Hi everyone
This is my first post here.
When I was teenager in the 1970s, I was a huge Roxy fan. Now, years later, I am in my fifties, and I am about to have my first novel published - and there is a connection between this novel and the These Foolish Things album, and specifically Ferry's covers of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, and The Tracks of My Tears, which I thought might interest people. The novel is based on the extraordinary events surrounding the creation of Charles Dickens's first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and its main character is Dickens's illustrator, Robert Seymour, who shot himself shortly after working on a picture of a dying clown for the Pickwick project. This week, on the novel's facebook page, I have been writing about events in my background which led me towards writing the novel - and the question arises as to when I first became interested in the motif of the "sad clown", which is so important in my novel. I suspect that I first became aware of the sad clown via the These Foolish Things album. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall has a line about a clown who cried in an alley, and the emotional power of the motif was truly brought home by The Tracks of My Tears, with its idea that a smile does not necessarily represent happiness. Anyway, if you would like to read the post, it appeared yesterday (May 3rd) at:
http://www.facebook.com/deathandmrpickwick A follow-up post, on clown imagery in Steve Harley's song Ritz, is also relevant.
if you are interested, the novel is called Death and Mr Pickwick, and further information can be found at:
http://www.deathandmrpickwick.com It will be published on May 21st by Random House (in the UK) and on June 23rd by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (in the USA).
And one final thing: in a modern-day section of my novel, I mention A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, and although I refer to it as Dylan's song, I had Ferry's cover on my mind as I wrote the section. I think it's a brilliant cover, and I much prefer it to Dylan's original.
Best wishes
Stephen Jarvis