Smash hit

It is fast becoming our culture’s most compelling artistic rite of passage: drunk or sober? Edgy, relentless and unflinching, or songs you can actually hum? Another trip to the dark side or a daring, experimental foray into cracking a smile? Eminem might want to take a leaf out of Charles Bukowski’s book. The old drunken whoremonger, now settled into cosy domesticity with his cats, was one day appalled to find himself writing a poem about “the little bluebird in my heart”. So he turned that tussle into the poem itself.

There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? You want to screw up the works? You want to blow my book sales in Europe?

Tom Shone’s novel In the Rooms is published by Hutchinson

Under the influence

Raging Bull.................... Martin Scorsese

The Shining......................... Stephen King

Layla and Other Assorted Lovesongs............................. Eric Clapton

Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952........... Jackson Pollock

The Dream Songs........... John Berryman

Honky Chateau........................ Elton John