Chess in music
Posted by Ben Milne on 18 January 2008 - 7:17pm.
Bobby Fischer, madman, anti-semite and chess genius is dead at the age of 64:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7195840.stm
and ever since I heard the news a certain Prefab Sprout lyric has planted itself in my brain ("When bobby fischer's plane touches the ground he'll take those russian boys and play them out of town").
Where else do the worlds of music and chess collide? Apart from the eponymous musical, the only song I can think of is "Your Move" by Yes. Any others?
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"Only a pawn in their game"?
Possibly tangential.
Much as I hate to admit this...
Chris de Burgh's 'Spanish Train' is loosely based on the old 'play chess with Death to save your soul' story.
As is Scott Walker's 'The Seventh Seal' on Scott 4 - which is a far, far better exploration of the same thing (hence the title, which is a bit of a giveaway)
I, too, have been humming 'Cue Fanfare' all day (and just how long did it take me to remember the title of the song!) A wonderful song from a wonderful album - far better then the highly overrated (comparatively speaking) Steve McQueen, in my humble.
Urrrr
"The Seventh Seal" by Scott Walker on Scott 4 is all set in a chess game, after the Bergman movie...(arrrgh - rereads thread and realises previous poster also said this...)
You should rename this thread...
Rook n' roll.
God I'm a wag...
Knights in white satin? Pawn
Knights in white satin? Pawn To Be Wild?
Van der Graaf Generator...
...was their oeuvre not steeped in chess imagery? Off the top of my head they had an album called Pawn Hearts and Peter Hammill's first solo was called Fool's Mate with a chess board on the sleeve. And Godbluff sounds like it ought to be some mighty catastrophic move that only gets played once a century.
Bob Dylan's Love Minus Zero/No Limit...
...contains the lines:
In ceremonies of the horsemen
Even the pawn must hold a grudge
And Planet Waves had Ceremonies Of The Horsemen as a working title.
I guess there's an obvious
I guess there's an obvious connection between prog and chess - all those teenage boys hunched over the chessboard while they listen intently to Tales Of Topographic Oceans.
2:20am? Ben lad, get to bed!
No one's mentioned White Rabbit, 'When the men on the chess board get up & tell you where to go'. And big ups for the Sprout reference. I'm off to look for the album.
Many miles before I sleep
Sleep? I can't - I'm at work until 5am.
Iggy?
'I'm Board'?
"Your move, Mr Bastard..."
Chess fits into the Wu-Tang Clan's Eastern philosophy; see the cover art (inside and out) for "Liquid Swords" by Genius/GZA and the song "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" on "36 Chambers".
They quite like an evening of KerPlunk too though.
Wood Rendered Invisible By Trees
Chess records?
Home for many years to Muddy Waters who recorded "She Moves Me".
Don't think anyone's mentioned it yet, but...
Queen's inventively-titled second album 'Queen II' features a track on one side (back in them days when LPs and cassettes were king, young kids nowadays etc etc) about the White Queen, and about the Black Queen on the other - and a picture of a chess piece on the back of the sleeve, too, I seem to recall.
Don't tell me
the world's forgotten 'Red Queen to Gryphon Three' already??