Interesting Songwriting Tip

Interesting: Songwriting Tips – Songs as stepping stones | Make It In Music http://bit.ly/gHQ2J9 RTYD musicians

Drummerless

I have posted a couple of ads on a couple of sites: Party Sounds, ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP-ADS, and Gumtree. Alright, so that's a Berkshire couple of sites, i.e. three.

And I've had a Berkshire couple of bites, too. One from a drummer in his 20s, who seems very keen. Too keen? My reservation, though is less his overt keenness, and more his long-term commitment; though he assures me he could commit to at least 3 years, if not more. Is that good? Maybe, it is these days.

Another sent a very brief email admitting he wasn't the world's most complex player but he could keep good time and play a funky groove. No links. No videos.

And finally, there was a response from a drummer who is in a band already that has a proper website and are releasing music and playing regularly, or were. They look like they're in the their 30s - so not long before you see them on ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP! Anyway, this guy says due to the more recent inactivity of his current band, he is ready to try out with others. Like the student, who sent links to You Tube videos of himself in his room playing along to Killing in the Name, I was also able to see this guy play, in this case, at The Bull & Gate with the afore mentioned band.

The latter seems to be edging it, though his responses to my emails, albeit convincing, are a little slow, and the last non-existent.

I am dreading the audition situation. I hope instead that an email from the right guy, or girl, will arrive like an epiphany.

In the meantime, I have been spending evenings away from the computer and with my notebook on my lap in front of the tele, or with my drum machine, headphones and guitar on the floor in front of the tele, writing new songs for a new set. Which has been nice. The fact I have been labouring lyrically over one particular song, has been a useful process, because it has pushed me to write and write and write in order to find the seed of what it is I'm actually trying to say. I'm still not sure? In between this, other ideas pop up as if the songwriting muscles are warming up again.

Like Johnny Mercer said in a TV clip during a recent documentary about the great American songwriter - there is no point in writing songs to be shut away in drawers.

'God' unplugged

Since having to play solo to fill the gap in the bill at the Guildford gig, I have been reminded just how much I enjoy playing my songs on the acoustic. This in turn inspired a recent trawling of my songbooks, which reminded me just how many songs I have that suit this type of rendition. Many of them were of course written on the acoustic, so this isn't really a surprise.

Pocket Rocket also spend a good 2-3 years playing the acoustic/unplugged circuit, which was both fun and challenging. Playing to people who are listening intently. Who are silent. Playing with the audience's expectations. It's a totally different kettle of fish to plugging in and rocking out.

So now, with some encouragement from Colin, I am into the idea of performing this way again, either alone or with an 'unplugged' outfit. And the Sunday afternoon acoustic sessions that I'm promoting at The Libertine will be an opportunity for me to play a few songs between other acts, or even a set of my own. Not just when artists pull out of bookings at the last minute.

Quite conveniently, my newest song would perfectly suit such a performance. Having heard recently from my mate that his ex-partner Rachel had finally died of cancer, I was moved to write a tribute to her. Back when my mate and I met, Rachel was living with him and endured our crash-course friendship and our regular all-nighters, from which she would disengage early to take to her bed with a good book. I always got the feeling that she was doing so to leave us in peace rather than because she couldn't stand to listen to us any longer. Come the morning she would be down to find us still going, but sporadically moaning, and cursing "Oh God" to describe how wrecked we felt. "God" she would say from the kitchen, pausing momentarily to make sure we were listening, "has got nothing to do with it". How right she was.

Around this time my mum was diagnosed with cancer and a few months later she lost her battle with it. Rachel and my mate split-up soon after and our shared emotional turmoil gave my mate and me good reason, we thought, to let all hell loose, in both Abbey Wood and Highbury.

Anyway, that's another story. It's not quite complete but the song's called God Has Got Nothing To Do With It so listen out for it.

Rest in peace Rachel.

Department Store Stairwell Snog

I love it when a song finally comes together after weeks, sometimes months of being picked up, put down, taken to bed, taken out on the bicycle, and even at times forgotten. I love the dilemma at this point about whether to have a double verse & bridge before the first chorus, or a single one.

I love it when you finally get a middle-8 together that changes key and comes in and goes out perfectly. I love it when you get to delete or scribble out those bits of unfinished verses in order to neaten up the arrangement.

But what I don't like so much is losing lines like 'department store stairwell snog'. I hate to let them go. But I just can't seem to get this is in.

The song, which is about the experience of returning to my hometown, about feeling "invisible" there, and it inspiring me to contemplate the path I have taken since leaving , and what I have achieved, and who I am and stuff, needs a title.

I don't think 'Department Store Stairwell Snog' is it. Maybe 'Department Store Stairwell Song'?

I want my habit back

"Songs don't tend to come to you if there's no outlet for them. Because I couldn't get any records out, songs would occasionally come but I knew as soon as we had a contract the floodgates would open". Here, here Joe. Joe Strummer that is, on the voice over for Julian Temple's bio-pic 'The Future is Unwritten'

This sums up how I feel about songwriting. I miss the compulsion I had for it immensely. I want it back. But there is not the 'outlet' so the habit, in thrall to the necessity, is broken.

I wrote songs compulsively from about 15 years of age until my early 30s. I have an archive box full of A6 size note books and hundreds of songs to show for those years. But as soon as the gigs became fewer and further between and the sets of no more than 40 minutes in length, so the need for new material greatly decreased.

I am lucky because I was able to turn my creativity to making paintings. I have done this for the last 5 years, but it is not the same. Not for me. To be honest, I'd rather be under contract to deliver a series of albums. Then I could rekindle the compulsion.

But would I have anything interesting to say? (Of course I would!) Is my best work behind me? Should I continue to play the best of my back-catalogue 'cos no bugger (apart from a few friends) would know? And who'd care if they found out that at 41, I was singing a song I had written at 21? Noel gets away with it.

Noel Gallagher (41), in his Guardian Magazine interview with Simon Hattenstone, this weekend, talks about writing songs post-Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger and how this was a time when he was simply "putting out records for the sake of it". This must be a creatively challenging time for successful musicans. You get your 3-5 years at the top and then, apart from the die-hards, people stop caring about what you have to say. You are now rich and out of touch with the people that you touched on the way up. If you are Noel Gallagher, you are also 41. You are married. You are a father. You want to be a responsible one. So there goes your edge. Right?

Well, not necessarily. Because there are mature singers and musicians that creatively appear to make a seamless transition into maturity and settling down. They do this, I think, by dealing with it in their lyrics. And with a less-fickle audience, who continue to be interested in what they have to say. They aren't attempting to sing to the youth. Instead their audience can relate to their songs about the challenges of middle-age. Because there is, of course, still an angst, some anger and fear associated with middle age. I'm thinking of someone like Julian Cope. He managed the transition. I don't know about his latest stuff but in the mid-90s he was singing about his wife and children. He and his music never lost their edge.

Unlike, Julian Cope I'm not making a living from my music. Music slipped a few places from the number one slot it was at for so many years. Like most married men with children, my time is more precious than ever. I do miss the days when all I did, all I wanted or needed to do with a passion was write songs. But writing and thinking about all this has got me to thinking that I'd like to attempt ot focus my creative attention on some songwriting again for a while. In the evenings, when I'm not painting. Regardless of the lack of outlet for new material. Besides, that's just making excuses, right? I could always go and play new songs at open-mic nights, anyway, couldn't I?

So, I'm off to write a song about the fall an institution close to my heart, Woolworths.

How to lose twenty years

I'm revamping another old song. I gotta stop this. This one, entitled Happy at Work was written retospectively about about a crush that a work-colleague had on me in my early-20s - twenty or so years ago. It was written around '95 and just after my band back then, 67, found itself without a deal again.

67's music was pretty heavy in a US hardcore kind of way. We caught the 'grunge' wave of the early 90s. We had always been rocky but as our musical attention turned to the wave of US lo-fi, grunge and hardcore bands of the period, so our sound began to gain in dynamic, angst and feedback. I began to push my voice too, inspired by Black Francis and Kurt Cobain and the like. However, I always retained the English accent - a cross between Hugh Cornwell and David Gedge, they would say. You can hear some of it on the player attached to my social network site.
By 94/95 British bands were making a resurgence. The likes of Blur, Suede, Oasis and Supergrass. We realised we had to change to survive. We changed the band's name to the more English-sounding Tea and drafted in another musician to stir things up a bit. He happened to be a saxophonist but he could have played the accordian - we didn't know what it was we wanted, we just wanted someone else. The sax worked well though, adding a touch of Roxy to our guitar noise and gradually the angst came out of the vocal and irony and wit took it's place.

We had already started falling out over money, money we hadn't even made yet and royalties we hadn't even receieved. Oh, and solo careers that weren't even possible.

67 had had a small deal and I had been very friendly with the record company staff. I think there was some jealousy about that and some feeling that I was in too much of a postion of power. This and the fact that certain people's opinions were being ignored. That kind of thing. We were still young and arrogant and just a little angry. We were drinking a lot too. Anyway, the cracks were showing long befor 67 became Tea, so didn't last long. It ended in a dramatic and comical post-gig scenario involving the drummer's wife, a flying drumstick and a balaclava. Think: "It's your fucking wife! She's not my wife! Whatever fuck she is, alright..."

We had some good songs though. A strong and cohesive set which included a stonking cover of Teardrop Explodes' Reward. Some of these songs have lasted to be played more recently in Pocket Rocket's set.

Happy at Work has been on my mind for a while as a possible revamp. It's quirky and very English. I wrote it about the time I was doing temporary clerical work for BT. I'd got this job at the job centre to get off the dole for a while. I worked for a couple of years for them on temporary contracts and finally got let go for, let's just say, doing something that I shouldn't have. I wrote it form the perspective of an older woman at my work who had a crush on me. The irony is that now, I am her age. I feel this irony when I sing the line: "We kissed and I lost twenty years". At the time she at 40-ish could afford to lose twenty years, me being 24-ish, could not. Now, of course, I can.

This woman was just a bit tarty, short and skinny with long black hair. Small tits, cat-like eyes. We snogged a few times and soon she was really after me. Stroking my leg in the office. Making eyes at me. Buying me stuff. The problem was her husband was a bit of a crook by all accounts. I remember she came in one day with a shiner, so I knew not to take our 'encounters' too far. I think I even met him at one point. So she's so into me that one night she comes to see my band play at the Rock Garden and she buys a black biker jacket to try to impress me. Unfortunatley, I'm too busy with my friends and self-absorbed to notice and so I upset her by not appearing to even care. I didn't mind the occasional snog but I certainly wasn't gonna go home with her as she had suggested when her husband was away.

Happy at Work is unusual in that it doesn't really have a chorus. It has a repeated guitar chord phrase that punctuates the verses. When it was written it had alot of these; too many. They upset the momentum of the song so I've taken a few out. It was written in A and half way through changed to E. I have put the whole song in D which enables me to sing the early verses in a lower register and to belt out the last verses in the higher one. This has the same effect and is smoother that the original key change.

Bearing in mind that we don't get to play more than a thirty minute set these days every 6-8 weeks, it's gonna be a while before this song will make the set, if it ever does. Still, in the process of revamping Happy at Work and revisiting those times, I did momentarily enjoy losing twenty years myself. All that hair. All that beer. All that testosterone.

The song don't necessarily remain the same

I have been writing songs since I was 14 or 15. I started writing lyrics before I could play guitar. Mostly about the end of the world.

It was the early 1980s and new tensions between the US and Russia inspired the so-called Second Cold War and resumed talk of nuclear war. The threat seemed very real. I was fascinated. Not by the politics but by the idea of Armageddon and a post-apocalypse planet Earth. I even bought my Dad a copy of a book called the Fate of the Earth for his birthday. He didn’t read it. I did. Well, not all of it because it went on a bit. I was particularly attracted to the idea of being the only remaining human being after the apocalypse; I had a song called Adam and Eve Mark II which I don’t need to explain to you.

Once I could play guitar, writing songs became a more complex process. But I loved it. I started keeping a notebook of song words and ideas. Once I had finished a song I would neatly write it all out and proudly look it. Then I would make some scribbled changes; and have to write it all out neatly again.

I quickly got to the point that I always had a song on the go in my head. At about 20, having moved to London with my band then called 1967, the necessity to write songs increased. We played gigs more often and hearing so much new music we changed musical styles and hairstyles with some frequency.

As the songwriter I could stay one step ahead of the band but learned quickly to deal with the frustration caused by the speed with which I was able to deliver new songs for arrangement and inclusion in the set. The set, once rehearsed, like a football team on a winning streak, didn’t need changing too often. Songs waited patiently on the bench, some never ever getting a game.
For the next twelve years or so, I wrote constantly. I always had a few song ideas on the go at any one time. Sometimes songs would take weeks or months to complete. Other times, I would write them in one sitting in a flash of inspiration, often on the way home from a night on the tiles. In the back of my mind though I think I was aware that I had to strike while the iron was hot. This prolific output might not last forever. The angst would turn to acceptance and grumpiness, the unrequited love would hopefully one day be requited and the self-indulgence would ultimately become time spent alone at home.

By my early thirties I started to write less. I was less inspired to write songs. I could make excuses. So I will. The band was playing less often so there wasn’t such a need for new material. I was settling down. I got married. We had a kid. And I wasn’t going out half as much. End of excuses.

My interests turned back to art, which I had pretty much renounced in favour of rock ‘n’ roll at 19. With the encouragement of my wife I returned to art school. I’ll get to the point in a minute.
The point is, earlier this year with a new band in place, I began to feel the need for new songs. I wrote a few. And I was in the lucky position of having a back-catalogue that I could cherry pick the best bits of. So one day I was listening to some old rehearsal recordings, made around 1990/91 and there was a group of songs which comprised our set at the time that I thought were really strong. None of these songs made it to the recording stage nor did they survive long
enough to make the set that we were playing when as 67 we got signed in 1993.

I figured these songs might be worth dusting down and playing they were so strong. The problem was that I felt uncomfortable about their lyrical content. Now I wrote these songs. But I obviously wrote them with a major twenty-something’s hard-on and after listening to too much Led Zeppelin. They were the stuff of cock-rock. I didn’t feel comfortable singing this kind of stuff. So I decided to try rewriting the lyrics to one of them. After playing with various ideas for weeks and feeling like I was getting nowhere, I felt inspired by the mood my wife was in on returning from seeing her family in California. She had jet-lag, which she treats by sleeping for a week and was feeling just a little blue about being back in miserable grey old England. So I wrote it about this. Bright young California vs. the dull old England; careful to make it clear this was how she was feeling not me. I would never be so unpatriotic.

It was funny because my bass player, who had played on the original song, then entitled Cleopatra, couldn’t remember the song or the bass line for the life of him - it was nearly twenty years since he had last played it – so I taught him to play his own bass line. I halved the length of the original verses and a new three and half minute pop song was born. Its new title is less concise: Post-California English Winter Blues. For a song that was written 20 years ago, it’s got quite a contemporary, White Stripesy sound. It’s now our set opener.