Sparks from the Fire » Inspirational Music Artist

The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1

Peter Link — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:45:32 +0000

Stephen Sondheim, one of our great present day lyricists, likes to say that lyric writing is puzzle solving. The puzzle is how are ya’ gonna get all them words to fit together into that pretty little melody and still make sense. I’ve now spent almost a half-century trying to solve these puzzles, and though I’ve certainly gotten better at it, it’s still a laborious but fascinating process.

However, as I’ve been improving in the craft, I’ve watched the noble art of the craft plummet into the depths of despair. Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic here, but often, when I’m reading or hearing many of today’s lyrics, I find myself groaning over the cheesiness of the content and the hollow and paltry result of the lack of craft.

OK, you say, give it to us, Pete. Do your thing.

So glad you asked…

Rhyming
I come from the world of the theater where rhymes had to rhyme (“shoe” does not rhyme with “blues” nor does “time” rhyme with “fine”) and if your rhymes ‘cheated’, you would be severely reprimanded by the critics. I studied under the tutelage of Alan Lerner, one of our masters, (Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot) and he wrote perfect lyrics that rhymed, scanned to perfection and are still today treasures of the American Songbook (If Ever I Would Leave You, The Heather On The Hill, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, and on and on). He would work, not hours, but weeks on one song lyric and, when presented, it would be a flawless piece of masterwork.

He turned me on to the one and only professional’s rhyming dictionary – the only one I’ve ever used and still highly recommend – The Clement Wood Rhyming Dictionary. None others come close. I keep one in each room of my apartment and hardly ever leave home without it. With it, the world of rhymes is literally at your fingertips and every possibility is represented within its pages. Short of the Bible, it’s my favorite book.

Rap music today has simply slaughtered the craft of rhyming. I am in no way against Rap music. It is a completely legitimate style of music representing the urban culture of today, but in it, most rappers rhyme with no regard to craft using any word in the vicinity of the vowel sound. For instance not only can ‘street’ rhyme with ‘beep’, but it can also rhyme with ‘ease’ or even with ‘help’ because ‘help’ has an ‘e’ in it.

To my ear that’s a point off – any of those kind of false rhymes. Ultimately they disappoint the listener’s ear and prove unsatisfactory. The trouble is that we now have a couple of generations so used to bad or cheated rhymes that they don’t even know what to listen for in the first place. And so it strikes me that the powerful tonality of rhyming is in jeopardy of being lost for generations. The result of this ignorance of style is that bad rhyming has now spread into pop music and even the theater where it is unfortunately now accepted and used often without criticism.

Call me ancient and stuffy, but it’s said that the decline of a civilization is often first seen in the decline of its language. Look around you, America, it’s like happnin’, you like know what I mean?

I’m a total hard-ass with my students when it comes to perfect rhyming. Cheat once and you get a point off. Get 5 points off and you have a mediocre song. Get 10 points off and you better start over and get to work.

Scanning and Jamming
I spoke to a ‘professional’ lyricist the other day and mentioned that in her second verse her lyrics did not scan. She said back to me, “What’s scan?” I stood dumbfounded. This is like saying to a musician, “ You’ve got a mistake in the third measure” and them saying back to you, “What’s a measure?”

The most powerful tool in popular music is repetition. It’s how we learn a song and it’s why good songs are ‘sticky’ or considered to be memorable melodies – because they scan – each time you hear the hook it’s the same notes in the same rhythms scanning (repeating) perfectly. Each time you hear the verse, the melody is exactly the same even though the words are different. Change a word or jam two words into the line where there should only be one, jam two or three syllables in where there should only be one and you lose the scan, you lose the repetition of the melody and confuse the ear of the listener.

So much of the music I hear today is ruined by lazy lyricists jamming words into melodies and fouling up the repetitions so that the listener’s ear is confused and the otherwise good melodies are ruined. In perfect scanning the repeated melodies are perfectly repeated even though the words change keeping the integrity of the music. Even the accents of the words – 1^st syllable/2^nd syllable, etc are honored in the repetition. So much of what I hear today is junked up by amateur approaches where scanning is ignored and melodies are slaughtered.

On top of that riffing and licks are also confusing the listener’s ears all in the name of two generations of vocalists trying to be as brilliant as Mariah Carey. I like Mariah Carey, but she singlehandedly destroyed melody for a couple of generations as vocal wannabe copiers trying to sing like her and forcing a twist and turn onto every note – a severe defect that I call being “lick happy” — turned melodies into a series of riffs. Oh, get me my soapbox. I’m feelin’ a rant comin’ on!

Enough. I hope you get the point. Bottom line: Proper scanning is crucial to repetition. Repetition is crucial to commercial music. Without each, music is just not memorable and becomes lost in the wash of mediocrity taking over our industry.

Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Lerner, Lennon & McCartney, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Alan & Marilyn Bergman, Lorenz Hart, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter – all followed the great traditions of true rhyming and perfect scanning. It’s why their songs are still sung, played and remembered today. These are the masters. Don’t let their discoveries and work slide away in the dissolving of our language into mediocrity.

John Lennon's Original - "Imagine"

Disneyfied Retreads
And then there’s the content… How many more “I want you, I need you, I love you” songs must we wade through? Don’t we, as a people, have anything better to think and sing about? When’s the last time you heard a great song with a new fresh lyric that wasn’t a retread of teenage discovery? Certainly love is a most powerful subject to write about, but can’t we yet find something new and interesting to write about that has a new twist, a new insight?

Every time a new animated film comes out I groan at the feeble attempts of the omnipresent love song in the score. They all sound as if they were written by a room full of people trying to write a hit instead of a one talented pro coming up with an original idea.

R&B music, long the bastion of solid lyrical writing especially in the Motown era, has now sunk to pandering the teenage mind consumed with sexual encounter. I listen to some of these blatant sexual references and wonder if any of the writers of today ever listened to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” or “Baby It’s Cold Outside” or “My Funny Valentine” or even “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. Here were songs that smoldered in their sensuality without clobbering you over the head with blatancy.

Art evokes. Commercialism steamrolls. I’d rather a song tickle my fancy than slap my face. I prefer discovering a rich dramatic moment rather than being deafened by the obvious. Give me a song that stimulates my brain and softens my heart and I’ll carry that song with me in the back of my mind for the rest of my life. After all, isn’t that why we write ‘em?

Summary
Every age has its mediocrity. “Flat-Foot Floosey With A Floy Floy” had its moment in the sun in the 30s but not many of us go around singing it today. But decades are not remembered for their mediocrity. They are remembered for their ground-breaking flashes of brilliance. What will this music generation sing to their kids? “I Want Your Sex”?

My generation sings John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, Seals and Croft’s “Summer Breeze” and Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and The Beatles’ “Let It Be”. I could go on… and I will – Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” and Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September”, Billy Joel’s…

Even More Inspiration

Spiritual Scientist

Peter Link — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:09:27 +0000

I’m not particularly big on the word “religion”. I find it to be oft times restrictive, non-inclusive and all too often divisive. Though I have studied the world’s religions all my life, it’s not a field that I find myself associating with very often. When anyone asks me if I am a religious person I often answer, “not particularly, but I am a spiritual seeker.”

There’s probably no greater cause of war throughout history than religious differences. The only thing that comes close to it is greed. I choose to stay as far away from the human element of religion in my spiritual practice, which, of course, is rather impossible, but, for me, preferable. We humans (and I count myself as one) have confused the study of God, consciousness, reality, our world, matter, thought, spirit and the universe by dividing into groups and along the way, shutting doors and windows to alternative thought in an effort to protect our own.

It strikes me that religions often are more limiting than creative. They often force the thinker into a box and essentially say, “think this, study this, here is the only truth – shut the rest out.”

If there is anything that I’ve learned in my life’s study of spirituality, it’s that nobody has a corner on truth. Truth is truth. Everybody has access to it. Every religion I’ve ever studied captured and illuminated much truth for me. The only thing that really ever got in my way was the differences in language or the various definitions of words that are tossed about. Most religious differences I’ve found to be based on a confusion of semantics.

So I choose to call myself first a spiritual seeker rather than a religious person. I hope this does not offend you as I approach the writing of this post with the objective of unifying thought as opposed to dividing it.

Wikipedia states, “A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense a scientist is an individual who uses a scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science… Some perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms… This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

If we’re to accept these definitions put forth by Wikipedia, then I suppose I’m sort of a scientist/philosopher, a combination of both. I do engage in a “systematic activity to acquire knowledge” and also I do “use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality…, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

All said and done, I prefer the word “scientist”. I find spirit to be actually quite tangible the more I study it and matter to be less and less the reality. So I call myself a spiritual scientist.

If I am pinned down to name a life religion I admit very freely to being a Christian Scientist. For those who need a specific religious definition of the way I think, that explains it as well as I know how on the religious level. I grew up a Christian Scientist, attended the Christian Science Sunday School and learned the principles of the religion. In my late twenties and early thirties I decided to explore beyond and commenced a 20-year journey of examination of many of the world’s great religions. This journey was primarily the result of some very serious and thoughtful research I participated in the first couple of years of that journey using the drug, LSD.

The controlled research that I and a few friends took part in certainly opened our minds to many things never before considered regarding life, consciousness, reality and matter and launched me into even further study of spirituality in areas that did not include drugs. It became very clear to me that drugs were not the answer, but I will say that they did provide me a fascinating starting point for exploration and launched my bark into immediate waters of wonder and matter/mind-blowing thought.

I then spent a few years as a practicing Hindu and found that religion to be immaculate in its conception, rich in thought, radical in approach and full of truth. Ultimately I found it difficult to practice it as a western capitalist trying to build a career in show business in NYC. I don’t know whether that would be true for me today, but decades ago I then moved on to Buddhism.

For a couple of years I studied the Dhammapada, generally accepted to be the words of Buddha, and found these verses to be elegant truths that rarely differed from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Studying Buddhism was a joy for me because it further substantiated my understanding of the basic truths of Christianity. There were, of course, many unfamiliar words that in the beginning would scare me and actually put me off until I learned to simply explore the meaning of the word. Always these strange words constructed in foreign languages revealed to me truths that I already believed and understood when translated into my own language. Through these studies I learned not to be fearful of words that I did not use or even know and rather look at their strangeness as opportunities to shed new light on spirituality.

I finally came to understand that human language is insufficient to explain the world of spirituality. It simply was not invented for that world. And so looking at spirituality through the various lenses of language became a plus rather than a minus.

I studied Confucianism, Jainism, the Koran, Judaism, Taoism, and Bahá’í through those years of seeking and honestly found that basically, they all said pretty much the same thing, but used different words.

I then, while in my mid forties, began to have a number of serious physical problems for the first time in my life. As I had never been to a doctor, taken medicine or set foot in a hospital, I decided to tackle these physical problems by healing them rather than using the medical route.

I visited a Christian Science Practitioner to elicit his help. We commenced a three-month series of meetings – one a week – where we systematically did a “spring cleaning” on my thinking. One visit we would discuss business ethics, the next, self-confidence, the next, sexuality, and so on. Each week he would correct my thinking and adjust my consciousness of right and wrong. He was merciless and I dove into this cleaning of my attic with him. During the week I would practice what he taught.

After 3 months of these meetings I was a better man – mentally and physically. We never discussed my physical problems at all – only my mental insufficiencies or confusions. I cleaned these up and committed to a better way of thinking and practicing that thought – a better way of living.

In the course of those three months all of my physical problems cleared up and went away. I was healed. There was never any difficulty moving through this experience. It was all completely positive and I enjoyed the challenge of cleaning up my mind and watching the physical ills disappear as a by-product of that mental purification.

I became a practicing Christian Scientist once again. However, Christian Science was then the basis of my thinking, the central core, though not the circumference of my thinking. Since then I have borrowed helpful corrections to thought from all the sources I studied over those years countless times. Again, truth is truth and I had a myriad of ways to investigate it and look at it.

I have never found this mixing pot to be confusing to my practice and demonstration of truth. My spiritual seeking continues to this day – probably more than ever as I grapple with life, and become more conscious of my own spirituality. The more I learn; the more there is to learn.

In the last ten years I have chosen music as my central tool of exploration. As a life work, music is probably what I’m best at. I’ve spent a lifetime practicing, so why not use it as the means to explore the objective of utmost importance. Exploring spirituality through music is really fascinating because music is such a universal language. It is not limited by spellings and strange words, but is appreciated and loved by all mankind.

Music too is a fascinating science. Again, the more I learn; the more there is to learn. The two, music and spirituality, seem to go hand in hand for me. One complements the other. I am a more spiritual man when I’m creating my music and I’m definitely a better musician when I approach the creation of music spiritually.

I am also always at my best as a person when I am in the studio writing, arranging, orchestrating, etc. There I am the happiest, the most fulfilled and the least stressful. Trouble just seem to fall away when I walk into my studio and I find myself doing everything I can in life to get to work musically. On days when the rest of life gets so hectic that I can’t do that work, I struggle. On the days that I work, I am fulfilled.

Still some things to be learned here… )

So I am a spiritual scientist/philosopher/musician. Being a human being is far too often a struggle. Here is where I need to improve and learn to manage life. Here is where I’m still stuck – earthbound. Both The Missus and I now discuss daily how we can approach these issues of humanity more gracefully and productively. Here is where the problems lay. Here is the next plateau of concentration.

In the meantime, however, I have my joy life, my world of peace, creativity and fulfillment to enter into and explore. My gratitude abounds for this space in thought. I am divinely fortunate.

I don’t know what I can accomplish during the rest of my time here on Planet Earth, but I do know that I am committed to this one endeavor only – scientific spiritual seeking through music. Everything else pales in comparison. Eating, sleeping, the laborious minutiae of everyday life all are just things to work through so that my true commitment can be practiced. The human experience is a stepping-stone to the divine. We’re trying to make those steps shorter every day.

Even More Inspiration

I Stood In The Wings… Part 4

Peter Link — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:12:22 +0000

This is Part 4. If you haven’t yet read Part 1, 2 & 3, I highly suggest you do so first.

He was a chicken. I don’t mean he was afraid to do things; I mean he was really a chicken. Well, not in all actuality, but he was acting a chicken.

Let me explain.

I was performing at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel Ballroom in some unremembered benefit back in the days when I did such things, and after I had finished my act, the stage manager asked me if I’d like to see the rest of the show. I said that I would and during the blackout and set change for the next act I was quickly led to a front row table right smack at the stage proscenium. I was so close to the next act that the comedian could have stepped on my head if he wasn’t careful.

I was not, this time, literally ‘in the wings’, but I was so up close and personal that it felt like it.

I do not remember the comic’s name, but I will never forget his act. It was hilarious and he kept the audience howling with hysterical laughter for a full ten minutes.

Like I said, he was a chicken. He was totally committed to being a chicken and, of course, he had to be. His act was so ‘out there’ that he would have bombed horribly if he had not been so committed. In it, he chicken-scratched, he rooster-strutted, he hen-squawked, he flapped his wings, he clucked, he gave us the best “cockadoodledoo” I’ve ever heard and he chickened about the stage in a total frenzy for the full ten minutes. What’s more, he wore no chicken costume at all. Just a man in his pants and shirt, but he impersonated a chicken before our very eyes. (Or perhaps he imchickenated a person when he finished his act.)

About the only thing he did that was un-chicken-like was that he sweated. Oh my god did he sweat. This comic was workin’ the house and was chickening so deeply that he must have lost ten pounds in ten minutes. The sweat flew off him like he was in the shower and any number of times flew right on me as I sat, fascinated and wet. I’ve seen men do this in the last frantic minutes of an overtime basketball game, but never such a constant shower on stage – and I’ve never had, before or since, the ‘privilege’ of taking part in anything resembling that shower of activity.

I don’t remember ever laughing. I remember thinking that he was really funny, and being aware of the audience roaring almost continuously, but laugh myself? Not. I was too fascinated with the caloric burn, the intense mad workout and the tsunami-like proportion of his effort as the sweat flew off him like feathers.

I remember thinking that I was glad that I had never chosen to be a comic. For such a funny thing, it’s just hard work! He was a big man, which made his particular chicken character even funnier, of course. He was so committed that I wondered how long, when he finally got off stage, it would take him to transform back into a human being. Perhaps they had a big bowl of chicken feed and water waiting for him back in his dressing room.

After the show, as I too was a cast member, I was hanging out back stage, and had to go see him and thank him for his wondrous performance. He took one look at me and snarled, “Oh, you’re the guy sitting in the front row who never laughed! Wha’ja think this was, Othello?

A comic to the end.

The stage is an amazing thing. It gives permission – permission to the performer to be the center of attention in the room. It contains within itself the power of focus. It says all by itself even when empty, “Here I am. Watch me.”

And yet, get too close and sometimes you can cross the line of demarcation from audience to performer unknowingly. When that happens, life changes dramatically and suddenly you’re on the other side. You’ve moved from a very safe place of being entertained, to a very dangerous place indeed – if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a whole other world up there and very few except the elite really understand it and can exist comfortably therein or thereon. I’ve learned to respect it deeply and also respect the great talent, experience and know-how it takes to fill that space with magic.

Many who perform never really get it and it defeats them eventually. Few truly succeed. It’s one of the wonders of life on Planet Earth – the stage. I learned early in life what it takes to be a great performer. I often stood in the wings and watched them, the great ones, and tried to figure out just how they did it. The best one-word answer I can come up with is ‘commitment’. The best are totally committed to that moment in time – to the doing of that moment fully in imaginary circumstances. It ain’t easy. And for those who can actually get the job done, I take off my hat – and watch from the wings.

My most recent experience standing in the wings has been the longest. For the past seven years I have stood in the wings watching my wife, Julia Wade (affectionately known here as ‘The Missus’) change the face of music in the Christian Science Church performing as Soloist every Sunday at its world headquarters in Boston. When she was offered the job seven long years ago she was given the direction by the Board of Directors to lead the music of that church into the 21^st century.

We used to joke that she would take it from the 19^th century leapfrogging over the 20^th and into the 21^st the music was so behind the times.

It was not an easy job. There were many against change of any sort. In the beginning, even some of those closest to her position were against change and fought her in subtle and not so subtle ways. But she persisted with the loving support of the Board of Directors and though she often came under fire for her 21^st century choices of style, sound, instrumentation, techniques of performance and especially choices of material, she was a strong world leader in the movement and won over, by example, most of those who were afraid to change in the beginning. She also, again by example, showed Christian Science churches around the world musically what they could do and how they could do it in their own churches.

The first 3-4 years were especially tough on her. Often there was great resistance and some turmoil, but through a very high sense of prayerful integrity she led the movement of change – sensitively and definitely.

Now, seven years later, music in this church is seen and heard in a whole different landscape. She has been able to hold on to the greatness of the past while expanding the range of music so that all would be attracted to the teachings of the church on a musical level.

Along the way also I have witnessed many who did not appreciate a more modern music in the beginning learn to first accept it and then understand and love it in the end. Not only was she able to make the changes required, but also she was also able to educate as well – education being the panacea for revolution.

And now her time is coming to an end. At the end of April, 2012 she will complete her job as soloist and move on to a wider sphere of audience and peoples. Focusing more on her recording career and international concert career, she will continue to be an inspirational communicator through music and I see her taking the experience of seven years of leadership and performance to an expanded world.

These past seven years I’ve had the great privilege of being the unofficial “man behind the curtain” in this endeavor. As her principal composer and record producer I’ve been able to watch and consult from a bit of a distance and sometimes help her through the shallows and depths of the experience. I’ve stood in the wings and watched, fascinated, as she encountered obstacle after obstacle and moved gracefully forward.

I’ve been grateful and relieved to be able to stay behind that curtain and not have to step out on that stage with her. She’s always been the point man (woman) and taken the heat (and gotten the applause) and I’m fine with that. I’ve learned that standing behind the curtain is where I belong in life. I’m good there. It’s a comfortable place for me and it’s where I’m at my best.

The next four months, as she moves towards her time of closure, I shall stay behind that curtain and continue to encourage, suggest and yes, take notes on how she might do it better. In the meantime, I’m still fascinated in watching greatness evolve from this up close and personal position.

I get to continue to study talent and investigate and explore the amazing craft of performance from my dark protected corner of the stage, there in those wings in the safety of my thoughts and observances.

Many people aspire to the stage. I learned early on in my career that it’s just not my place and I’m good with that. I’m happy to watch and learn and I’ve been very fortunate to stand in those wings.

After all, I’ve had the best seat in the house.

Even More Inspiration

I Stood In The Wings… Part 3

Peter Link — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:40:02 +0000

This is Part 3. If you haven’t yet read Part 1 & 2, I highly suggest you do so first.

For a little more than five years when I was in my late 20s and early 30s I was composer-in-residence at the NY Shakespeare Festival (The Public Theater) working with producer Joseph Papp in what was, at the time, the most creative theatrical hot spot in the country. Joe Papp and his plays and musicals had an amazing run of success during the 70s that we haven’t seen the likes of from a theatrical producer since.

It was at The Public where I learned my craft having the opportunity to work on some 40 shows in those 5+ years working as composer for Joe. Besides many other theaters in The Public complex, the NYSF also produced two Shakespeare plays per summer at the outdoor Delacorte Theater in Central Park. I created incidental music for a number of these productions and I remember one particular production of Shakespeare’s Comedy Of Errors where I was backstage standing in the wings one night.

An older actor was on stage in a scene with one other actor one night when the older actor simply stopped in the middle of one line and kind of slumped over, still standing, into a frozen position. The long pause brought us all to quick alert. His fellow actor fed him his cue again to no response. The stage manager in the wings downstage of me also fed him his lines in a stage whisper several times to no avail. The audience began to buzz and we all quickly realized that there was something very wrong with the older actor.

Truth is, he had had a small stroke.

The stage manager, taking charge, simply walked out on stage calmly, and taking the arm of the older actor, led him slowly off stage. Then the stage manager went back on stage and announced to the audience that we would take a short intermission and resume the play after 15 minutes. The audience, still abuzz, did as they were told to do peacefully.

Backstage it was anything but peaceful. Rather, it was a pretty wild scene as the older actor was addressed and cared for, an ambulance was called and his understudy was frantically preparing to go on in the older actor’s place.

The costume mistresses scurried about preparing the understudy’s costume changes, I got in his face discussing his musical cues and the stage manager ran through a litany of reminders for the young, inexperienced understudy.

As it was very early in the run, the understudies for each role had only had up to that point one two-hour rehearsal — far too little for a three and a half hour Shakespeare production, and we soon discovered that the understudy had not totally committed his lines to memory.

On top of that, the understudy was also one of the townspeople in the play so his role had to be covered by the swingman and that had to be organized as well – all in the announced 15 minutes.

It was quickly decided that the understudy should carry the book – that is, hold the script from the play while acting his part on stage. This, of course, would kill the reality of the play, but there seemed no other choice and we hoped that the audience would simply understand the predicament and put up with the solution.

The understudy was a cute, funny little unknown fellow with the unlikely name of Danny Devito. Yes, that Danny Devito – pre-stardom and yet undiscovered.

No one knew that frantic night backstage that a star was about to be born.

The announcement that we were about to resume brought the audience back to their seats and the announcement that the role once performed by the older gentleman would now be played by Danny Devito brought the dreaded groan of disappointment from the audience.

And then this tiny little man, script in hand, nervously walked out on stage and resumed the scene where we had left off. I watched nervously from the wings.

The role was never a particularly funny one as played by the older actor. Danny read his first line nervously and somehow caught the humor of it and the audience tittered at this little fellow. That titter seemed to give Danny courage to go on and by the end of the scene he magically held the audience in the palm of his hand and had them roaring in the aisles.

It was an amazing transformation and afterwards, talking to several people who were in the audience that night, I discovered that they did not even remember that he held the book throughout. They just remembered Danny and how funny and charming and adorable he was.

In the bows afterwards, Danny got the grandest of standing ovations from the audience and also the entire cast. It was as sweet a memory as I have in life to see this little guy triumph over such adversity the way he had.

The next day the NY papers were full of the incident and Danny finished the production that summer doing the role.

The actor’s nightmare puts the actor on-stage in a role where he does not know his lines and often does not even know the name of the play he or she is in. All actors have this nightmare from time to time. One always wakes gratefully from it in a sweat.

The composer’s nightmare is similar. For me, I stand in the wings watching my own musical, but the songs are not mine, don’t really fit the play and are not performed well. I can’t figure out what has gone wrong and finally I too wake gratefully in a sweat.

The opposite experiences are the joys of my life. To stand in the wings and watch the magic of my own hit show night after night, to hear the laughter, to feel the confident throb of the music and hear the audience cheer in response, to feel my songs touch the hearts of hundreds or even thousands is, of course, pure pleasure. It is a gratification that runs deep and that I’ll probably never get enough of.

Two particular shows provided that gratification night after night for literally hundreds and hundreds of performances. The first was another NY Shakespeare Festival production done at The Public Theater of a rock opera that I wrote back in the 70s. The Wedding Of Iphigenia was an assignment given to me by Joe Papp to help me learn my theater craft and work with a master. The master was Euripedes, one of the greatest of the Greek playwrights, and the two classic works of his that I drew my opera from were Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Taurus.

We performed the show both at The Public Theater in NYC and The Old Vic (their experimental theater, The Young Vic) in London under the leadership of Sir Lawrence Olivier. The opera simply worked form the beginning and melted the paint from the walls every time it was performed over the course of a couple of years.

When we first cast the show, I knew the show would have a Greek chorus of women to support the young maiden lead, Iphigenia. In casting we had so many wondrous young women try out that we could not decide who should play Iphigenia so we hired them all with the stipulation that we would decide in the course of rehearsals and the others would be in the chorus.

At the end of each day, the director, producer Joe Papp, and I would discuss the choices. Every day we changed our mind to a different girl. Two weeks went by and they were all so good and so original that we were dumbfounded at our own inability to decide. The girls were, of course, getting restless and impatient to have a decision and our inability to decide was beginning to create negative vibes in the company.

Finally Joe Papp had a most original and courageous idea. They should all play Iphigenia. At first we laughed at the idea, but then, as we discussed it thoroughly, we got first intrigued and then excited about the possibilities.

The idea worked like gangbusters. It unified the women and brought an amazing style and power to the play and to the music. It was so different from anything audiences had ever seen – the leading role of a Greek tragedy being played by 12 women at the same time — but we laid it out well and the music took you to powerful places of drama and passion. It also helped that the music, rock music, was very new to the theater and so created an ambiance of “anything goes” in the theater.

I watched these ten women tear this opera up night after night as they ripped through every conceivable passion provided by Euripedes’ masterwork. Trish Hawkins, Nell Carter, Margaret Dorn, Marta Heflin, Linda Lawley, Leata Galloway, Pamela Pentony, Marion Ramsey, Julianne Marshall, Andrea Marcovicci, Bonnie Guidry, Sharon Redd and even Patti LuPone all played this one little girl together and sang their way to standing ovations night after night.

I got to watch it from the wings. It was a time I shall never forget. A number would start and I knew each night that it would scrape the moon and each night it did. It was a great feeling.

Years later I had a very similar experience with The Jenny Burton Experience. Jenny, and a choir of nine of the top studio singers in NYC, played to sold-out audiences every Thursday night at a NY club called “Don’t Tell Mama”. The act won, in that time, every conceivable music award given and drew thousands of people – many of which came back time after time.

Here again I got to watch from the wings great performers sing my music in magical ways. The choir, led by vocal arranger, Margaret Dorn, was a superb blend of R&B and Gospel voices and could raise the roof at the drop of a hat, but it was Jenny herself who grabbed us all by the socks each night and carried us. She was a radiant performer at the height of her art, able to both touch the center of your heart with a ballad and dazzle your mind with an up song and set your feet a’dancin’.

And she was, on top of it all, funny. She developed into a tremendous ad libber and could run with an improvised moment away from the written show and then get back and keep the audience in stitches. She was the consummate performer and the group backed her up beautifully.

She also had the so important ability to recreate the performance every night. One night during a terrible snowstorm they performed the show for the 6 people who trudged through the blizzard and showed up and the show was as good as it had ever been. I was one of those six. I sat that night in the audience at a table just to make the room look fuller. At the end of the show I was also one of the six who stood up and cheered. There were more people on stage that night than in the audience.

Standing in the wings for the hundreds of performances throughout those seven years is also one of the most cherished times of my life. The opportunity to be so close to such talent and to actually be a part of it, even though I hid behind the curtain, brought me the joyous satisfactions of a lifetime.

Stay tuned for Part 4 – the last if this series – yet to come.

Even More Inspiration

I Stood In The Wings… Part 2

Peter Link — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:26:10 +0000

This is Part 2. If you haven’t yet read Part 1, I highly suggest you do so first.

Zero Mostel was a large man – not particularly tall, but large. He had a voluptuous appetite for both food and all the rest of life as well. Many people don’t know this, but besides being a huge Broadway star culminating in his unforgettable performance originating the role of Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, he was also a wondrous painter. He once invited me over to his studio which covered an entire floor of a rebuilt factory and was filled with the paintings of a lifetime.

Zero -- Self Portrait

I had the chance to get to know him and work with him in the Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses In Nighttown directed by Burgess Meredith for which I wrote songs and underscore. Zero was probably well into his 70s by then and at about 5’ 10” and 280 lbs, carried a lot of girth. Because of this largess, he sometimes had trouble walking and even standing for long periods of time. When he would go to get up out of a chair everyone would want to rush over and help him up and, of course, he would have none of it.

Any yet he was one of those – one of those stories we so often hear about actors who have some infliction off-stage, yet seem to lose it on-stage when they become someone else.

From the first day of rehearsal, everyone in the company absolutely loved Zero. You couldn’t help it. Oh, he was loud and large in every way and full of himself, but he was an absolute star – totally magnetic, hilariously funny, lightening fast with a quip and probably the most loveable large teddy bear I’ve ever known. By lunch after the first morning of the rehearsal, he knew everyone’s name by heart in a company of 45 actors.

That tells you a lot about how much he cared for his fellow actor.

Here was a man who drew me to my quiet spot in the wings night after night as I studied and marveled at just how the man did it – how he radiated life, how he found the energy for this huge, complex role of magnificent words and images and how he sustained this for eight grueling shows a week. If there was ever a man who carried us all on his back, Zero was the man.

In one particularly memorable scene he had a dance. I had scored the dance with an original Irish jig that I had written especially for Zero that he loved, complete with a hilarious elephant walk section which actually satirizes Zero himself. I had even snuck in a short musical quote from Fiddler On The Roof referencing his iconic performance of If I Were A Rich Man, that nobody really recognized but Zero. It was our secret and at the first musical rehearsal with the orchestra when he first heard it, he screamed “HAH” and wheeled on his heel and winked at me as he danced along.

He was, in this dance, unbelievably light on his feet and danced on his toes parodying the ballerina elephants in Disney’s Fantasia. Oh how he loved to do this number!

One second show on a Saturday night well into the run you could see from the sweat flying off his body and his drenched costume that he was especially tired. I had long ago placed a chair in an unused wing far downstage where I would often sit and watch him work. On this particular night, and even some performances afterwards, he was just about a quarter of the way into this long celebrative dance which was, by now, on of our real showstoppers.

I could see that he was in some trouble out there. He looked into the wing where I sat and in the middle of the dance mouthed the word, “Chair” to me. I knew instantly exactly what he wanted and stood up and lifted the chair to my chest with the back away from me. Zero did a quick re-choreographing of his steps which brought him over to me standing off-stage with the chair. There, he grabbed the chair with a wink and, not missing a beat or a step, danced the chair to center stage, sat down and finished the entire number sitting.

The audience loved it. It got the biggest applause yet and I swear that he did all of the choreography of the dance sitting, sweating, acting, panting, elephanting, and wowing his audience.

He was a star. He let nothing get in the way of entertaining his audience. If he couldn’t dance standing up, well then, he’d just do it sitting down. And, by golly, he did.

Years later when I heard that Zero had passed on, I cried like a baby. The world lost, not a man, but a huge force of nature that day and I got to watch him up close and personal.

Again, many years ago, I got a call one Saturday afternoon from a friend who said, “Hey Pete, I got two free tickets to see Elton John tonight at the Garden. Wanna go?”

Does the sun shine?

I soon learned why the tickets were free. They were the worst seats in the house. The present Madison Square Garden is not square. Rather it is round and actually rather oblong within. The stage was placed at one end of the arena and the basketball court/hockey ring was filled with seats as well as 7/8ths of the rest of the house to fit the audience of 25,000 screamin’ rockin’ fans.

The only seats they didn’t sell was the section directly behind the stage at one end of the oblong. Our seats were the last two seats before the roped off section, so we were effectually behind the stage and behind the band. Had I bought the tickets, I would have been furious. Before the concert, as we were ushered to our seats, my friend wanted to leave, but I somehow felt right at home once again having the opportunity to watch a star do his thing from the wings.

We faced the back of all the band members and if you’ve ever seen Elton, you know that he plays sitting, standing, jumping and dancing – and sings looking over his right shoulder into the mic so that he can turn his face to the audience. We only occasionally saw his face in profile that night. We were totally out of it. We never saw the faces of the band our seats were so bad. It was actually worse than standing in the wings.

So Elton put us on the piano. Actually, Elton put everyone in the audience on the piano – all 25,000 people. As a performer, he didn’t go out to us, he brought us to him. That was his charisma. We were all equal, no matter where our seats, we all had great seats – there on the piano.

I, of course, never moved from my chair, and yet I felt like he was singing and playing especially for me all night. That’s what it means to be a star. To me, that’s star quality. I’ve had the occasion to witness it – we all have – and I really can’t tell you how he did it, but I know he did it. I was there.

I think it is just one of those God-given gifts that some of the lucky ones get — a largess, or humanity, so powerful as to take over an arena of people and hold them transfixed for hours. Call it talent; call it magnanimity, but I don’t think charisma like that can be taught. It can be released by a great teacher if you have it to begin with, but, as a teacher, I’ve never really figured out how to teach it if ya’ don’t got it to begin with.

That’s really why I’ve been drawn to the wings all these years to study it and try to get an insight into where it comes from, how it’s done.

Stay tuned for more such explorations and sightings in my next couple of posts.

Even More Inspiration

Goin’ Home – Digi-Book

Peter Link — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:20:21 +0000

When I was a kid and would buy an album, one of my favorite things in life to do, I couldn’t wait to rush home, plunk myself down in front of our Hi-Fi and give it a thorough listen – and, of course, while listening the first time, read the liner notes.

Back then, LPs were large enough – approximately 12”x12” – so that the cardboard cover they came in could have all kinds of information about the music and the artist. I remember to this day literally paragraphs of my Ellington At Newport (Jazz Festival) that I played and read until the grooves wore out.

Back then they even gave a Grammy for “Best Liner Notes” each year.

Then the medium began to shrink – first to the size of a CD and now to nothing more than a digital download of the cover and the names of the songs if you’re lucky. Lost along the way were other pictures besides the cover, lyrics and especially my beloved liner notes.

Several years back when I started producing CDs regularly I tried to keep the time-honored traditions by releasing CDs with 8 to 24 page booklet inserts. Inspirational music depends a lot on its lyrical content and I always felt it necessary to include those lyrics and especially give credit to all the musicians, singers, designers, etc. who worked to complete the project. But the cost of the booklet became prohibitive.

Today a 4 panel booklet CD will cost $1.14 per unit from the manufacturer if I buy at least 1000. Take that booklet to 18-24 pages and the cost soars to over $3.00 per unit. There go the profits.

So Watchfire Music and a few other artists turned to the Digi-Book. What is a Digi-Book? “A Digi-Book is an electronic version of an album’s liner notes and vital information. This downloadable digital booklet contains photos, lyrics, and notes written by the artists and producers of the album as well as all sorts of information pertinent to the experience.”

Better yet, go look for yourself! WFM’s latest is a gorgeous journey of nearly 40 full screen pages of pictures, lyrics, quotes, artist insights and credit material with bios that is visually stunning and completely informative regarding the experience of making the CD and other vital information.

Designed by WFM’s leading designer, Sara Gray, who also did Julia Wade’s Every Day gem of a booklet, this digital package looks fabulous on your computer screen and can actually be printed as well. If you print, we suggest using Glossy Photo Paper for a beautiful treasured keepsake of the album experience.

But you don’t have to print it to enjoy it. Backlit from your computer screen, it’s a colorful experience that is sure to delight anyone who is into the music on the album.

Best of all, it’s FREE! You can download it and send it to a friend in just a click or two.

We even created a new section of the site just for Digi-Books! Just go to the far right of the Nav Bar and click on Digi-Books.

I’m not going to write much more about it because that would be redundant to the experience, so take a moment or two right now to follow this link and experience it for yourself.

Oh yes, while you’re at it, Buy The Goin’ Home CD! The whole package is worth far more than the price of admission. That’s a promise.

We did a soft release last Thanksgiving Day and already, in one week, Goin’ Home is our best selling CD of the year. I can’t tell you how excited we all are here at WFM at the promise that this CD and Digi-Book holds for the coming months. We thank so many of you, literally hundreds of people who have already been so supportive of this project.

The package is finished. It’s available now. We promised it for Christmas and delivered. It’s a wondrous Christmas gift idea and with WFM’s Send To A Friend capability, it’s the easiest of shopping ventures – all from your easy chair in front of your computer. Give the gift of music and a perspicacious look at the road to eternal life.

Don’t forget the Digi-Book!

Even More Inspiration

Wonderful

Peter Link — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:15:52 +0000

I’ve always loved Christmas songs. Who hasn’t? They are iconic references and symbols of one of, for most of us, one of the real highlights of childhood – and then we get to repeat it all in a slightly different fashion as parents years later. These songs take us through these enchanting times and play in the background like a movie score.

Previous to this month I had only ever written one Christmas song – a song recorded by the Jenny Burton Experience called Christmas In My Soul. They say, in the music business, that the month of June is the month to write and begin one’s Christmas album, the preparation of such to be around 5-6 months. Who can write Christmas songs in June? What a silly notion.

This year the Missus has come up short in her search for the perfect Christmas song for her Christmas Day performance in church. She had decided to employ a terrific Boston harpist and together with her organist, Bryan Ashley, keep it small and delicate in accordance with the spiritual implications of the morning. Last year she used a brass quintet plus the church four manual pipe organ and blew the roof off, so this year she wanted to do something completely different.

But no song came to mind to fit the criteria.

While watching her go through her turmoil, I happened to mention one day several weeks ago that perhaps I could write one for her. This was said in a fit of compassion for her plight while I was in the middle of the mad dash of the final throes of my own CD, Goin’ Home.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, she grabbed at the offer and signed me up. At first I thought, “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?” Where would I ever find the time to do this?

Then she came up with the notion that not only should I write it and arrange it for harp and keyboard, but that we should also record it and sell it for Christmas. Then she came up with the idea that we should also do the sheet music for it and sell that too and let others use it in their churches for their Christmas services as well. Then she came up with the idea that as long as we were going to do all that, she may as well use the song for her musical Christmas Presence lecture that she does around the country with lecturer, Chet Manchester. This only moved the deadline for all this up by about 2 ½ weeks! “Egads,” thought I. “What have I done?”

So I did it. In the next 3 days Julia will record the lead vocal to the orchestrated track, Craig Wagner, the designer, will design all the packaging, I’ll mix the song, the WFM staff will manufacture about a hundred singles to start with and by Thursday we’ll be selling this song that will receive it’s first performance in St. Louis on this coming Sunday. Whew!

Will we make it? With God’s help, we shall.

It’s a new world. Things like this can be accomplished in a matter of weeks, a matter of days now. The power of computers – the power of Mind.

The writing was fun and accomplished in a matter of 48 hours. Once that was done, I knew we’d be OK. The rest was just a matter of getting’ it done.

Julia directed me to the Bible for my text and chose the tried and true – think Handel.

“And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful”

But I also wanted to shed some new light on the subject – not just rehash George Fredric. Julia suggested that I combine the Bible text with some of the text of Mary Baker Eddy and her thoughts on the life of Jesus. Julia and her big ideas! Using text (non-lyrics) always makes good songwriting very difficult in that text is not metered and has a way of not particularly sounding very musical much less poetic. On top of that the text of Mary Baker Eddy cannot be changed by even the alteration of a comma.

However the text she gave me was poetic to a certain extent so I thought I’d give it a go. I had a great deal more content than I needed to begin with. Julia can have her long-winded moments, so I had to do some clever editing. Always easier to cut than to add. While fooling around with several lyrical directions the line struck me like a lightening bolt — “And his name shall be called Wonderful,”

“What a great idea,” thought I. Call the song Wonderful!

And so I did.

I was on my way…

Here is the finished lyric. In another magical musical week you’ll be able to hear, sing, play, perform, buy and listen to the whole thing through the wonderful world of MIDI, LOGIC, the INTERNET and God’s gift of inspiration.

Hot off the presses!

Wonderful

Text by Mary Baker Eddy
Lyrics adapted from the Book of John
Music by Peter Link

The wakeful shepherd beholds
The first faint morning beams,
Ere cometh the full radiance
Of a risen day.

So shone the pale star
To the prophet-shepherds;
Yet it traversed the night, and came
Where, in cradled obscurity, lay
The Bethlehem babe,
And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Wonderful

The people that walked in darkness
Have seen a very great light:
For unto us a child is born,
And a son is given:
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:

And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful

Now the Son of man is glorified,
Yes and God is glorified in him.
Verily, he says unto you,
“He that believeth on me,
The works that I do shall he do also;
And greater works than these shall he do;

If ye love me, keep my commandments.
And I will pray the Father,
And he shall give you another Comforter”

The prophet of today
Beholds in the mental horizon
The signs of these times,
The reappearance of the Christianity
Which heals the sick
And destroys error,
And no other sign shall be given.

When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth,
The prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfilled:
Saying “Unto us a child is born, . . .”
“Unto us a child is born, . . .”

And his name shall be called Wonderful.”
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful
Wonderful
Yes he is wonderful
Wonderful!

Even More Inspiration

The Changing Scene

Peter Link — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:42:20 +0000

Naturally, with great interest, I have watched closely the evolution of the music business. It is my life. Inspirational music has become my mission for the past 15 years and in that time I’ve watched this business of music spin out of control, crash and burn and then try to rise from the ashes time after time only to crash and burn again.

During this time we invented a company, Watchfire Music, to sell our product and to be the machinery behind all of our musical efforts. It has been just that for us, and so we continue to try to make it all work during these historically toughest of times.

My approach has been to try new things to see if they would work, to stay creative and turn out good and great product and to sometimes pause and simply watch where the world, and especially our industry, is going next.

If we were a rich organization, if there were an endless financial stream of support, we could be leaders in the industry – we certainly know and understand the technology and keep up to date on the evolution of music and the Internet – but we don’t have that deep well of cash.

Many companies have tried to lead and gone down trying. We have survived because we have stayed small and nimble, watching for the technology to evolve to a point where the industry would settle into a music delivery system that would make sense during this collapse and ever-changing time.

To a certain extent, it has worked. We’ve not spent millions of investor money. We have a powerful and well-developed ecommerce website that is pretty automated, easy to manage and graceful to change. And we have gone from a start-up company to more than a breakeven company in these 5 years of both success and failure.

Have we failed? You bet. I could name 20 great ideas that have come and gone and now only exist in the depths of one of my hard drives. Have we had our share of successes? Another “You bet”. After all, we’re still here.

Will we change things again? A third YOU BET.

It seems now that with the success of Spotify and Pandora, music is now a streaming medium. For the average Joe with their smart phones and iPods and iPads and whatever new fandangled thing is just over the next horizon, music is available to be searched and found, listened to at any time and collected in organized fashion – all for free.

This puts a serious dent in the ability to maintain a company that sells recorded music. Oh yes, I know, there are still people who want to actually own their favorite music, still people who want to play their music on their CD players and hear the music at its quality best, but unfortunately they are a rapidly dwindling few.

Case in point: We have one lovely man and wife set of “customers” who absolutely love WFM Radio and are often found writing us and suggesting new programming, updating of our channels and new ideas for better radio. They are devoted listeners to our free radio. They have never bought a single download. They’re happy with what we give them, but do not buy.

I look at all this and wonder…

Where do we go from here?

Over the next months we will continue to watch, listen, work and pray.

This Christmas I have a new CD, Goin’ Home, coming out that is presently the hope of our company. We’re going to do new things in new ways that we’ve never done before. We’re going to try to do everything in our power and imagination to reach people with this life-changing and life-supporting idea. We’re going to spend more money than ever before on promotion and packaging and quality.

My favorite quote from music blogger Bob Lefsetz sits before me here on my desk. “But can you build something so good people will be drawn to you?” It’s all I think about these days. I will tell you this:

We’re gonna give it a shot.