The Anatomy of Influence: Woody to Bruce to RATM edition
And as long as we are on the subject of Woody Guthrie and his ongoing influence, look at how short a journey it is from Woody’s Tom Joad, to Bruce’s Ghost, to this:
Art makes art.
Explore posts in the same categories: Music, The Good Fight
The Inverse Square Blog 
July 14, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Definitely! Artists respond to and riff on each other across years and sometimes centuries or millenia. I’ve found it’s easiest (on a blog) to show examples in poetry, but the interplay between composers/songwriters is ridiculous. I’ve always thought the Springsteen song featured in the previous post was extremely underrated/overlooked, by the way. His rendition of the famous speech is pretty haunting.
July 14, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I completely agree re Springsteen and “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
I do love this evolution of influence stuff. Have you ever read any essays by Guy Davenport. He’s a master at tracing literary threads, and is a wonderful writer as well. I recommend “The Geography of the Imagination” as a great collection.
July 15, 2010 at 11:06 am
[…] … I don’t know quite how to characterize this one After yesterday’s Woody fest, I really shouldn’t do this, but outsourced entirely to someone with whom I dare not enter […]