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| What pop music tells us about JG Ballard | What pop music tells us about JG Ballard |
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| Joy Division: Ian Curtis (second left) was a Ballard fan By Stephen Dowling BBC News Magazine | Joy Division: Ian Curtis (second left) was a Ballard fan By Stephen Dowling BBC News Magazine |
| Author JG Ballard, who has died aged 78, cast a huge influence over the literary world. But for those who have never picked up one of his novels there's another forum for learning about his work - pop music. | Author JG Ballard, who has died aged 78, cast a huge influence over the literary world. But for those who have never picked up one of his novels there's another forum for learning about his work - pop music. |
| Through his books and essays JG Ballard was said to have predicted the melting of the polar icecaps, terrorism against tourists and Ronald Reagan's ascent to the White House. | |
| His science fiction of the almost-normal - based around suburbia and urban hinterlands, fixations on celebrity and car crashes - became best known through the film Crash, and the surreal semi-autobiography Empire of the Sun. | His science fiction of the almost-normal - based around suburbia and urban hinterlands, fixations on celebrity and car crashes - became best known through the film Crash, and the surreal semi-autobiography Empire of the Sun. |
| But his feverish imagination, stoked by pre-lunch whisky and sodas in his study, found an unlikely appeal among pop musicians - many of whom liked to invoke a bit of Ballard in their work. | But his feverish imagination, stoked by pre-lunch whisky and sodas in his study, found an unlikely appeal among pop musicians - many of whom liked to invoke a bit of Ballard in their work. |
| JOY DIVISION | JOY DIVISION |
| The 1980 album Closer - the band's last record before the death of singer Ian Curtis - included the track Atrocity Exhibition, a chilling glimpse into psychosis. The track is based on Ballard's 1970 short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition, in which a psychotic mental hospital doctor tries to make sense of world events surrounding him. Curtis had written most of the song before reading Ballard's book, but the song - anchored round the oppressive chorus "this is the way, step inside" - is still heavily informed by Ballard's tale of a man restaging world events in his mind. | The 1980 album Closer - the band's last record before the death of singer Ian Curtis - included the track Atrocity Exhibition, a chilling glimpse into psychosis. The track is based on Ballard's 1970 short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition, in which a psychotic mental hospital doctor tries to make sense of world events surrounding him. Curtis had written most of the song before reading Ballard's book, but the song - anchored round the oppressive chorus "this is the way, step inside" - is still heavily informed by Ballard's tale of a man restaging world events in his mind. |
| COMSAT ANGELS/EMPIRE OF THE SUN Not the film, but the group... | COMSAT ANGELS/EMPIRE OF THE SUN Not the film, but the group... |
| Two bands who took their names from Ballard's work. Sheffield post-punkers the Comsat Angels, who enjoyed a brief flourish of cult success in the 1980s and have recently reformed, named themselves after a late-1960s short story. Sleepy Jackson frontman Luke Steele named his new band, Empire of the Sun, after Ballard's best-known novel, which was based on his own experiences as a child in war-torn China. | Two bands who took their names from Ballard's work. Sheffield post-punkers the Comsat Angels, who enjoyed a brief flourish of cult success in the 1980s and have recently reformed, named themselves after a late-1960s short story. Sleepy Jackson frontman Luke Steele named his new band, Empire of the Sun, after Ballard's best-known novel, which was based on his own experiences as a child in war-torn China. |
| THE KLAXONS' MYTHS OF THE NEAR FUTURE | THE KLAXONS' MYTHS OF THE NEAR FUTURE |
| Mercury Prize winners The Klaxons named their debut album Myths of the Near Future after Ballard's short story collection published in 1982. One of its tracks, Golden Skans - "Light touch my hands, in a dream of Golden Skans, from now on, you can forget all future plans" - marries the psychedelic lights of a concert to the planet scouring rays which transform the Earth in the short story Myths of the Near Future. Ballard alluded to environmental devastation often in his work, exploring how man-made landscapes and the retreat from the natural world might affect humanity. | Mercury Prize winners The Klaxons named their debut album Myths of the Near Future after Ballard's short story collection published in 1982. One of its tracks, Golden Skans - "Light touch my hands, in a dream of Golden Skans, from now on, you can forget all future plans" - marries the psychedelic lights of a concert to the planet scouring rays which transform the Earth in the short story Myths of the Near Future. Ballard alluded to environmental devastation often in his work, exploring how man-made landscapes and the retreat from the natural world might affect humanity. |
| BUGGLES JG Ballard: Lyrics influenced by his violent surrealism | BUGGLES JG Ballard: Lyrics influenced by his violent surrealism |
| Producer Trevor Horn's 1979 single Video Killed the Radio Star ushered in the MTV age - it was the first song played on MTV when it launched in 1981. Horn admits the song - about a radio star whose career is cut short by TV - is based on a Ballard short story The Sound Sweep, in which a mute boy obsessed with collecting music discovers an opera singer hiding in a sewer. It taps into Ballard's interest in the hold of mass media on people's lives, especially the influence of television, beamed into the same suburban homes that used to listen in their millions to radio. | Producer Trevor Horn's 1979 single Video Killed the Radio Star ushered in the MTV age - it was the first song played on MTV when it launched in 1981. Horn admits the song - about a radio star whose career is cut short by TV - is based on a Ballard short story The Sound Sweep, in which a mute boy obsessed with collecting music discovers an opera singer hiding in a sewer. It taps into Ballard's interest in the hold of mass media on people's lives, especially the influence of television, beamed into the same suburban homes that used to listen in their millions to radio. |
| RADIOHEAD'S OK COMPUTER | RADIOHEAD'S OK COMPUTER |
| Not a band to simply knock out two-minute pop songs on unrequited love, Radiohead condensed Ballard's preoccupation with the spectacle of tragedy - most famously explored in the story Crash - into some of their most celebrated work. OK Computer, their 1997 album, includes two songs influenced by Ballard's worldview. Opener Airbag describes a car crash almost in slow motion - "In a fast German car/ I'm amazed that I survived/An airbag saved my life" - while the haunting Lucky relates a near-death experience in a crashing airliner. Singer Thom Yorke, never one to wear his esoteric pursuits lightly, blogged excerpts of Ballard's anti-consumerist novel Kingdom Come in the run up to the release of the band's 2007 album In Rainbows. | Not a band to simply knock out two-minute pop songs on unrequited love, Radiohead condensed Ballard's preoccupation with the spectacle of tragedy - most famously explored in the story Crash - into some of their most celebrated work. OK Computer, their 1997 album, includes two songs influenced by Ballard's worldview. Opener Airbag describes a car crash almost in slow motion - "In a fast German car/ I'm amazed that I survived/An airbag saved my life" - while the haunting Lucky relates a near-death experience in a crashing airliner. Singer Thom Yorke, never one to wear his esoteric pursuits lightly, blogged excerpts of Ballard's anti-consumerist novel Kingdom Come in the run up to the release of the band's 2007 album In Rainbows. |
| HAWKWIND'S HIGH RISE | HAWKWIND'S HIGH RISE |
| Space-rock pioneers Hawkwind released a song called High Rise on their 1978 album PXR5, which they said was inspired by the author. Ballard's 1975 novel High Rise is set in a futuristic high-rise building that offers its pampered inhabitants everything they need - closing them off from the wider world. After intermittent power failures within the sealed-off building, the closed society begins to fragment, leading to a brutal, violent tribalism. Ballard believed an urban life aided by technology might warp the human psyche in unexpected ways. | Space-rock pioneers Hawkwind released a song called High Rise on their 1978 album PXR5, which they said was inspired by the author. Ballard's 1975 novel High Rise is set in a futuristic high-rise building that offers its pampered inhabitants everything they need - closing them off from the wider world. After intermittent power failures within the sealed-off building, the closed society begins to fragment, leading to a brutal, violent tribalism. Ballard believed an urban life aided by technology might warp the human psyche in unexpected ways. |
| MANIC STREET PREACHERS Manic Street Preachers have also relied on Ballard's words | MANIC STREET PREACHERS Manic Street Preachers have also relied on Ballard's words |
| The Welsh band's lyricists Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards were both fans of Ballard's work. Their bleak, unsettling 1994 album The Holy Bible included the song Mausoleum, a dystopian nightmare which included a sample of Ballard talking about his book Crash: "I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, I wanted to force it to look in the mirror..." Elsewhere, the capital punishment treatise Archives of Pain and the Intense Humming of Evil - which describes the horrors of the Holocaust through the emptiness of modern day Auschwitz - connect with Ballard's dystopian themes. | The Welsh band's lyricists Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards were both fans of Ballard's work. Their bleak, unsettling 1994 album The Holy Bible included the song Mausoleum, a dystopian nightmare which included a sample of Ballard talking about his book Crash: "I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, I wanted to force it to look in the mirror..." Elsewhere, the capital punishment treatise Archives of Pain and the Intense Humming of Evil - which describes the horrors of the Holocaust through the emptiness of modern day Auschwitz - connect with Ballard's dystopian themes. |
| GARY NUMAN's DOWN IN THE PARK | GARY NUMAN's DOWN IN THE PARK |
| New wave synth-pop man Gary Numan's Tubeway Army song Down In the Park is a Ballard-influenced dystopian nightmare. The lyric relates a story of humans raped and killed by androids for entertainment, viewed by a crowd in a nearby club - a fear and fetishism of technology that was a Ballard staple. Asked about his inspiration, Numan cited Philip K Dick and, of course, Ballard. The concrete futurama of other Numan songs contains much Ballardian imagery, with the twin themes of technological improvement and alienation explored succinctly in the 1979 hit Cars "Here in my car/Where the image breaks down/Will you visit me please?/If I open my door/In cars". | New wave synth-pop man Gary Numan's Tubeway Army song Down In the Park is a Ballard-influenced dystopian nightmare. The lyric relates a story of humans raped and killed by androids for entertainment, viewed by a crowd in a nearby club - a fear and fetishism of technology that was a Ballard staple. Asked about his inspiration, Numan cited Philip K Dick and, of course, Ballard. The concrete futurama of other Numan songs contains much Ballardian imagery, with the twin themes of technological improvement and alienation explored succinctly in the 1979 hit Cars "Here in my car/Where the image breaks down/Will you visit me please?/If I open my door/In cars". |
| SUEDE | SUEDE |
| You don't need to cite Ballard to have worn his influence. Suede, who always had a dash more pretension than most of their Brit Pop peers, paid homage to Ballard - knowingly or otherwise - with the cover image of their 1997 B-sides compilation, Sci-Fi Lullabies. Its picture of a scrapped RAF English Electric jet fighter lying on desolate moorland is the perfect Ballardian image; the writer repeatedly used downed or crashed aircraft in his work. Suede's lyrics often touched on a Ballardian conceit of urban life, rich with allusions to concrete, traffic and ennui. | You don't need to cite Ballard to have worn his influence. Suede, who always had a dash more pretension than most of their Brit Pop peers, paid homage to Ballard - knowingly or otherwise - with the cover image of their 1997 B-sides compilation, Sci-Fi Lullabies. Its picture of a scrapped RAF English Electric jet fighter lying on desolate moorland is the perfect Ballardian image; the writer repeatedly used downed or crashed aircraft in his work. Suede's lyrics often touched on a Ballardian conceit of urban life, rich with allusions to concrete, traffic and ennui. |
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