Peter Gabriel (while in Genesis) write The Battle of Epping Forrest about gang/turf wars in London.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.
and Muskrat Love.
OK, you’re not crazy — Wikipedia says the same thing.
But the only resemblance to the Pueblo incident I can find in the lyrics are the words “captain” and “ship.”
Can anyone explain any other relation to the Pueblo?
I should think that very probably a considerable majority of songs are about real events (sometimes with names and details changed to protect the guilty), even if most of them are about events that few people except the songwriter and a few other involved people ever heard of.
Right. From the Beatles, for example, we have “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” and “Blue Jay Way” and “She Said She Said” and “A Day in the Life” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko” and “Dear Prudence” and probably a bunch of others… we happen to know the events they’re about because the Beatles have been so minutely examined. It’s probably the same for other artists but we just don’t know the details.
Um… I know who the Ballad of John and Yoko is about, anyway.
I would think not. Songwriters use their imagination and make up songs. Sometimes real event are an inspiration. Take my contribution above of The Way. After reading up on it, the events in the song did not actually happen. The writer heard about a couple who drove off and were never heard from again and wrote The Way.
In actuality, the couple was found- dead in a ditch.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is about what Lightfoot imagined happened. No one really knows.
Songs that people think are about real events are not. Paul Simon has explained that My Little Town isn’t about anyone he knows, especially not him since he’s from Queens, NY. He thought about how it would feel to be from a small, rustbelt type town and wrote a song.
The Night Chicago Died-- the events in that song did not happen. The guy from Paper Lace made that story up.
‘American Pie’ and the death of Buddy Holly and Co.
Bob Dylan also wrote songs about civil rights martyr Medgar Evans (“Only A Pawn In Their Side”), mobster Joey Gallo (“Joey”), baseball player Catfish Hunter (“Catfish”), and a boxer named Davey Moore who died in the ring (“Who Killed Davey Moore”). His song “George Jackson” is about a prison activist who was killed in the retaking of Attica prison in 1971.
I think there are a bunch of songs about the 1927 Mississippi flood, but at the moment I can only think of three examples, two contemporary and one from 1974:
“When the Levee Breaks” by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joy McCoy (later famously covered by Led Zeppelin).
"High Water Everywhere"by Charley Patton.
“Louisiana 1927” by Randy Newman.
Don McGlashan (ex-Muttonbirds) wrote Toy Factory Fire about the 1993 Kader factory fire in Thailand.
It’s on his Warm Hand cd.
The Levellers sang about the Battle of the Beanfield, a confrontation between new age travellers and the police in Wiltshire in 1985.
Midnight Oil wrote:
Beds Are Burning: about giving Australian lands back to natives
Blue Sky Mine: about asbestos mine workers
Truganani: about Aborigines effected by European settlement
Got one more:
The Manic Street Preachers’ “S.Y.M.M (South Yorkshire Mass Murderer)” is about the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster.
How About the Eagles’ Last Resort
I have a photo of the sign “Jesus is Coming” in Lahaina…
Don’ McLean’s “The Legend of Andrew McCrew” about Anderson McCrew.
The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” about the impending race/class revolution.
Umm, Charley, is that you?
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and the final days of the US Cvil War, although the song places Robert E. Lee quite a bit further west than he really was.
Burn On by Randy Newman
Cuyahoga by REM
River on Fire by Adam Again
All three were about the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching on fire in 1969