Page 41 - WriteAwaySept

Greg Barnett
It Seems
My first song
A friend and I each had done a solo CD of
covers, and together a CD of duets. Heck,
the obvious thing was to write our own songs,
right? WRONG! We tried several times to get
the juices flowing, but we got nowhere. We
sought inspiration from books of quotations,
thesauri, poetry, novels opened at random.
Nothing sparked. We Listened intently to
documentaries featuring songwriters.
Apparently a single overheard phrase gave
Mark Knopfler “Money for Nothing”. Well,
good for him ... but it didn’t help us? We
effectively gave up trying.
In February 2001, an ex-colleague and a good
friend of mine, the same age, died. This was
perhaps the closest death I had experienced
to date and, besides the great discomfort of
seeing his family grieve, I felt a great guilt in various options of lyrical ideas. Phrases,
that I had never expressed my affection and
admiration to his face.
Anglo-Saxon men leave so many things
unsaid for so many reasons. While trying to
write a eulogy, words began to form in a way
that, with only minor changes, were a
fully-fledged song which offered broad
interpretation about not expressing
friendship more openly and making the most
of what you have while you have it.
This turned out to be a watershed moment.
Lyrics were no longer a barrier and within a
few weeks I had the basics of a dozen songs.
My guitar friend Mike had just returned from
a folk festival and was revved up by the
creative atmosphere which crackles at such
events. He read the lyrics and pulled a
melody out of somewhere. We definitely had
the kernel of a song, although the melody
had little variation. This is where, with a
couple of adjustments, the verse and chorus
became different but complimentary. Some
little embellishments, a cascade of chords
for the intro, a second part for the chorus, an
instrumental and a coda made for a
“complete” song.
www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk
The lyrics had come fairly easily to me, a
melody easily to Mike, and the structuring
and embellishments were a breeze for me
once there was a core on which to build.
It should be noted that although McDonalds
tends to receive a lot of ribbing from our
generation, it played a big part in my lyric
writing. Around this time, I’d have breakfast
at McDonalds almost every day on the way to
work. I was such a regular that they even
presented me with a VIP card ... all the fat
and sugar I could eat! Jokes aside, it was the
one part of the day when I could concentrate
on lyrics. After my regular bacon’n’egg
McMuffin, a bottomless cup of quite
reasonable coffee allowed me to read a
paper and let my mind freewheel and explore
lines, couplets and whole verses would spill
out that I’d scribble into an ever-handy paper
notebook. Some just never gelled and were
discarded. Some were OK and just needed
reworking. A few were great and lasted
unchanged through the whole development
process.
From my own perspective, I do not agree with
most purveyors of creative writing courses
who say “write, write and write” as pure
exercise. For me, the right time had come
and fortunately I was receptive to that
moment. Note too that I have always been
keen to ‘write’ throughout my life ... long
letters from my travels, computer user
manuals, club newsletters, and the like. If
you don’t have the constant itch and urge, I
don’t believe anyone will suddenly start to
churn out lyrics. But, hey, I’m wrong about so
many other things in life!
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