BOOKS
Bob Sarlin’s Turn It Up, I Can’t Hear the Words is an attempt to define the emergence and direction of serious lyrics in rock and roll. Beginning with a short history of the influence of folk music, and early rock and roll, Sarlin arrives at the term “songpoet” to describe Dylan and those who have followed him.
BOOKS
Mommy, What's o Poet?
TURN IT UP, I CAN'T HEAR THE WORDS By Bob Sarlin (Touchstone)
Bob Sarlin’s Turn It Up, I Can’t Hear the Words is an attempt to define the emergence and direction of serious lyrics in rock and roll. Beginning with a short history of the influence of folk music, and early rock and roll, Sarlin arrives at the term “songpoet” to describe Dylan and those who have followed him. Dylan, he feels, rightfully, opened the floodgates to serious literary invention within the Confines of popular music. But Sarlin is mistaken, I think,-in thinking that a new form has been created. More lijcely, a white, American art song tradition has been developed in the work of the songwriters, (or poets) discussed here: among them, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Van Morrison, Don1 McLean, and the Grateful Dead’s Robert Hunter.
Sarlin fails to show, however, how Dylan, Mitchell, and the others differ in conception from the concept - of the bard, or European art composers of the 19th century. Both 6f them incidentally, were based upon accesible (not to say, popular) and native ingredients.