I have been invited to do a talk about songwriting. There might be some other element to it in a coaching or mentoring area but I’ll cross that bridge whenI get to it.
It is nice to be asked!
Also, it comes with a fee.
pic - Amber Schmidt
I have done two or three sessions like this in the past at different state music festival events. (All attempts to create something like SXSW in the USA).
It was a bit like the way I was involved in a couple of the television music trivia shows early on. I was no good in a panel type situation and am basically a bit of a lair. (Not a larrikin , a lair…).
The result at the songwriting events was that I was not really seen to be serious enough about it or just being contrarian or annoying.
As I remember one was led by a fellow who talked emotionally about being introduced to the music of Bob Dylan by a teacher. The lair in me was rolling his eyes at this mawkish, sentimental life story. By a teacher! How revolting!
Then it was a female performer talking of being true to your inner emotions and self and it will all come out in a magical way and people out there will respond.
That sort of talk I found to be infantile and mediocre and all sorts of other negative words. And I tried to talk of different situations.
I still hold those views. I asked the room (I considered the other panellists to be in need of education as much as the poor novice songwriters in the audience) to think about the golden age of professional songwriting in Tin Pan Alley (in pre recorded music time - more to do with sheet music) and the Brill Building (recorded music era) . People showed up for work every day and smashed out classics in a production line situation. Emotional power was involved but it wasn’t the only thing. There was craft and skill involved. Also money.
I also asked about the influence of technology and production. None of that has stopped progressing in the mean time.
I love stories of classic songs making their way into the public sphere. The song Nature Boy being written by a drifting proto beatnik with long hair to his shoulders who slept under the Hollywood sign somehow getting the song Nature Boy to Nat King Cole. Also there was the story that the melody was so haunting because it was very similar to an old yiddish folk song. The melody was already out there. Already inside people. (thats the greatest thing - to come up with something people already know).
The story I heard of a young girl walking for miles before turning up at the studio where Little Richard was recording and handing over a few lyrics about her uncles and aunties which became the song Long Tall Sally. The story of Little Richards Tutti Frutti coming from a live rave up where he would declaim and shout wildly about all manner of sexual couplings, combinations and positions he would like to indulge in (or just watch). They all came out of bustling, shared, human lives. Common stories. Big, bold things.
But - songwriting.
“Songwriting is the greatest scam there is!” This was attributed to Chuck Berry .
But its a great scam! I don’t know who said that, but I agree!
An artist rarely gets paid for making records but will often get paid for writing a song that gets recorded and released. And performed. Think of writing a song that is recorded and played by a hundred different artists, a song that travels that far and wide but still contains something for all those people.
Back to the songs.
When people talk about songs and songwriting they are focused on the words. The text. People also think film scripts are all about words too. Raymond Chandler was hired to turn James M Cains thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice into a script. He found that the dialogue that looked so great on the page sounded bad when actors had to speak it. Its always the form that dictates.
Margret Roadknight is a friend and an amazing performer. She is from the folk and blues world. She has never written a song. She performs other peoples material. That is the tradition she is from. Now around 80 years old she rarely performs and when she talks of it all perhaps having stopped she is most perturbed that her repertoire will disappear when she no longer plays the songs.
Singer songwriters were invented by Carole King and James Taylor in 1971.
I mean the classic role or persona of a singer in everyday clothes (authentic - no showbusiness involved) presenting dramatic, confessional songs they have drawn out from their own lives.
All performers have to possess or conjure some kind of drama which is the reason for them being there and demanding your attention.
Before the singer songwriters there had been the Beatles and before them Buddy Holly who were performing artists who created their own songs or material. In the short time when both Holly and the Beatles were active entities they considered that their time in the spotlight was sure to be certainly brief and that they would have to consider a life after it would be - inevitably - over. They’d have to do something serious and adult. That attitude effected the kinds of songs they wrote.
Before this new situation of there being artists who provided their own material there were performers and songwriters. Separate people, separate crafts.
In some ways I think this was much better.
A&R people matched the song to the performer. Artist and Repertoire. (There are still A&R people but they mostly deal in pr).
This division of songwriters and singers has continued to happen, in a little way, in the Country Music part of the international music scene.
Words. They are important for the writer only. They force the music in certain directions as far as arrangement, texture, tempo and power are concerned. They also interest the writer - and perhaps a listener - in making them take the activity seriously. To take themselves seriously. That can draw a listener in as well. Intensity and yes, drama.
A voice is much more important than words.
Some of my favourite songwriters?
The Doors. A great collective of young men.Very close friends and skilled players. So close that many of the songs and images identified as coming from the - brilliant - singer Jim Morrison were written by guitarist Robbie Krieger. Full of drama. Full of fire and power. Great for two and three minute packets of sound and ten minute epics.
The Rolling Stones. With Brian Jones in them and then with Brian Jones no longer alive but still deep within them. Amazing group SOUND. Occasional words coming out of that. Mick Jagger being an incredible mimic while they were regularly releasing great music. Knowing the way bands work I think Brian was the song and Mick and Keith wrote it up.
LOVE. Forever Changes one of the greatest albums in terms of intense songwriting meeting classic arrangement and production techniques when LA was a peak music city. A freakish talent inside the big machine, it happens! Unknowable but intensely personal lyrics, beautiful sounds, beautiful melodies and dynamics. Full of Drama! Arthur Lee wrote all the songs but the most well known - Alone Again Or - which was written by the guitarist Bryan Maclean.
The Byrds, another LA collective. I think this small group of artists here are all really bands of young men. When young men need to be in groups. But the Byrds are the most collective of them. Anybody who tries to play one of their songs is frustrated because there is really no lead vocal. It shifts all the time between four great singers. Gene Clarke, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Chris Hillman. All very unique and strong voices. Crosby with his amazing harmony drifting though it all. Their singles from 1965-67 are just perfection. Also nothing but drama.
I could go on as far as bands go. Split Enz first album is great for their prog sensibility and presence of songwriter Phil Judd. I find it to be very exotic.
Classic period Dragon - also from New Zealand - had a great songwriter in keyboard player Paul Hewson and charismatic singer in Marc Hunter. Loads of drama too.
Mike Rudd came from New Zealand to eventually form Spectrum and then Ariel. The early 70s Australian scene had great players but didn’t have many songwriters.
Shit, another band with some New Zealand elements (brothers Reg Mombassa and Peter O’Doherty) . Mental As Anything had four great songwriters and one exceptionally great singer in Martin Plaza. Bass player Peter O’Doherty wrote the amazing Beserk Warriors. By itself, a love story of two Vikings with beautiful chords and dynamics but when considered as a song about Bjorn and Anna from Abba it took on new dimensions. Amusing and witty, but charmingly musical and full of real pathos.
Oh no! Another Kiwi genius! Jonathan Bree. After the Brunettes, he really got his freak on. This is one of the great modern blues songs. Writing, production, performing. He has it all.
One more Auckland native, Lawrence Arabia aka James Milne.
The late Renee Geyer did an album in 1998 where she wanted songs by Australian songwriters. I sent her a tape of this song by Peter Milton Walsh from the Apartments. One of my oldest mates and a great inspiration. You can blame him for my over use of the major seventh chord.
Renee Geyer also covered this song written by Clare Moore for another album. She had the best players in Australia working for her. She brought everything up in value.
One of the few times one of my songs has been interpreted. Tex Perkins on his debut solo album in 1996. Thank you, Tex.
Ok, some of my favourite singer songwriters.
Tom Rush. The Walker Brothers, among many others covered this in a richly arranged production, but when you hear the original demo its all there already.
Much like this classic by Bobby Womack . Its all there in the demo.
But the production of the title track for the movie of teh same name (and inspiration for Jackie Brown by Tarantino) is so good. The groove and the urgent vocal with dynamic string flourishes. It is so top shelf!
Van Dyke Parks. The rest of this album is not to my taste, all Caribbean steel band tonal stuff, but this is impressive. I love his first ever song (allegedly) High Coin and play it regularly.
Mickey Newbury - amazing songwriter and also arranged three folk songs for this classic.
Leon Russell . He wrote nothing but classics and became hugely popular whilst remaining unknowable.
Carly Simon. This is a real female blues. A real middle class blues too, I guess. The anguish is real.
Joni Mitchell putting a few of her peers in their place. Nobody can really copy her. Very autobiographical writer, I don’t know how she coped with people always knowing her business. But she traded in it I guess. She wrote and played in open tunings due to a childhood episode of Polio making Barre chords difficult for her to play. This album was said to be about a drive across the USA, in disguise, with her still unknown Australian lover…
Vic Godard. Subway Sect. The most enigmatic character of the first wave of UK punk.
Urge Overkill - (Blackie Onassis). His one contribution to an album of classic party anthems. A bleak blues set to a hip hop beat. This album, Saturation, was such a great meeting of band and production sensibilities and record company ambition. Thats all ya need!
The Replacements - Paul Westerberg. Great voice and great songs, with and without the Replacements.
Queens Of The Stone Age - Josh Homme. Era Vulgaris was such a great album. The guys had swagger and chops.
Kim Salmon. Kim is so productive. Perfectly imperfect is all I can say about his work.
Blue Oyster Cult - mainly Donald “Buck” Roeser but all who sailed in them really!
Lou Reed with the last word.
Believe me, I could go on! I mostly try to educate myself with listening to a lot of jazz. Where do you relegate Miles Davis to in this world? And where do you put instrumentalists like Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie. In some ways jazz people seemed to be beyond the world of tightly controlled pieces of uptight musical territory. They respected no borders or shapes. It was all there for the taking. Bird took off from well known standards and made them into something else. But Dizzy wrote Salt Peanuts and Manteca , the latter probably inspiring a few rock n roll grooves.
Then there’s Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. How many classics did they get down in paper and tape?
Also, Lee Perry and all those classic reggae recordings, often using the same backing track for different songs and singers.
Some interesting books that are tangentially connected to this.
1971 by David Hepworth
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/1971-never-a-dull-moment-978178416206
Save The Last Dance For Satan by Nick Tosches.
https://www.nortonrecords.com/kb3-save-the-last-dance-for-satan-by-nick-tosches/
The Life And Times of Little Richard - Qasar of Rock N Roll