Tag: Greil Marcus

Did you Know Taxi Driver Was Inspired by Astral Weeks?

Astral Weeks Van Morrison Taxi Driver Director Martin Scorsese once claimed that the first fifteen minutes of the movie Taxi Driver (1976) were inspired by Van Morrison’s album Astral Weeks (1968). How is this violent movie connected to one of the most beautiful albums of all time?

Sources About the Connection

One of the main sources for the link is the essay, “Save the Last Waltz for Me,” where Greil Marcus wrote about the documentary The Last Waltz (1978) and hanging out with Martin Scorsese. The essay was originally published in New West (May 22, 1978) and reprinted in Marcus’s book, Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010 (p. 79).

Several Internet sources claim that the “first half” of Taxi Driver is based on Astral Weeks.  These sources may be perpetuating misinformation from Wikipedia based on a later Marcus interview.  Instead, Marcus’s 1978 essay actually asserts that much less of the movie is based on the album.

According to Marcus’s story, Scorsese put on the album when Marcus was visiting. “Madame George” came on.

Down on Cyprus Avenue,
With a childlike vision leaping into view,
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe,
Ford & Fitzroy, Madame George
Marching with the soldier boy behind;
He’s much older with hat on drinking wine,
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar;
And outside they’re making all the stops;
The kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops,
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops.

Scorsese said, “That’s the song.” He explained, “I based the first fifteen minutes of Taxi Driver on Astral Weeks, and that’s a movie about a man who hates music.”

The First Fifteen Minutes of Taxi Driver

During the first fifteen minutes of Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) drives around the dirty 1970s New York streets.  He applies for and gets the job as a taxi driver. Writing a letter, he describes how he cannot sleep at night and that after his shifts he has to clean off the back seat of his taxi.

Additionally, we see Bickle going to a pornographic movie.  There, he unsuccessfully tries to strike up a conversation with the woman who works at the concession stand.

Interpretations of “Madame George”

Critic Lester Bangs wrote an outstanding essay about Astral Weeks that gives some insight, even though he does not address the Taxi Driver rumor. But he did write about the “desolation, hurt, and anguish” in “Madame George.”

Bangs called the song, “Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I’ll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too.” He added, “The beauty, sensitivity, holiness of the song is that there’s nothing at all sensationalistic, exploitative, or tawdry about it.”

A number of writers have offered various interpretations of the song “Madame George.” And Van Morrison has reportedly disputed some of the interpretations.  But a piece in Rolling Stone correctly asserts that “Madame George” is “a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music.”

The Connection Between Movie and Song?

So what is the connection between the movie and the ambiguous song? Part of the connection seems to be that both are about lonely men wandering the dirty streets.

There is heartbreak in both the movie and the song, so the connection seems more of tone than a literal connection. In his essay, Bangs also declined to “reduce” the other songs on the album by trying to explain them.

You should read Bangs’s essay, but I will follow his lead and not try to explain the unexplainable any further. But the next time you watch Taxi Driver, think of the poetry found in the misery.  And reflect on the beauty of both the film and Astral Weeks.

Check out our other posts on connections between music and the movie Taxi Driver: Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” and Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky.”

Another Scorsese-Morrison Connection and Bonus Information About Taxi Driver: Martin Scorsese later used Van Morrison’s music for the beginning of another movie, Bringing Out the Dead (1999).  That film features some similarities to Taxi Driver.  Bringing Out the Dead opens with the main character driving a vehicle, although in this movie it is an ambulance instead of a taxi, and he is played by Nicolas Cage. During the scene, the music playing is Van Morrison’s “T.B. Sheets.” Regarding Taxi Driver, Obsessed With Film recently posted “50 Reasons Why Taxi Driver Might Just Be The Greatest Film of All Time.”

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    Anniv. of Civil War’s Start: Elvis’s American Trilogy

    Fort SumterOn April 12, 1861, the first shots of the American Civil War were fired. In the early morning hours at 4:30 a.m., Confederate soldiers opened fire on the Federal Government’s Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, South Carolina.

    The state of South Carolina had seceded from the United States in December 1860 soon after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. By the time he took office in March, the situation at Fort Sumter was nearing a crisis and seven states had seceded.

    Once the bombardment of Fort Sumter began on the morning of this date, it continued for 34 hours. And, on April 13 U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.

    According to David Herbert Donald in the book Lincoln (1995), during the weeks between Pres. Lincoln’s inauguration and the first shots at Fort Sumter, the president was physically exhausted by stress. But there was some relief after this date. Because the first shots were fired by the Confederates, the rebels now had the burden of starting the war, not the North.

    And after the first shots of the Civil War, Lincoln’s choices became clearer. Two days later, Pres. Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for volunteer soldiers. Within a week, Virginia voted to secede, and more states followed. The war would rage for the next four years.

    Perhaps no song in recent history has attempted to encapsulate the Civil War era like “An American Trilogy,” a song that Elvis Presley performed regularly in concert toward the end of his life. The song was actually three popular American songs arranged by Mickey Newbury. It begins with the unofficial Confederate anthem “Dixie,” followed by the African-American spiritual, “All My Trials,” and closes with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the Yankee marching song.

    What is the meaning of “An American Trilogy”? Paul Simpson’s The Rough Guide to Elvis notes that Mickey Newbury’s original intent is unclear, as the combination could have been about America’s lack of innocence or been intended ironically in reference to Pres. Nixon and the Viet Nam War.

    For Elvis, “An American Trilogy” might have been about patriotism. But Charles Reagan Wilson wrote in Judgment and Faith in Dixie (1997) that Elvis’s “slow, reflective, melancholy” performances of the song in the 1970s “suggested an emotional awareness of the complex past of regional conflict and Southern trauma.”

    In his excellent book Mystery Train (1975), critic Greil Marcus considered “An American Trilogy” to be Elvis’s attempt to combine all aspects of America and bring everyone together in a fantasy of freedom. But Marcus believed that Elvis’s song failed in that goal because the lack of complexity in the song creates “a throwaway America where nothing is at stake.” (p. 124.) For example, Marcus claimed, “There is no John Brown in his ‘Battle Hymn,’ no romance in his ‘Dixie,’ no blood in his slave song.”

    Maybe Marcus wants too much out of a four-minute song. Yes, the song is gaudy in its performance, and Elvis’s jumpsuit is a long way from the soldiers and slaves. But as discussed in another Chimesfreedom post, John Brown is inherent in “Battle Hymn,” just as the romance is inherent in “Dixie,” and as blood is inherent in the dying in “All My Trials.”

    There is another layer of confusion regarding the meaning of the song today because Elvis sings it. And Elvis, especially since his death, has become a complex American icon, as some consider him a revolutionary, some call him a thief, and some see him as a fat man steeped in excess. Yet perhaps the contradictions of Elvis, like the contradictions of the song, are the only way you can try to sum up the Civil War, in particular, and the complexity of America in general.

    Finally, one additional complication is that what Newbury and Presley apparently thought was an African-American spiritual, was not. Many today believe that the center of the trilogy, “All My Trials,” which is also sometimes called “All My Sorrows,” has somewhat muddled origins. Many current scholars believe that the song was assembled from fragments of existing songs in the 1950s and set to the music of a lullaby from the Bahamas to make it sound like a traditional spiritual.

    Newbury and Presley were not the only ones who thought it was an actual slave spiritual. In the 1950s, music critic Nat Hentoff wrote that it came from an African-American song, and in the 1960s, Joan Baez and others referred to the song as a slave spiritual.

    So, there are more questions in “An American Trilogy” than answers. But on a day that started the deadliest war in our nation’s history, I prefer the people with questions over the armed generals who think they have the answers.

    Bonus American Trilogy Version: For you Celebrity Apprentice fans, here is Meat Loaf singing “American Trilogy” at a 1987 tribute to Elvis Presley.

    What do you think is the meaning of “American Trilogy”? Leave a comment.

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    Oxford American Southern Music Issue

    Oxford American MagazineThe Oxford American magazine recently released its Twelfth Annual Southern Music Issue, and, as always, the magazine and enclosed CD are outstanding.  Oxford American is billed as “The Southern Magazine of Good Writing,” and once a year, it devotes an issue to southern music, including a CD of the music discussed in the magazine.  I first discovered the annual music issue in 1999, when my friend and co-worker Sid gave me my first copy, and I have been following the magazine ever since.

    The “southern music” of these issues consists of nuggets of a wide variety of the good stuff.  In the CDs I have from past annual music issues, the artists included people I already knew – such as Sonny Burgess, Odetta, and the Del McCoury Band – to new discoveries for me – like the Gosdin Brothers’ 1968 recording of “There Must Be Someone (I Can Turn To)” on this year’s CD.  There are occasional odd gems, like when the 2000 CD included a recording of Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish singing “Leaning” from Night of the Hunter that made me love the song and his voice outside the context of the haunting scene in the movie.

    Last year, Oxford American started a new approach with its music issue. Instead of covering a broad geography, the magazine began to focus on one state each year.  Last year was Arkansas, and this year’s issue concentrates on Alabama.  I really liked the previous broader approach, but the state-by-state approach is growing on me.  And either way, it is the best magazine-CD out there, and it still covers a wide range of styles and time, with songs from the 1940s through 2010.  Additionally, I like that the magazine’s approach has evolved over the years so now there is a feature story about each track on the CD.

    There are also other articles, like fiction by Greil Marcus and an article about the song-writing team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.  Never heard of the Bryants?  The article will tell you the story behind their songs recorded by the Everly Brothers, like “Bye Bye Love” (recorded by the Everlys just to get the $64 session fee).

    Oxford American has struggled through the years to stay in business (like another music magazine I loved, No Depression). From my recollection, and from the missing CD in my collection from one year, the magazine’s troubles peaked in 2004 when they stopped publishing for a period. Do not let that happen again. You may pick up the magazine at most bookstores or order the magazine and back issues from the website, which also has this year’s track listing (under “Further Listening”). FYI, I have no affiliation with the magazine, I just wanted to share.

    A version of this review was also published at NoDepression.com