Wednesday, August 18, 2004 AD
T-Bone Burnett and the Light of the World
In the comments to my previous post on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Bunnie correctly pointed out that, in addition to the great script and acting, not to mention the "beautiful sacramentalism", the music in the film is "divine". The music - including, I assume, the Soggy Bottom Boys' barnstorming hit, "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" - was written by T-Bone Burnett, who I first came across in Steve Turner's 1988 book, Hungry for Heaven: Rock'n'Roll & the Search for Redemption.
Hungry for Heaven is an interesting book detailing the influence of religion on pop music, even Turner does seem to have the slightly odd belief that the entire history of pop music up to 1980 was merely preparatory for the arrival upon the scene of U2. Erm, whatever, dude.
But one of the most compelling figures in the book is T-Bone Burnett, whose music I'm not really familiar with (other than the gorgeous "Till the Heart Caves In", co-written with Roy Orbison, and one of the highlights of kd lang's album, "Drag"), but who comes across very well in the brief references to him in Turner's book. Burnett is a Christian, partly because, as he puts it, "Christianity has survived Christians for two thousand years now, which from my point of view is evidence that maybe something is going on there" (p.155).
Two quotes in particular have stuck in my mind ever since I read the book some years ago. Turner describes how Burnett drew inspiration from CS Lewis' comment that "I believe in God like I believe in the sun. Not just because I can see Him, but because by Him I can see everything else". As Burnett put it in a 1980 interview:
Hungry for Heaven is an interesting book detailing the influence of religion on pop music, even Turner does seem to have the slightly odd belief that the entire history of pop music up to 1980 was merely preparatory for the arrival upon the scene of U2. Erm, whatever, dude.
But one of the most compelling figures in the book is T-Bone Burnett, whose music I'm not really familiar with (other than the gorgeous "Till the Heart Caves In", co-written with Roy Orbison, and one of the highlights of kd lang's album, "Drag"), but who comes across very well in the brief references to him in Turner's book. Burnett is a Christian, partly because, as he puts it, "Christianity has survived Christians for two thousand years now, which from my point of view is evidence that maybe something is going on there" (p.155).
Two quotes in particular have stuck in my mind ever since I read the book some years ago. Turner describes how Burnett drew inspiration from CS Lewis' comment that "I believe in God like I believe in the sun. Not just because I can see Him, but because by Him I can see everything else". As Burnett put it in a 1980 interview:
If Jesus is the Light of the World, there are two kinds of songs you can write .You can write songs about the light, or you can write songs about what you can see from the light. That's what I try to do. (p 165)Turner points out that for Burnett, "a bad piece of song-writing was never redeemed by a spiritually accurate lyric". Burnett explained this to Rolling Stone in 1982:
A bricklayer's job is to build a good wall that will stand against the rain and wind. Writing JESUS on it isn't going to help it withstand the storms. (p.165)A quote which should be emblazoned in ten-foot high letters above the front door of every CCM record label, as well as being a great expression of the doctrine of vocation.
