‘The Echo of a Tune We Have Not Heard’: C.S. Lewis and the Music of The Waterboys

When interviewed about The Waterboys’ hit single, ‘The Whole of the Moon’, Mike Scott, the group's lead singer-songwriter, explained that ‘“The Whole of the Moon” is about someone like C.S. Lewis, who seemed to see so much and explore issues much more deeply than most people’. Scott read The Chronicles of Narnia when he was 8, as well as Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength by the age of 12. Lewis's influence on his songwriting is made evident by numerous references to these books in songs such as ‘Savage Earth Heart’, ‘Universal Hall’, and ‘Further Up, Further In’. Scott says that Lucy's entering Narnia through the wardrobe introduced him to ‘the notion of finding other worlds, other realities’. For Lewis, this was because there existed a higher reality than this world, ‘that of the spirit,’ being a Christian and a Platonist (but not a Gnostic). In addition, Scott and Lewis were both inspired by George MacDonald, W.B. Yeats, James Stephens, and the island of Ireland (where they each spent significant portions of their lives). Nevertheless, Scott has criticised the Christian dogma in Lewis's writing, saying that ‘the Christian framework of much of his work renders it frustrating to a non-Christian like me’. For Lewis, Christianity is where religion reached its true maturity, where the hints of Paganism were fulfilled, but for Scott, all religions point to the ‘Millennial Truth’, claiming that everyone is or can become God, with Jesus Christ being the foremost example.