Do you know the three philosphers joke?
Marx says: To do is to be
Sartre says: To be is to do
Sinatra says: Do be do be do
I’m a Sinatra-ist by nature. I’ve also been a songwriter since I was seven – a little bit of doing sandwiched inbetween a lot of being. The first song I wrote was called “Witchcraft”, all about the way those foxy women entrapped clueless men with their seductive wiles. The Lennon to my McCartney (and I’m afraid it was that way round) was only a year older than me, so in my case it would have been a song about my mother or sister. Either that, or a “homage” to some drain-piped and winkled-pickered Lothario with an axe to grind.
Lately I’ve been a songwriter exploring different genres. There was my Blues phase – one long cathartic anti-depressant where no degree of misery was too extreme, and my voice rasped and rumbled in thin Beefheartian, Waitsian imitation, until I discovered that almost everything they knew came from Howling Wolf. Hell, I couldn’t pretend to be black.
Onto ballads in the English and Scots tradition – those thirty or forty verse monsters which served as the oral newspapers of their day. I’m not a jolly ploughboy, or an errant knight, no roving gypsy nor poacher, mill-hand, soldier, sailor, beggarman, thief – but some of my ancestors were. And even one generation back, their regional accents not wiped clean by education, I could think I had some lineage, some heritage – some claim on this tradition. Unfortunately, in terms of oral newspapers, my ballads were always going to be a bit too Guardian, as pink as the FT, a lot of the spice bleached from the telling. I have yet to stick my finger in my ear and take these beauties out to a hungry public.
And so to the crooners. If I were songwriter to the stars, by appointment to His Smoothness Frank Sinatra, or the Prince of Cool, Tony Bennett, or even to that new generation of young pretenders, Harry Connick Jr. and now Michael Bublé, what would I write like? What would it be to inhabit that new skin? Same old wine – in its phonetic sense too – but refreshed, more lively; and a whole different imaginary audience.
Research is key in this kind of genre-hopping. I still like record stores, Amazon.co.uk notwithstanding, but the barriers to research in this case were almost insurmountable. For which category do these crooners reside in, where no self-respecting muso can be found? You guessed it. Easy Listening. Filed alongside poor skinny Karen Carpenter, Joe Loss and His Orchestra and a whole universe of bland pap – the sine qua non of The X-Factor – nestles the produce of those big-lunged romantic boys. For research, I have to stand in the Easy Listening section. Of course, in your head, you pretend it’s for your mother or a favourite uncle or someone who remembers rationing – an older person certainly. That doesn’t last. One glance around tells you that you are that older person. You are standing where you belong.
Actually, it’s time to confess. I like these singers and their songs. Tom Waits can be too much: sometimes I’m just not strong enough. There are days – amazingly – when free improvisation just sounds like a racket. Prog Rock, stripped back roots music, socio-economic rants over hip-hop beats – it’s sort of like going to work. But Tony and Frank and all those others of their ilk, they’re there to do the work for you – to take the strain, to fly you to the moon and bring you back again for another sip of Martini. I only wish I could write their kind of songs.
This is my method. I drive forty minutes to work each day. I know I know. I should cycle or take the bus – the planet’s dying. However, the car is my song laboratory. I have a little recorder, a digital dictaphone, into which I sing the first things that come into my head as I drive – taking care – of course – to keep my eyes on the road – usually with nonsense words or syllables. When I get home at night, or later in the week, I listen back to see what’s retrievable – what’s melodic enough – and start to work it up on the piano. Key thing – fresh is best. Sing before you’ve heard any kind of music that day. (I got that tip from Tom Waits).
No great songs so far. No “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” or “Embraceable You”, and anyway I’m trying for something new and authentic – not a re-hash or a history lesson; not an imitation. And who’s going to sing them when they are finally buffed and polished, as shiny as a Las Vegas roulette wheel? Odds are against it being Michael Bublé. No chance at all it’ll be Frank. It’ll have to be me. That was anyway my first choice. What’s the point of a new set of clothes if you can’t put them on? You’ve surely got to give it a whirl, strut it, be it, do it. Or “Do-be-do” as we say in show business. “Do-be-do-be-do.”
JPW
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