Salinger would have been extremely disappointed to find that Salinger was not Holden Caullfield, and that “Catcher” was not autobiographical.
In the same way, Alice Cooper’s fans know he’s never really done any of the sick things he sings about, and don’t care. But some fans of sensitive singer-songwriters probably form an emotional bond with their idols, and imagine that, say, Joni Mitchell has really experienced every heartache and tragedy she sings about. Would her fans be hurt if Joni said that her saddest songs were NOT based on anything she’d actually experienced?
It’s a good question. I never got it when people wondered, “Who is You’re so Vain about?” Granted she did apparently reveal the answer to one guy so I suppose there is a subject for that song. But why does it have to be about anyone?
I guess for me, I don’t think of the song as necessarily being part of an artist’s life. If I happen to learn something cool about how the song was inspired or recorded, that’s cool–I like reading about the music I’m into. But I don’t feel let down if the answer was, “Nothing–we just needed a hit and we came up with one.”
Carly Simon has played along with the “You’re So Vain” mystery game, but IIRC she’s also said that when she wrote the song she was thinking about several different vain men she had known. It may have been based more on one than the others, but I don’t think she intended for the song to be about one specific real person.
Another one I never got was the supposed mystery around “Angie” by the Rolling Stones. For some reason a lot of people seem to have assumed that the song is 1) about a specific real person and 2) that her name was actually Angie. There’s an urban legend that it was inspired by David Bowie’s first wife Angie, or even that it’s a secret gay love song about Bowie (“There ain’t a woman that comes close to you” indeed!) that also refers to his wife. But I’d think that if Mick Jagger were going to write a love song about another man’s wife, or about another man and his wife, then he’d at least take the time to make up a different name for her.
That reminds me of a sort of reverse example of what the OP is looking for, The Who’s “Athena”. I remember this song as being something of a mystery to Who fans for many years, with a common interpretation being that it wasn’t really a love song at all but a metaphor about war – Athena was the Greek goddess of war, and the word “bomb” appears in the lyrics. Turns out it’s a pretty straightforward song about romantic infatuation that Pete Townshend wrote about actress Theresa Russell. Her first name appears in the demo version of the song, which was never officially released but has been leaked (to Townshend’s displeasure, IIRC) as a bootleg. Townshend changed the name for the finished version of the song, and I suspect he chose “Athena” for no other reason than that it could be swapped for “Theresa” without changing the notes/stresses in the song.
Well, here’s what Carly said during an interview with Michael Eisner:
You don’t HAVE to believe her, as she’s said different things over the years. But I’m inclined to think this is pretty truthful and accurate.
For those who don’t want to watch the whole thing, here’s a brief summary: Carly didn’t sit down at a piano and write the song all at once. If she had, you could reasonably assume the song was written with one person in mind.
She says she wrote the song in bits and pieces over a long period of time. That she sometimes thinks of a clever line or a nice melody, and will jot it down in a notebook to use later. She came up with the line, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” jotted it down, and didn’t use it for months.
MUCH later, she saw husband James Taylor getting ready for a party, playfully acting as if he were a suave ladies’ man, she remembered that old line, and started forming a set of lyrics about a show biz hotshot who thought he was God’s gift to women. And only much later did she put a whole song together. At THAT point, she thought to herself, “Wow, this is almost a perfect portrait of some of the egomaniacs I’ve dated (no doubt including Warren Beatty, among others)”.
So, even if it sounds too coy, the song took a long time to be born, and there wasn’t any one inspiration for it.
How about disappointment over a song that I thought was pure fiction, but turned out to be true: “Adia” by Sarah MacLachlan. Basically, Sarah started dating and then married her friend’s recently-ex-boyfriend, and the song basically says, “tough luck, get it over, honey.”
It worked much better for me when I didn’t know the particulars. I now tend to see the song as a big F-you by an egomaniac.
toadspittle—really? I heard it was about her grandmother. Though admittedly this was some random radio DJ back in '98…