What's it all about, Sandi?

The singer Sandi Thom’s much-discussed online ‘meltdown’ attested to just how upset she was that her latest single had not been play-listed by any of the big radio stations (i.e. the ones with lots of listeners). She was particularly aggrieved that Radio 2 had ignored it, because she considered it to be catchy and ‘perfect’ for their format. She exclaimed, tearfully, that: “It’s a fucking good song, OK? There is no reason why they need to do this to me!” We must assume from this that it simply did not occur to her that the Radio 2 producers may not have liked her song, thus ensuring that “22 million people won’t get to hear it.”

You may recall that Ms Thom came to fame in 2006 on the back of what was essentially a clever social networking campaign, when reports suggested that 100,000 people were watching shows being streamed live from her ‘bedroom’. The internet is a wonderful thing, the story suggested, because it allowed unknown artists like Sandi to connect with huge numbers of fans and to be discovered in a whole new way. Apart from the fact that the technical specifications required to handle such a massive number of live streams would have been beyond the simple bedroom artist that she purported to be, Ms Thom was also already signed to a record company. The ‘100,000 live streams for an unknown independent artist’ story had, in the immortal words of Damon Runyon, more than a touch of the old phonus balonus about it, but whether we believed it or not, it certainly gave her career a splendid kick-start.

Since her big hit (You may remember it: 'I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair'), her sales have been on a relentless downward curve and, without wishing to be unkind, it is clear that her appeal has become rather more selective.

The online commentary on her confessional has been divided as to whether it represented:

  

a) A blubbering, pathetic illustration of an utterly bewildering sense of entitlement. She’s written a song … so what?

b) A depressingly public display of her fragile mental health. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean; it looks like there could be something more going on than ‘nobody likes my brilliant single’.  

or  

c) A tawdry marketing ploy. How many folk were talking or writing about her single last week? How many folk are talking or writing about it now? After the meltdown and attendant furore, she was invited, among other things, to appear on the Chris Moyles Radio Show (now who could have predicted that?) 

You can judge for yourself as to what her rant really means. My feeling is that options a, b and c are all, to one extent or another, probably close to the truth.

I am, however, going to make a more charitable observation and suggest that Sandi has –intentionally or not- aired a refreshingly candid snapshot of the pathetic little beast that dwells within the heart of every creative person, the needy critter that raises its voice whenever a work of art is released into the world at large.  

It’s an abject, pitiable, whimpering thing that says:

“Look. I’ve made something. It took me a long time and I’ve put a lot into it. Like it, please. Please, please, please … like it.”

Scuttling around in the dark, neglected cellar of creativity, this wretched creature nurses a devastating and little-uttered truth:

Your sense of self-worth is based on how complete strangers react to your creative endeavours. How is that working out for you? 

Sandi's rant

Making an album, part 7: How not to write a song for Shania Twain

A few years ago, I was asked to provide some material for an up-and-coming young female country singer. A friend in the business who was familiar with my writing style (I was going to use the phrase ‘writing prowess’ there, but that would have been a bit of an exaggeration) thought that I might have some songs which -given the right treatment- could have worked for this particular vocalist. My name was passed to the singer’s manager, who also happened to be her mother. After a perfunctory phone call (“I’ve been told you write songs. We’re looking for songs”), an appointment was made for us to meet. I packed my guitar and notebook and drove out to a big house in the country, about a mile and half from the middle of nowhere.

Upon my arrival, it was made clear that the singer’s mum /manager (let’s call her The Mumager) was the director of operations. I was led into a room that could have passed for a middle-sized function suite (complete with its own stage) and it was explained that I would be auditioning my songs to her before she decided if the enterprise was to proceed beyond first base. I’m being polite here when I say that she was not the kind of person who liked to waste time with idle chit-chat. Inasmuch as I had expected anything, I thought that I would at least have met the singer before introducing her to the songs which, in my head at least, had ‘surprise country smash’ written all over them, but the daughter was -as yet- nowhere to be seen. The Mumager, with a small hand gesture, invited me to take the stage and perform. She positioned herself on a chair a few feet from the raised platform and, from that distance, looked like the smallest and possibly the toughest audience I would ever have to play to. There was no point in trying to crack a joke to ease the tension, because the meagre conversational scraps of our opening exchanges had made it obvious that my sense of humour and hers had about as much in common as scrap metal and scrambled eggs.

Mindful of that ever-useful mnemonic beloved of all performers (TNT MAFFOY – ‘Try Not To Make a Fucking Fool of Yourself’), I had come prepared with a number of possible contenders for the surprise country hit of the year. I assumed that The Mumager’s idea of country music would have been based on songs she had heard played by proper country musicians. As I’ve stated in some previous articles, I’m not a particularly gifted musician, let alone a gifted country musician. My playing style, such as it is, could best be described as ‘tipsy welterweight’; I don’t really do finesse and, rather than tease a melody out of a guitar or piano, I’m more naturally equipped to bludgeon the instrument with some ham-fisted chords. Accordingly, I figured that each song would require an eloquent preamble; rather than let The Mumager judge my songs on what she was about to hear, I needed her to judge them on what I imagined they could be, given a bit of investment and finesse. Before essaying the first strum on each song, I tried to explain how a recorded version might sound, given the proper backing. Imagine, if you will, Woody Allen trying to talk his way out of being whacked by one of Tony Soprano’s henchmen; that is more or less how my song pitches were delivered.   

“This one could turn out to be a bit like Shania Twain, if we arrange it properly” I heard myself saying. Somewhere in the background, a clock ticked. Slowly.

There was little to glean from The Mumager’s inscrutable expression, although as the audition went on, I began to suspect that my preambles were going down about as well an attempt to get her to buy into a time-share in a beaten-up caravan in Arbroath. I introduced another song. “This one would sound a bit country if we added some pedal steel” I said, probably sounding a bit feeble. Or, now that I think about it, actually sounding feeble. In my experience, one of the biggest mistakes a songwriter can make is to let people hear something that isn’t finished; where the songwriter can hear the glorious possibilities of embellishment, imaginings of beautiful harmonies, echoes of eloquent guitars, the layperson just hears whatever is placed in front of them.      

As I ran through my various would-be country classics, The Mumager said nothing, although she did nod her head occasionally. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but, given her almost complete lack of chat, facial expression or interpretable body language, I chose to take any occasional nod as a positive sign; perhaps, inside, she was all cartwheels, laughter and pure country joy. Five songs (and five rather laboured explanations) later, the audition was over. The Mumager said “We’ll do number three”. And that was it; the first part of our business had been conducted, leaving me glad that the pool of sweat on the stage beneath me had not been deposited in vain.        

The daughter was called through from the west wing and we were finally introduced. I played the song for her and –thankfully- she seemed to like it. We ran through it a few times until we found the right key for her and, before I left, I gave her a handwritten copy of the lyric to practise with. A few weeks later, we were in the studio recording a decent version of the song but, sadly, it didn’t turn out to be a surprise country hit; this, I realise, has been a recurring theme in my musical career.   

Of the five songs I pitched that night, one had seemed to me like a stand-out candidate (and it wasn’t number three). I had the feeling at the time that they would (and should) have picked song number four: ‘Read my Lips’. 

Like the vast majority of songs that I write, this had started with some chords on a guitar or piano, before I improvised a vocal melody over the top. Only after that initial ‘brainstorming’ phase would I have considered a subject matter, a title and some words to suit the mood that had been set by the basic components I had already put in place. As I played around with the chord sequence and melody, I had not only pictured someone like Shania Twain singing it, I also had the distinct feeling that it would somehow have suited a lyric with a universal theme. With, however, no pressing need to finish it, the song was filed away in my burgeoning ‘one-day-I-might-do-something-with-this’ file. Once I had accepted the assignment to try and write a hit for someone, it seemed like an obvious choice. I drafted, tweaked and re-drafted the lyric several times until it felt just right. I imagined a tight rocking band delivering the backing with some real torch and twang, while Shania belted out an empowering lyric along the lines of my-man-gone-done-me-wrong-so-he-can-sling-his-hook-and-I’ll-be-just-fine.

I thought that the tune was catchy and that the universal theme gave it some extra hit potential, but with my modest track record I don’t suppose many folk would see the percentage in betting on that. The Mumager was unmoved by the song (and my sales pitch), so ‘Read my Lips’ was consigned to the ‘pending’ file.  

Writing a pop lyric presents a different kind of challenge and is, in some ways, harder than writing something just to please yourself (which is what I usually do). It’s quite easy to write lyrics, but it’s rather more difficult to write good lyrics and, in my experience, even harder to write good lyrics for someone else.

A few years ago, I was in a band in which I had to write for another young female vocalist. She had a lovely voice, she looked the part and she had some pretty good ideas of her own, but her lyric-writing pace could best be described as sluggish and I often had to push matters along in order to get new material into our set. A man in his forties composing for a woman in her twenties was not necessarily a recipe for insightful writing and, in my desire to increase the band’s productivity, I tended to steer very firmly to the lyrical middle of the road, drafting lines that were, for want of a better term, generic. 

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with generic lyrics, but –sooner or later- you’ll find that you’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name and it’ll feel good to be out of the rain; or, as is more likely, nobody will have a clue what you’re talking about. I know that for some writers, this is actually something like a state of bliss. It is often the case (for a variety of reasons) that songwriters don’t particularly wish to be understood and plenty of folk have sustained entire careers on being vague and evasive in their songs.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Coldplay –to take but one example- have sold so many albums is that, in addition to the fact that their music is relatively easy on the ear, their words are usually just vague enough to have a broad appeal.

Take the lyrics to ‘Yellow’:

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.

I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called "Yellow".

So then I took my turn,
Oh what a thing to have done,
And it was all yellow.

Your skin Oh yeah your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
You know, You know I love you so,
You know I love you so.

What does that even mean? I’d suggest that the answer is: nothing. Or, maybe it’s everything. These lyrics are so vague that any notion of meaning is conferred entirely by the listener. ‘Yellow’ can mean whatever you want it to mean, which in pop music terms, probably makes it a good (that is, commercially appealing) lyric.

Take, by way of contrast, Joni Mitchell’s ‘Song for Sharon’. Here’s the opening few lines:

I went to Staten Island, Sharon.
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars...
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazyOn a storefront mannequin     

In addition to delineating a very personal and perceptive observation, these lines prepare the listener for the complex subject matter of the song. In exploring the idea of the path not taken, ‘Song for Sharon’ compares Joni Mitchell’s life -that of a successful musician- with that of a friend who has “a husband, a family and a farm”.

Mitchell acknowledges the powerful attraction of that “long white dress of love” (and all that it implies) then reflects on the lifestyle choices she has made in pursuing her muse. The lyric explores the tension between, on the one hand, her need to create art and, on the other, the desire for love, constancy and security.  

In the final lines, she sings:

But you still have your music
And I've still got my eyes on the land and the sky
You sing for your friends and your family
I'll walk green pastures by and by

This is open to interpretation, but not in the same way that ‘Yellow’ is open to interpretation. Where ‘Yellow’ trusts the imagination of the listener to sprinkle some fairy dust over its prosaic phrasing, ‘Song for Sharon’ probes the complexity of big life choices. In laying out the consequences, regrets and rewards of opting for the life of a musical free spirit and rejecting the role of wife and mother, Mitchell sketches her ambivalence so skilfully that, by the end the song, we’re not really sure which woman has got the best deal.

There is no right way or wrong way to compose a lyric, but ‘Song for Sharon’ is clearly the work of a poet, while ‘Yellow’ could easily have been written by someone employed to churn out greeting cards for Walmart. I’d love to sit at Joni’s end of the song-writing table, but it’s a very long table and the reality is that I’m way down at the other end, using the wrong cutlery, knocking over the condiments and trying not to slurp my soup. But at least the songs on my album will make a series of statements that I’ll be reasonably happy to make. And, although ‘Read my Lips’ may have been written with the specific aim of having a hit by putting words into someone else’s mouth, it’s still something that I’m proud of. If I hadn’t had to audition this song, I might never have gotten around to finishing it. The discipline of pulling it all together, the imagining of Shania Twain performing it, improved me as a writer.

The Mumager might not have cared much for my material, but her daughter is now doing very well for herself on the Irish country circuit; by the sounds of it, she wanted something closer to old-school country than I could provide. My recorded version of the song is very close to what I had in mind when I wrote it. The band (Les, Fraser and Peter) absolutely nailed the arrangement, with Peter’s country-tinged guitar, in particular, bang on the money for the mood I wanted to create. 

On the subject of the album, work is now moving into the closing stages. I’ve recorded around 50 pieces of music and they currently sit in three distinct piles, each of which will hopefully see the light of day pretty soon.

More will be revealed shortly, but -just to be on the safe side- I have left instructions in my will that, in the event of my sudden death, the entire body of work should be performed at Hampden Park with a 60-piece orchestra, a male voice choir and Shania Twain on lead vocals. 

And, if we can swing it with her management, I’d like her to be dressed as Catwoman. 

Making an album, part 6: Vengeance (in E minor) will be mine

Have you ever been let down by a friend or a lover? Ever been betrayed or dumped for a younger, richer or more glamorous model? At some point in our lives, most of us will get ditched or double-crossed, pulverised or put down and the chances are that some of us will harbour dark thoughts of revenge. Harbouring those thoughts can be a frustrating way to pass the time, but if you’re a songwriter you can at least even things up a little by writing a revenge song. Your revenge song won’t quite make up for any slights you have suffered, but the process of writing it will be cathartic and, if you get lucky, it might even make you a few bob.

Well-known examples of revenge songs include Carly Simon’s ‘You’re so vain’ (which I think was probably about me), and ‘How do you sleep?’ which was John Lennon’s not-so-sneaky attempt at the character assassination of a fellow Beatle (nice work, John). ‘Goodbye Earl’ by The Dixie Chicks was an otherwise jolly country-pop hit which gleefully advocated the murder of a domestic abuser, while Elvis Costello launched a lucrative career on the back of a whole bunch of songs heavily seasoned with vengeful bitterness. 

Revenge songs, by their very nature, can get a bit ugly. Alanis Morrissette’s smash hit ‘You oughta know’ is a fine piece of music, but one can’t help but suspect that it represents six months of counselling distilled into four raging minutes of bombast. Addressing an unfaithful former lover, the lyric asks:

“Every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back
I hope you feel it ... well, can you feel it?” 

The answer is ‘probably not, Alanis’, but you do get the impression that she had to either write that song or go ahead and boil the ex-boyfriend’s bunny. 

In song-writing, as in life, I’m generally the sort of person who prefers to poke gentle fun rather than put the boot in, but the song I’ve linked to below (Angry Boy) does stray somewhat into revenge song territory. It was inspired by an awkward social encounter from about a year ago, when I was out having a few drinks in mixed company. During what I thought was a civilised and interesting discussion on the topic of Scottish independence, I was threatened by a middle-aged chap (who happened to be a member of the local arts community). When I say ‘threatened’ I mean that he actually wanted to hit me. From where I had been standing, I thought we were having a good old intellectual joust as he laid out the case for independence and I –from what was at the time an undecided position- batted back a few questions and concerns. Because I’m used to the company of people who like to discuss things without hitting other people, I had not picked up on the fact that my interlocutor was not enjoying the good old intellectual joust. Rather, he imagined that he was being deliberately wound up by the provocative wittering of an intellectual gadfly or, in his words, “a fucking pub troll”. In my experience, using the t-word is often a sign that someone doesn’t wish to engage in, or has already lost, an argument. Then he got right in my face with the ‘see you, Jimmy’ stare, which, although an authentic part of the Glasgow experience, is not one I’d necessarily recommend to visiting tourists. For all his ‘sensitive artist’ bona fides, the guy had lost the plot and was ready to knock me into the middle of next week. Only the intervention of a friend prevented an ugly scene which might have ended up with a late-night visit to Accident and Emergency. What with my pretty-boy looks and all, I can’t afford to take chances like that. 

As songwriters do, I stored the incident away for future consideration. What did it all mean? What had I done to provoke this sensitive fellow? Was it something I said, or something about my manner? Might I have done more to diffuse the situation? Did I really say something to offend him, or was he merely a jerk with a drink in him who didn’t like to be crossed in an argument? The evidence of the song reveals which option I went for.

The tune was one I had been playing around with for ages, while struggling to come up with a suitable lyric. Various drafts had withered on the vine as I grasped for a topic that would sit with the feel of the piece. The music always comes first, because I believe that there is no point in having good lyrics if the tune doesn’t cut the mustard. There are many classic pop songs that have great tunes and rubbish lyrics, but I can’t think of many acknowledged classics with rubbish tunes and great lyrics. When you live what, for shorthand purposes, I’ll describe as an ordinary settled life, finding interesting subject matter can be tricky. Lyrics written to reflect my day-to-day experiences might not necessarily interest the average listener. I suspect the market would be somewhere south of sluggish for songs with titles like ‘Do we need milk?’ or ‘Go and tidy your room, madam!’ Having said that, however, perhaps some readers will identify with my heartfelt power ballad ‘Broken photocopier blues’.

It’s worth taking your time with the words, because the difference between dreary lyrics (for example, pretty much anything by Oasis) and excellent lyrics (for example, pretty much anything by Joni Mitchell) is roughly equivalent to the difference between typing and writing. Once I’ve identified a theme and a title, the hardest part is coming up with a couple of lines that I like, signature lines that will encode the lyrical DNA of the song. Once those words are in place, I can usually work around them and start to embellish things reasonably quickly. In this case, I knew that I was going to write about the motivations of that mad guy in the pub, so the key words formed the opening line of the song:

“You don’t want to hear, you just want to bend somebody’s ear.”

Everything else flowed from that point. Once I got inside the mind of the character, it was relatively easy to lay out the possible and probable reasons for his behaviour. By the time the process was finished, I had accumulated enough material to make it a matter of what to leave out, not what to force in. To score an extra bonus song-writing point, I decided to present some of his anger issues in list form during the middle eight. Lists in songs, when done well, always impress me. Apart from anything else, it shows that the writer has given the words a little bit of thought, instead of just looking for things that rhyme, although REM’s impenetrable ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)’ might just be an exception to that rule.

Perhaps the most famous example of a list song is ‘My favourite things’ by Rodgers and Hammerstein:   

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things”

‘Let’s call the whole thing off’ by George and Ira Gershwin is another refined example of the genre, while Bob Dylan’s ‘A hard rain’s gonna fall’, written -according to legend- during the Cuban missile crisis, is said to be a compilation of the first lines of all the songs he didn’t think he’d ever get to write. A less portentous list appears on ‘Hello’, the 1990 hit by The Beloved, which features a roll call of various A, B and C-list celebrities. I salute any writer with the chutzpah to include the line:

"Sir Bufton Tufton, Jean Paul Sartre, Zippy, Bungle and Jeffrey Archer"

But I digress.

The list in the middle eight of my song lays out some of the things that might grind the gears of an angry man of a certain age:  

"You’re angry if they don’t, angry if they do, angry when they don’t think the same as you. You're angry with your boss, angry with your car, angry at the queue waiting at the bar.”

I’m going to write some other time about walking in the footsteps of my musical heroes, but it’s clear from the staccato delivery of the ‘angry’ list that this track is influenced by David Bowie. This impression is emphasised by some excellent ‘Scary Monsters’-style guitar provided by my chum Alan Robertson. Alan has been contributing to the album through the miracle of digital file transfer. The way it works is that I send him a copy of the track at a relatively early stage of its development and he adds loads of stuff at his home studio before emailing it back to me. He gives me lots of options, which is how I like it. Again, I prefer the mixing process to be more about what to leave out than what to put in; when it comes to selecting guitar or keyboard parts, my indecision is usually final. Fraser Sneddon’s bass, as ever, provides fluidity and heft, reminding me how lucky I am to know such talented musicians, people with the ability to bring my basis ideas to life.  

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, but this particular dish will probably never be served; it's highly unlikely that the bloke in the pub will ever hear my song.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should have just punched him in the mouth.

Angry Boy

                                           

Making an album, part 5: In search of the perfect pop song

One fine morning a few weeks ago, I emerged from sleep with a tune in my head. The tune was ‘Late for the train’, the final track on ‘Love Bites’, the second album by the English post-punk band Buzzcocks. The imprint of that tune, deeply encoded on some neglected neural pathway, provoked an early-morning flashback so vivid and poignant that -for a brief instant- I was once again a spotty teenager in love with that band and their music. The tantalising, sleep-charged echo of ‘Late for the train’ fooled the adult me into believing that he was the teenaged me, a kid buffeted by the turbulence of hopes, fears and passions that he hoped would somehow propel him through an exciting world of possibilities. Alas, the tangibility of the moment was all-too-brief and I was soon back in the present, wide awake to the fact that I’m an adult comfortably tethered to my responsibilities. The flashback, however, had reminded me once more of how potent pop music can be. Like the powerful scent of cheap perfume, even the tawdriest manufactured pop ditty has the potential to evoke powerful memories. It can make you smile, laugh or cry; it can make you remember people, places and things. I like pop music more than I like any other art form. At its best, I believe the popular song to be one of humankind’s great achievements, because something wonderful and transcendent happens within certain intoxicating combinations of rhythm, melody, notes, voices and words. Pop music, in that sense, is capable of achieving artistic perfection, although it would be difficult for any two people to agree on a definition of perfect pop; some might even argue that there is no such thing.  

But let’s assume for the moment that perfection is possible; what would the ingredients of a perfect pop song be? At the risk of stating the obvious, it has to be popular; it can’t be too alternative, too under-the-radar. It shouldn’t overstay its welcome and should probably be able to accommodate mainstream tastes. It can be breezy (like 'I get around' by The Beach Boys) or menacing (like 'Every breath you take' by The Police), but definitely not dreary. It can be populist and perhaps even a bit lightweight; it should be catchy, but not annoyingly so. 'Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini' is catchy, but it’s catchy in the same way that scabies is catchy.

A great pop song can be very much of its time, but should also have that elusive element of timelessness. You shouldn’t have to say: ‘you had to be there’ or ‘you had to be on such-and-such a drug’ to appreciate a truly perfect pop song. Some songs are so closely identified with the era from which they emerged that they are eulogised mainly by the folk who lived through their glorious flowering; others rise above their milieu to achieve greatness. 'Smoke gets in your eyes' by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach is a wonderful song that was written for a musical in the 1930s, but you don’t need to have seen the show or to have lived through that decade in order to appreciate it. 'Penny Lane' by the Beatles evokes a very particular time and place, but you don’t have to have lived in Liverpool in the 1960s to know that it is a great pop tune. In many cases, you don’t even need to understand the lyrics to appreciate a great song. 'Sir Duke' by Stevie Wonder waxes lyrical about the contribution that black artists have made to American popular culture, but you don’t need to ‘get’ the words to be moved by the joy and genius in the music. If pushed to come up with a definition, I’d suggest that perfect pop happens when there is a magical alchemy between words, rhythm, melody, voice and structure. A perfect pop song is probably something to which nothing could be added or taken away to improve it.

So what has any of this got to do with me?  

At this time last year, I wrote about my intention to record an album. Although I have not yet managed to complete this task, I’m probably about 60% of the way there. The project has taken some unexpected twists and turns and I’ve already changed my mind several times about songs, themes and the album title. I’ve narrowed the contenders down to around songs and each of these is partly recorded, with some of them just about finished and others requiring a bit more work. Once that work is done, I’ll pick the twelve songs that sound to me like they will make most sense as a collection. Within this body of work, it would be ridiculous for me to claim that I have the remotest chance of creating a perfect pop song. With respect to the criteria listed above, it’s clear that I can’t qualify in many of the categories. None of my songs are going to be popular, because very few people are going to get to hear them; none of my songs are going to remind anyone of an important time in their life; none of my songs will provide the soundtrack to anyone’s dream. There is not a single spotty teenager on the planet who will think that anything I write will encapsulate the equivalent feelings of lust, rebellion, restlessness, excitement and wonder that I felt when listening to that Buzzcocks tune.   

So why bother? I’ve asked myself this question many times and, if I had to boil the answer down to a single notion, it would be this: Let’s suppose I found a piece of driftwood on the beach and decided to take it home and sculpt something interesting out of it. Suppose I then decided to make an objet d’art for my garden. This artefact would be required to serve no other purpose than to sit somewhere and be pleasing on the eye. I might spend ages on this project – filing, carving, whittling, scraping, gouging and maybe some other associated words that you’ll find under ‘sculpt’ in a thesaurus. The process of creating that artefact would be rewarding in and of itself. The number of folk who’d get to see or appreciate my garden sculpture would be more or less irrelevant. If only a few friends and relatives ever got to see it, that would be fine with me.  

Accordingly, my satisfaction with making music resides in the peace that comes with the imagining act, the execution of creative impulses, the feeling of having brought a new thing into the world. It matters little if I am the only one who can hear beauty in any of these songs. When I listen, I can also hear the process and the goal; I hear echoes of everything else I have ever listened to; I hear inchoate ideas rescued from formlessness by the building blocks of melody and rhythm, random promiscuous scatterings of notes and chords arranged into order and harmony. From the chaos of noise and purposelessness, I hear the shaping of disparate elements into a brief illusion of meaning, into three and a half minutes in which the universe appears to make sense. There are a couple of songs I’m working on for my album which –in my head at least- have the makings of perfect pop songs, as long as we extend a generous definition of the word perfect to include ‘well-constructed songs that don’t actually make you feel physically sick’.   

I started work on the song I've linked to below (If she gets on my train) with the intention of writing something upbeat and life-affirming. It tried its best for a while, but has somehow ended up with a sting in the tail. The lyric tries to get inside the head of a guy who nurses a crush on a girl he sees every day when he commutes to work. At one point I imagined that there would be a happy ending, with him asking the girl out and them both living happily ever after, but I never got around to completing that draft; by the time I returned to the lyric, it seemed more appropriate to insert a twist. The protagonist is trying to imagine a situation in which he will have the courage to make an approach to the girl of his dreams, but with every situation he imagines (she gets on his train, she walks down his street) there is also the recognition that all he will ever do is continue to do what he has always done. He knows that he will never pluck up the courage to ask the girl out, so settles instead for running little fantasy scenarios in his head.

When I let a friend hear a version of this a few months ago, he suggested that I hadn’t quite nailed the ending. This led me to return to the recording with the idea of emphasizing the character’s haplessness in the fadeout. Rather than let him fantasize about the life he might lead with this mystery girl, the extent of his detachment from reality would be delineated by his repetition of the line ‘if she gets on my train, we could have a conversation’. By this point in the song, we know that he is not going to be having any conversation with that girl. In that sense, the fadeout is a little nod to the chilling climax of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian nightmare ‘Brazil’, in which the audience is led to believe that the hero (played by Jonathan Pryce) has escaped the rapacious clutches of the Big Brother state and is living in bliss with his sweetheart. The big reveal comes when we discover that he is, in fact, tied to a chair and under brutal interrogation; so complete is his abandonment of his awful reality that he has retreated to a safe place inside his head where he can run his fantasies even as the state thugs are pulling his nails out with pliers.          

As is often the case, the failure seemed more interesting than the success.

If she gets on my train

Making an album part 4: I’m not with the band

Although I’m working with several different people on my album, I’ve chosen not to go down the route of forming a band to record it. Instead, I’m bringing in musicians as and when required. I’ve been in plenty of bands over the years and I’ve always been the main songwriter, but being a ‘one-person-does-most-of-the-writing’ kind of band is not necessarily the greatest formula for longevity. When the songwriting is a truly collaborative process, with everyone having a more or less equal say in the composition, you’ve probably got a better chance of keeping everyone in the band happy. But that’s not usually how I prefer to work, for reasons I’ve been exploring with a psychotherapist for the past decade or so (another three or four years, she says, and I should be almost out of the woods).    

Assuming that talent and hard work are already in place, one of the things that can keep a band going is momentum; you not only have to recognise when you have it, you need to be able to capitalise on it. From a songwriter’s point of view, momentum –or even the illusion of momentum- can only be maintained as long as the musicians believe that the songs might be able to take them places. With the benefit of hindsight, I can recognise the point at which various bands I’ve been in have lost momentum and belief, but failed to notice it. When that happens, it’s possible to trundle along for months and months, a bit like that Bruce Willis character in The Sixth Sense, not knowing that he’s actually dead. 

Up until sometime around your mid-to-late twenties, it’s relatively easy to maintain the enthusiasm, energy and belief required to maintain a band. At that stage, you are pretty resilient because, essentially, you believe that a big break might be just around the corner; but keeping a band together gets harder as you get older, particularly if the gigs you are playing aren’t bringing in much money. As the years pass and you start to realise that you are still quite some distance from earning a crust from music, you’ll sometimes wonder why the hell you are still doing it. And, as band members start to accumulate significant life baggage, the option of suffering for their art seems somehow less attractive. 

If you’re lucky, the business side of your operation will be looked after by a manager, leaving the sensitive artists to concentrate on playing music, drinking and showing off. I’ve had several managers over the years; most of them were nice enough people, but were often largely ineffective when it came to the main item on their job description: helping the band become much more successful. The management continuum has ‘autocrat’ at one end and ‘best friend’ at the other, with lots of variations in between; each style has its advantages and disadvantages. I once had a particularly autocratic manager who terminated our contract over an argument about the clothes that were to be worn in a promotional shoot. The manager wanted me, as the vocalist, to dress in a certain way. What he called -with a straight face- ‘his people’ had carried out some research into ‘winning’ colours and styles and had come up with what they believed was the perfect formula. This appeared to involve me dressing as what a Victorian novelist would have described as a popinjay.  I thought that what I was being asked to wear would make me feel even more stupid than usual, so I politely demurred. We couldn’t find a sartorial middle ground, so the manager, rather less politely, ripped up our contract. Sometimes it isn’t just about the music.           

Autocrats can be tricky to work with, but having a friend as your manager is also not without its pitfalls. Someone who is very close to the musicians might be unable to bring the necessary hard-headed objectivity to what should be a business relationship.   

I was once in a band that was booked to play a big student rally in a park on the south side of Glasgow. The placard-wielding students were marching from the centre of town to the event, which was to include a number of guest speakers and some live entertainment (namely us). As the park started to fill up, we sat backstage slugging warm beer and nibbling at the corporate hospitality crisps. Our manager (bless him) said: “This is it, lads!  This is going to be the turning point.” Having slogged for some time around various pubs and clubs in the West of Scotland, slowly but surely building a reputation as we clawed our way from the depths of nonentity to the giddy heights of relative obscurity, we felt that yes, indeed, we might well have been on the cusp of a breakthrough to a bigger audience. The organisers had very kindly given us the choice of either playing our set as the students were arriving at the park (i.e. warming the audience up for the speakers) or going on after the various student leaders and politicians had worked the crowd up into an indignant frenzy.   

To a band accustomed to performing in grotty, sparsely-populated bars, the crowd that day looked to be of Woodstockian proportions and we were buzzing at the possibility of performing for them. As bodies continued to flood into the park, the manager announced that we would go on after the speeches; this, he suggested, would give us ‘maximum impact’. We all agreed. Why –so our thinking went- should our unique brand of rock and roll play second fiddle to a bunch of boring old speakers? No way, man! Let the politicians do their bit and then we’ll rock this place! Hell, yeah! This is the turning point! With the benefit of hindsight, our manager’s statement was probably correct, but only if by ‘turning point’ he meant ‘career-defining clusterfuck’. It was certainly the point at which I realised that our plans for world domination were sadly unsupported by anything approaching a coherent strategy. 

Not knowing our collective arse from a hole in the ground, we had chosen to ‘top’ the bill, having given no thought as to why hundreds of students had bothered to walk all the way from the city centre to the south side. They were there to protest, to listen to speeches, to vent some spleen, to stamp their feet and shout ‘Tories Out!’ (although it was such a cold afternoon that I’m pretty sure that some of them must have felt like shouting ‘What do we want? Some hot chocolate, please!’)  

By the time those speeches had ended (and there were more than one or two), that Woodstockian throng had already started to dwindle; by halfway through our opening number, the crowd had shrunk in size by about 50%. Once we were three or four songs into our blistering set, the remaining punters could comfortably have been accommodated behind the goal at a Ramsden’s Cup preliminary round tie between East Stirling and Stenhousemuir. During our last number, what was left of what I’m now embarrassed to call the ‘crowd’ could have gathered in the average student bedsit and each of them would have had more than enough room to swing a cat. It’s not that we were that bad a band (honest), but we were certainly stupid enough to deserve everything we got that day. Had our manager been more than just a supportive buddy, had he been capable of strategic thought, he would surely have advised us, in the strongest possible terms, to go on before the speakers. So if you ever get invited to play at a political rally, kids … just remember exactly where you are in the food chain.                                 

But I digress; back to the album. I’m playing bass on a couple of the tracks, but the majority of the songs require something a bit more sophisticated than the root note simplicity I can just about get way with. I had a great session a couple of weeks ago with the very talented Fraser Sneddon (pictured above). I’ve played with Fraser before and know that he can be relied upon to nail some really wonderful bass lines. Hearing the bottom end of my tracks start to take on a bit of heft and groove was a joyful experience. I enjoy the experience of sitting face-to-face with musicians and talking about what you want to achieve with an individual piece of music. A good player will usually give you options when it comes to specific parts. I like to give talented people their head and let them interpret the part as they will. I will then make one or two suggestions, with perhaps a point or two about emphasis or rhythm here or there. I might suggest that the part needs to be more or less aggressive, or perhaps requires more or fewer passing notes. Little alterations can sometimes really alter the feel of a piece. 

The best recording sessions occur when folk are relaxed and feel confident enough to experiment a little. My co-producer on the album, Eddie McArthur at Stealth, has a much better ear than me for spotting little tuning fluctuations or deviations in timing. Our preferred method is to get the player to run through the parts a couple of times to loosen up and then get a version which is more or less the part we imagined. Then we’ll pursue the ‘what if?’ strategy, which involves letting the player wander off-piste to see what kind of unusual or interesting stuff gets thrown up. The wonders of digital editing will often allow us to construct a part which might be a mixture of the basic idea, the loose ‘off-piste’ take and maybe a dollop of additional studio surgery.        

Another way of collaborating on recording projects is to have musician friends send you stuff through the miracle of electronic mail. For this album, Alan Robertson –a former colleague in the band ‘Gum’- has been recording material at home and firing it off into the ether; somehow, it ends up on my laptop. Alan’s one of those chaps who can knock out a tune on a variety of instruments, a great ideas man with a good ear for hooks and textures which can help add flavour to a piece. Fraser and Alan both make excellent contributions to the song I've linked to here.  Since I posted the original demo (featuring just a vocal, an acoustic guitar and some rudimentary piano), they have helped me flesh it out a bit.

I said at the time that I was hoping that it would one day inhabit a lusher soundscape and, thanks to Alan’s electronic noodlings and nurdlings (and what I hope is the judicious use of some backing vocals) I think the track is now close to being complete.  Another tweak or two and it’ll almost be there.

Making an album, part 2: It’s not (quite) about the money, money, money.

I’ve had some interesting correspondence since my previous post about deciding to record an album and to write about the various issues associated with that process. Most of the comments have been supportive, with some folk saying that they are curious to see how it will all turn out. I was a little bit surprised by a couple of the more critical remarks, not because I expect everyone to think that my idea is great and that my music is wonderful, but because these comments focused on the fact that my opening spiel talked about money and, specifically, about my hope of recovering some of the costs of the venture. 

One correspondent suggested that I was approaching this from the ‘wrong direction’, because true artists shouldn’t be bothered with financial considerations; this person suggested that, if filthy lucre was at the top of my agenda, I would be better advised to stick to my day job. I’m intrigued by arguments about the purity of art.  It seems to me that, unless you have a benefactor (or can survive on just the occasional bowl of steam), money will impact on how and when you produce your work. If you can’t make a living from it -which is the case for the majority of artists- then whenever you spend time and money on your art, it is time and money you are not devoting to something else; it is time you are not giving to your loved ones and money you are not spending on essential bills or other items.  Should I spend a couple grand making an album because I feel the need to, or should I put that money towards my mum’s hip operation? Should I hire some really good session musicians to sprinkle fairy dust over my stupid little songs, or should I use that cash to give my kids a really good holiday? It’s a difficult call.  

Any musician who has their work promoted by a record company and any artist whose endeavours are supported through the public purse (for example, with a grant from Creative Scotland) is in an unusual and fortunate position. I don’t have any choice as to whether some of my hard-earned tax buck should go towards subsidising another artist’s (no doubt worthy) efforts. I do, however, have a choice in how I spend my own spare cash and -much as I’d love some additional support- I’m comfortable with the fact that I’ll have to record this album on my own dime. If wondering how I might best manage that makes me some kind of philistine breadhead, then I guess I’ll just have to live with the stigma.     

If previous experience is anything to go by, I have about as much chance of getting my money back as I have of becoming the next James Bond; in fact, I would regard it as something of a triumph to recoup even a quarter of my costs. My prospects of glory are somewhat south of remote, but that won’t stop me committing to the enterprise. It would just be nice to think that I’ll be able to bank enough positivity to encourage me to start work on another album; that ‘positivity’ might be defined in financial terms, but it is just as likely to be something as simple as getting some good reviews and good vibes from a handful of supporters. The truth is that the real reward will be the work itself and the completion of that work.     

I think that when people make art, they are probably making it first and foremost for themselves. But even if that were not the case, I’m not sure why anyone would object to an artist hoping to get paid for their work. It’s always nice to get a little approbation, but it’s probably nicer to get paid; and it’s probably even nicer to get paid a lot.  I heard the comic actor Christopher Biggins on the radio recently talking about his role in the TV comedy ‘Porridge’; he was, as I recall, a relatively minor character in the show (let’s, for the moment, leave to one side the question of whether or not Mr Biggins can legitimately be described as an artist). In a charming interview in which he came across as an amusing and essentially decent chap, Mr Biggins revealed that every time the BBC shows an old episode of ‘Porridge’ on the telly, he pockets £1,000. That, my friends, is a beautiful dollar. Just imagine how good it must feel to get work that pays you at the time that you do it and is still paying you some forty years later. No wonder Mr Biggins sounded so jolly.      

At the risk of causing offence, I’ll venture the opinion that writing a song is a purer artistic process than acting in a sitcom. I would define it as purer because there is an unbroken line between intent and execution. It is pure in the same way that writing a poem or painting a picture is pure, because the intent of the artist –at that stage- is unmediated and uncompromised. 

On my way to the holy grail of completing the album, there are certain things I am able to do musically and certain things in the recording sphere that I can achieve on my own. I have a basic recording set-up at home, but have neither the equipment nor the technical expertise to record to the standard I would desire. Accordingly, I have to book time in a professional recording studio to realise my goal. I must also factor in the additional cost of hiring session musicians. You might argue that I could just record these songs with vocals and acoustic guitar and do a ‘purer’ version of the album without spending a lot of money. I could do that, but it would result in a particular kind of album and not the one that I want to make right now. The album I want to make has to sound as close as possible to what I’m hearing in my head; achieving that sound will necessarily involve a significant investment of time and money. 

There is, of course, an obvious tension between ‘how much’ money I am willing to spend and ‘how good’ I want this album to be; in my experience, the less you rush things, the more you take the time to review your options, the better the end result will be. There might, however, be limits as to how much time you should take.  Many moons ago I was in a band that recorded a couple of songs at a ‘proper’ recording studio in Glasgow. We sat on the tracks for a few weeks before deciding that they could be improved with some judicious remixing. When we called the studio to book some additional time, we were told that our tracks had been erased to free up some room on the master tape. Chastened and more than a bit crestfallen, we had to make do with the unsatisfactory versions we had. Who knows, the entire course of pop music history might have been different had we only managed to remix those two tracks (although, if I was a betting man, my money would be on the remixed tracks still sounding a bit rubbish and the band still breaking up within six months). These days, with digital recording and storage, it is unlikely that anyone would have their material scrubbed just to make some space.   

There are countless examples of the excessive (and compulsive) behaviour of bands in the studio, tales of musicians who spent weeks working on a snare sound or a difficult guitar solo. Bryan Ferry -an artist I really admire- once used 30 musicians at six different recording studios over several years to make one album, the lush and lovely ‘Boys and Girls’, released in 1985. This album achieved some notoriety before it was released because Ferry had sunk so much cash into it; he is known to be something of studio obsessive, but –even by his meticulous standards- this one was a doozy. You might argue that to spend so much time and money on an album was ridiculous, decadent and indulgent, but the end justified the means if the songwriter achieved what he set out to achieve. 

‘Boys and Girls’ is bejewelled with sonic delights, but there is one achingly beautiful piece in which the purity of the songwriter’s vision is illustrated. ‘Windswept’, like much of the album, features gossamer-light melodies floating on a beautifully seductive rhythmical bed.  About two minutes into the track, a violin appears stage left for a brief cameo, the job of which is to introduce a scorching and melodic guitar solo from Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour which –for 25 blissful seconds- lifts the song out of its seductive reverie, before we settle back once more into Ferry’s trademark elegant ambience. You could argue that ‘Windswept’ didn’t need that brief appearance by the violin nor, indeed, the expensive guitar solo, but here’s the thing: Bryan Ferry thought it needed it. My guess is that he wanted to create something beautiful, now matter how much time and money it was going to cost him. He pursued his vision and, for an artist, that is what counts. The bonus for Bryan was that the ‘Boys and Girls’ album gave him his only UK number 1 solo record. 

Now that I’ve fulfilled a lifetime’s dream by seeing my work mentioned in print alongside that of Bryan Ferry, there’s a link below to a one of the tracks from the album. It’s called ‘How will you know when you know?’ and the lyric is relevant to some of the topics I’ll be exploring in this blog. The song is about being in a band and about hitting the wall of realisation that you are not going to be the next U2. In the first verse, there is excitement and optimism as the band plan for a successful future, loading up their van to hit the road for a gig (in the exotic location of Aberdeen). The second verse is written from the perspective of the morning after the night before, grinding through the day job and attempting to analyse events through a fug of sleep deprivation. What was last night about?  Why did we do it? Was it really a good use of our time? The chorus illustrates that perhaps a certain realisation has occurred to the protagonist:  

“If every step we ever take leads us to where we ought to be,

shouldn’t we be smart enough to know we ought to rest there?” 

I think the track is pretty much finished, but I'd be prepared to reconsider if anyone can pass me David Gilmour’s phone number.                 

How will you know when you know?