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

• Wonderful
• Even Now
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• My Body
• You Must Remember This!
• Love Is The Reason For Living

James Taylor

If you were to ask me, “Who has been your favorite pop star throughout your life?” I’d have to answer that it is a tie between The Beatles and James Taylor.  Perhaps that dates me; perhaps, on the other hand, it doesn’t.  Both have had such musically triumphant careers and both are sure to be long lasting.

Also both churned out mountains of great music and for me that’s the bottom line.  The Beatles were perhaps more eclectic, but Sweet Baby James was, well, just so sweeeet!

As a lyricist, James can be somewhat impressionistic like Paul and Joni, but also could just nail it down with the best of them.  He wrote this song for a musical, “Working”, and as a story-telling song, it’s one of the best.  It wins my Ira Award for Best Song for a Musical Written by a Pop Star.

Now my grandfather was a sailor

He blew in off the water

My father was a farmer

And I, his only daughter

Took up with a no good mill working man

From Massachusetts

Who dies from too much whiskey

And leaves me these three faces to feed

Millwork ain’t easy

Millwork ain’t hard

Millwork it ain’t nothing

But an awful boring job

I’m waiting for a daydream

To take me through the morning

And put me in my coffee break

Where I can have a sandwich

And remember

Then it’s me and my machine

For the rest of the morning

For the rest of the afternoon

And the rest of my life

Now my mind begins to wander

To the days back on the farm

I can see my father smiling at me

Swinging on his arm

I can hear my granddad’s stories

Of the storms out on Lake Eerie

Where vessels and cargos and fortunes

And sailors’ lives were lost

Yes, but it’s my life has been wasted

And I have been the fool

To let this manufacturer

Use my body for a tool

I can ride home in the evening

Staring at my hands

Swearing by my sorrow that a young girl

Ought to stand a better chance

So may I work the mills just as long as I am able

And never meet the man whose name is on the label

It be me and my machine

For the rest of the morning

And the rest of the afternoon

Gone for the rest of my life

Then James can turn around and write with great depth sharing his own spiritual corner on life with us in this wonderful insight into his style of life.  This song expresses the nature of James the best for me, capturing the essence of the man better than any of his others.  I like to think of him sitting out on his back porch in the Berkshires, pen in one hand, guitar in the other.

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time

Any fool can do it

There ain’t nothing to it

Nobody knows how we got to

The top of the hill

But since we’re on our way down

We might as well enjoy the ride

The secret of love is in opening up your heart

It’s okay to feel afraid

But don’t let that stand in your way

‘Cause anyone knows that love is the only road

And since we’re only here for a while

Might as well show some style

Give us a smile

Isn’t it a lovely ride

Sliding down

Gliding down

Try not to try too hard

It’s just a lovely ride

Now the thing about time is that time

Isn’t really real

It’s just your point of view

How does it feel for you

Einstein said he could never understand it all

Planets spinning through space

The smile upon your face

Welcome to the human race

Some kind of lovely ride

I’ll be sliding down

I’ll be gliding down

Try not to try too hard

It’s just a lovely ride

Isn’t it a lovely ride

Sliding down

Gliding down

Try not to try too hard

It’s just a lovely ride

Now the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time

James has had a great effect on me in my life and in my music.  His mastery of chord progressions and guitar meanderings always blows my mind and stimulates my imagination.  Musically, he is probably my biggest influence.  When his new CDs come out, I’m always first in line, knowing that in a short time I’ll be lying on the couch back home with my headphones on, a big smile upon my face and wonder in my heart.

I don’t know that his lyrics have had a similar impact, but I do know that one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written came from the wish to some day be able to write a song like the one above, “Isn’t It A Lovely Ride.”

This next song, as beautifully sung by Jenny Burton, is definitely a reaction to my hero, Sweet Baby James, and my own shot at putting my stamp on my own soul.

When I consider the heavens

The works of Thy fingers

The moon and the stars

You ordained

When I consider a child

The steps that he’s taking

His light and his joy

So ingrained

When I think of the way

That each breath comes unnoticed

Sustaining this delicate life

I am swept off my feet

In breathless wonder

At the mystery of life

When I consider the music

Of all the great masters

And know it was You

They all heard

And the works of our Shakespeares

King Davids and Keats

You gave them each

Every word

When I contemplate

The pure fabric of nature

Bewildered by all we have learned

I am swept off my feet

In breathless wonder

At the miracle of life

And I think on these things

And the wonder life brings

From the greatest of things to the small

And though I spend my life

Searching life’s solemn secrets

I know I’ll never know all

As I ponder the atom

The boundless vast ether

The billions of lives

On this stone

I consider the gift

Of God’s imagination

And begin to explore

The unknown

But this whimsical world

It just slips through my fingers

As I try to hold on to the air

And I’m swept off my feet

In breathless wonder

At the miracle of life

And I think on these things

Yes I think on these things

And the wonder life brings

Even More Inspiration

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• Kickstarter.com Campaign – I
• WFM Listening Room – Series II Finale
• WFM Listening Room Series II – 3
• Progress Afoot
• Life At Its Best

Joni Mitchell-Self Portrait

If you’ve already read Part 1, then welcome back!  Tonight let’s start with Joni.  In Part 1 I opened with the expression “A poem doth not a lyric make”.  Joni Mitchell, in my book, comes the closest to writing poetry that works as lyrics.  It is her genius to do so.  Even though she can make it work sometimes, I still wouldn’t try it if I were you.  Joni Mitchells only come along once in a lifetime.

Joni writes a lot like Paul Simon – she paints an impressionistic picture.  She is a poet at work on a lyrical canvas.  She sometimes tells a story, but that story often just has splotches of through line and she leaves it up to the listener to fill in the blanks.  She is also, you may already know, an accomplished painter whose work often graces her album covers.

Here’s one of my favorite Joni’s.

Just before our love got lost you said

I am as constant as a northern star

And I said, constantly in the darkness

Where’s that at?

If you want me I’ll be in the bar

On the back of a carton coaster

In the blue TV screen light

I drew a map of Canada

Oh Canada

With your face sketched on it twice

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

And I would still be on my feet

Oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints

I’m frightened by the devil

And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid

I remember that time that you told me, you said

Love is touching souls

Surely you touched mine

Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

Still I’d be on my feet

I would still be on my feet

I met a woman

She had a mouth like yours

She knew your life

She knew your devils and your deeds

And she said

Go to him, stay with him if you can

But be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood you’re my holy wine

You’re so bitter, bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

Still I’d be on my feet

I would still be on my feet

When you get done reading or hearing this lyric, you’ve only gotten sketches, but you really have an insight into their relationship and the analogy used is just terrific.

I grew up writing theater lyrics.  They have to be more straightforward, less obtuse, because, especially in today’s musicals, the lyrics must advance the plot.  That’s a lot to require in a medium where most people pay little attention to the lyrics being absorbed by the music, but the surroundings of the theater, the stage, the costumes, the characters, the plot itself make the audience focus more on the lyrics.

Oscar Hammerstein pretty much invented this tradition with the advent of the ground breaking “Oklahoma” (No one who has ever seen this musical will ever have trouble spelling this word).  After “Oklahoma” the songs pretty much always had to forward the plot.  Previous to that, songs turned up most often as nightclub routines that had nothing to do with anything except pure entertainment.

Pop music is a whole different story.  In the 50’s when rock was born, lyrics went from great sophistication to great simplicity.  “Da doo run run” and “Purple People Eater” tickled the sensibilities of millions, but I couldn’t say that the 50s or the 60s were exactly a high watermark in the craft and art of lyric writing.

Then the Beatles came along and smashed all the traditions and turned the musical world, and the rest of the world for that matter, upside down.

Lennon and McCartney not only could write with beautiful, cogent and intelligent simplicity (think “Yesterday”), but they could also take you far beyond Joni and Paul in the art of impressionism.

In terms of simplicity, here’s a beauty from John:

Imagine there’s no Heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

Lennon and McCartney could also write with a kind of off the wall sense of humor.  It was Stephen Sondheim who said that one of the hardest things to do in the theater was to write a song that got laughs.  Then he went out and proved himself wrong with “Gee, Officer Krupke” and “Comedy Tonight”.

Lennon and McCartney tickled our funny bones with songs like “Octopus’s Garden”, “When I’m Sixty-four”, and even the following great straight rocker that gives a tongue in cheek nod in the middle to the great Brian Wilson’s “I Wish They All Could Be California Girls” and also squeezes in a tip o’ the hat to Ray Charles.  I may not have a boffo laugh from this song, but I can’t hear it without breaking out into a big grin.

Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC

Didn’t get to bed last night

On the way the paper bag was on my knee

Man I had a dreadful flight

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boy

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Been away so long I hardly knew the place

Gee it’s good to be back home

Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case

Honey disconnect the phone

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boy

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out

They leave the West behind

And Moscow girls make me sing and shout

That Georgia’s always on my mind.

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boys

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Show me round your snow peaked mountains way down south

Take me to your daddy’s farm

Let me hear your balalaika’s ringing out

Come and keep your comrade warm.

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boys

Back in the U.S.S.R.

And then, of course, in the impressionistic tradition of Joni and Paul, there’s Lucy.  For two decades my generation argued about what this song was about, but when you were on what they were on, you didn’t care.  The song is an icon of its time.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,

Towering over your head.

Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,

And she’s gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain

Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies,

Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,

That grow so incredibly high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,

Waiting to take you away.

Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,

And you’re gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Picture yourself on a train in a station,

With plasticine porters with looking glass ties,

Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,

The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Stay tuned.  Coming soon: Cole Porter, James Taylor, Lieber and Stoller, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, and the great Oscar Hammerstein.

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• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• My Body
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now
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A 2 Part Series – Part 1

The Internet, especially when it comes to music, is an ever-changing world. Watchfire Music, in order to be a leader in the Inspirational category, must also be an ever-changing company.

Lately, and once again, we’ve been putting this “Inspirational” term under the microscope and studying and discussing how its definition might evolve. Once again, we’ve been asking ourselves, “Just what is Inspirational music?”

And once again we’re secure in a reshaping of that definition to include within our borders a widening of the umbrella.

The impulse came to me in many different ways because of my day to day dealings and discussions with artists and their new music. Here are some of the reasons why we have widened the umbrella.

In looking back over my own life in music I asked myself what were some of my most inspirational moments. I’ll never forget rushing one day on the way out the door late to an important meeting and being frozen to the floor by the DJ’s announcement of a new Beatles’ single and then standing helplessly before my radio as it played “Hey Jude” knowing full well that I was going to miss the meeting deadline, but not caring. The song was that overpowering, the moment just that riveting. Then, instead of rushing off to the meeting, I rushed to the record store to buy the single.

I was totally blown away by this song whose lyrics sang:

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.

Hey Jude, don’t be afraid.
You were made to go out and get her.
The minute you let her under your skin,
Then you begin to make it better.

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.

Na na na na na na na

Not exactly the world’s greatest lyric or even a particularly Inspirational lyric. So what inspired me? What just blew me away?  It was the music, of course. After all, who was this Jude guy? We didn’t know and we didn’t care. And what did all those “Na na na na nas” mean? Haven’t got a clue, but the music they rode on swept up a nation in its wake.

The Beatles were the most inspiring musical act of my life. Some of their songs were lyrically Inspirational – “Let It Be” comes to mind, but others were just musically inspirational, and we were all fine with that.

It was twenty years ago today,
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile.
So may I introduce to you
The act you’ve known for all these years,
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
We’re Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
We hope you will enjoy the show,
We’re Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
Sit back and let the evening go.

Again, not exactly an Inspirational lyric, but it’s still down there in my bones today. I was shopping in a store the other day and it was playing over the store sound system and I had to just stop there in the aisle and listen. I was inspired all over again.

These two instances got me to thinking. Also several submissions from fine new artists who you’ll be hearing from very soon here at Watchfire stimulated the change and prompted us to re-investigate the definition. These new artists were writing more about the human condition than the spiritual condition and yet their music reflected such a high caliber of musicianship that it was truly inspiring.

Take Jenny Burton’s new CD, Released, as a case in point. (Release will be up on Jenny Burton’s inspirational artist page next week available for purchase and download.) On it she sings a song that comes out against cheating in relationships.

Two shadows in a doorway
Sweet temptation on a Tuesday night
Hot love in a hotel room
In the middle of the afternoon

Nasty rumors gonna haunt me
Secret rendezvous are all we’ve known
Feelin’ so guilty ’bout the sneakin’ around
And the whispering on the phone

And I’m so tired of livin’ this way

Why must we be so indiscreet
We never face it but the truth is we cheat
The lies we fabricate
Tryin’ to keep our stories straight
Just don’t make sense

It’s just lies lies and more lies
Pounding hearts and hungry eyes
In all honesty
I don’t know what’s become of me
Livin’ like a tramp on the street
Why must we be so indiscreet
So indiscreet
So totally indiscreet

This song puts the problem that haunts millions of marriages right out on the table and then calls a spade a spade. It is what we call an Issue Song. It raises the human consciousness by putting the issue out there before us and then telling the truth about it. These lyrics are suggestive without being offensive, but do deal with the problem of infidelity head-on. They are not sensual for sensuality’s sake, but evocative to make a point.

So we ask, “Is this an Inspirational song?” Does it inspire you to rethink your marriage, your office flirtation? Does it remind you of who you are, who you’d rather be? We hope so. We want our music to inspire better lives above all.

More on this same subject tomorrow…
(You can now read part 2 of this article here.)

For more inspirational music and thoughts from Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

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• Phoenix Rising
• Kickstarter.com Campaign – I
• Live Music Lives!
• WFM Listening Room – Series II Finale
• WFM Listening Room Series II – 3

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was one of these. In fact, you might say that with Michael you had the one where God’s thumb slipped the most.  For about a decade he was arguably the most talented man on the planet and definitely the world’s greatest performer.

In my lifetime I would place Michael right up there in the top 5 with The Beatles, Judy Garland, Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra.  We watched Thriller until many of us knew all the steps.  We totally rocked out to Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, I’m Bad, and Billie Jean, and my favorite will always be Man In The Mirror.  That music stop into the big key change will ever be the epitome of great pop music.  Michael was a great rocker, but the King Of Pop.

On top of it all he was a great innovative dancer, right up there with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.  It wasn’t just Thriller that thrilled.  Every time I ever saw Michael dance, my jaw would drop at this wondrous human being.  The rhythm that poured from his body and his music was way beyond the rest of us mere mortals.

I was a fan.  I was in awe of his talent.  I loved him for being a super human performer and then I came crashing down just like the rest of you as he went over some mad crazy edge in his life and lost his balance.  I laughed at him and dissed him and pitied him and finally shook my head and walked away from him as he became more and more confused with his own identity.

He never really had a boyhood — he was always out there entertaining us – and so in his adulthood he turned to playing with boys, hanging out with them and God knows what else.

He was a consummate performer, always trying to make the song, the step, the move new, better, best and he often succeeded.  So it was only natural that he try to remake himself and his look new, better, best.  For a minute there, when he had his long hair and his glove and his white socks, he succeeded again.  But he couldn’t stop tinkering and for some reason thought he might try to make his make-up permanent.  He was great, but he wasn’t God, and he found that out the hard way – losing his nose in the process.

You had to just shake your head at his personal life and just hope that he could get through the bizarre periods and on to the next great album.

Quincy Jones, Michael’s friend and producer on Thriller said of Michael, “I’d never seen so much focus in my life.”  Kobe Bryant, LAs basketball star said, “One of the things he always told me was don’t be afraid to be different,” Kobe wrote. “He’s saying: ‘It’s OK to be that driven, it’s OK to be obsessed with what you want to do. That’s perfectly fine.’”

Michael was willing to pay the price – and he did.

Looking back, it was a tragic life.  I’m not going to try to figure it out.  Stardom is a tough road to traverse, a heavy load to carry.  I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.  It throws us so far beyond the realm of human normalcy on so many confusing levels.

Most great performers are naturally instinctive people whose talents radiate from that naturally instinctive core.  Fame totally confuses the issue and separates the consciousness from that naturalness because fame is just so unnatural.  It takes a rare individual who can handle that.  Most of them can’t and that’s why we see so many of them come crashing down.

Michael Jackson’s talent was a gift to us all from God.  I’m choosing to focus on that side of him and let the rest be forgotten.  Michael was one weird being, but I’m willing to let that part of him die and focus on the gift.

So play that video again and let’s all smile as Michael moon walks across the stage.  Play that Man In The Mirror song again and let’s all wait for the key change and go “Aaaaaaahhhhhh” together.  Put up Thriller one more time and let’s just watch the guy dance.  I’m sure God sits in heaven today watching Michael’s videos and massaging His thumb.

Even More Inspiration

• Top 3 Inspirational – Part 2
• Even Now
• Thinking And Creativity
• Valentine Thoughts
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• What Is A Cantata?

The Beatles

Please remember that these are my personal most Inspirational songs – not necessarily my favorites, but the ones that have had the most Inspirational impact on my life as a composer and music listener.

Here goes.

POP
1. Hey Jude – The Beatles / John Lennon and Paul McCartney

In 1968, John Lennon and his wife Cynthia Lennon separated due to his affair with Yoko Ono. Soon afterwards, Paul McCartney drove out to visit Cynthia and Julian, her son with Lennon. “We’d been very good friends for millions of years and I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life,” McCartney said. Later, Cynthia Lennon recalled, “I was truly surprised when, one afternoon, Paul arrived on his own. I was touched by his obvious concern for our welfare… On the journey down he composed ‘Hey Jude’ in the car. I will never forget Paul’s gesture of care and concern in coming to see us.”

I was on my way out the door, rushing to an important appointment and very late.  Hey Jude came on the radio for the first time.  Announced as a new Beatles song, I just had to stop for a quick listen to the first couple of bars before rushing off.  I stood, briefcase and coat in hand, transfixed as the song played – all 7 minutes of it.  When it was over, I calmly walked back to the phone, called my appointment and cancelled it.  Then I changed the course of my life and went out and bought the single.

2. What A Fool Believes – The Doobie Brothers / Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins

The single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 14, 1979, remaining in that position for just one week. However, the song received 1980 Grammy Awards for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

“What a Fool Believes” was one of the few non-disco No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1979.

From the totally catchy fresh new style of the opening chords which launched a thousand hits, to the whiskey/gutter tough melodic sound of Michael’s instantly identifiable voice, this song captured a sound, feel and groove that I aspired to and fell in love with and tried to emulate over and over for years.  But it was Michael’s genius and Michael’s sound and nobody ever done it better.

3. I Get Around – The Beach Boys / Brian Wilson and Mike Love

As far as researchers can gather, the instrumental track was recorded on April 2, 1964. The session, produced by Brian Wilson.  The vocals were recorded during a session eight days later on April 10. The lead vocal features Mike Love on the verses and Brian Wilson on the choruses with backing vocals from Brian, Carl & Dennis Wilson, Mike Love and Alan Jardine.

Brian Wilson was my hero.  His Pop song writing was the best of an incredible time in Pop music history.  The era belonged to the Beatles, but the Beach Boys were right up there.  This song captures the vocal style genius of Brian’s work which was heavily influenced by The Four Freshmen, one of my favorite groups as a kid.  With Brian’s fantastic falsetto leading the way and his tight harmonies like no other Pop group out there, the Beach Boys set the table for my own harmonic style.  Simply a great sound.

Honorable Mention – I Wanna Hold Your Hand – The Beatles / Lennon and McCartney

In September 1980, Lennon told Playboy magazine:
“ We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u/ got that something…’ And Paul hits this chord [E minor] and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each other’s noses.”

This song broke the 1/4/5 chord progression barrier that had been Pop music’s unwritten law throughout the 50s.  It’s why the song sounds so fresh, because we were all so used to the same old chord progression that literally thousands of songs had used.  Then along came this song and broke it all open.  Again, the genius of the Beatles.  Pop music would never be the same.

RUNNERS UP
It Might Be You – Stephen Bishop / with music written by Dave Grusin, and lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman
The First Time – Roberta Flack / Ewan MacColl
Killing Me Softly With His Song — Roberta Flack / Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel.
Man In A Mirror – Michael Jackson / Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett
Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
Don’t Stand So Close To Me – The Police / Sting
Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys / Brian Wilson
Sympathy For The Devil – The Rolling Stones / Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Help, I can’t stop.  Too many great songs to choose from.  Too many life moments defined by the music.  Whoever said I could do this as a Top 3?  Impossible.

Even More Inspiration

• Michael Jackson
• Top 3 Inspirational-Part 1
• The Ira Awards Part 3
• The Ira Awards Part 2
• The Ira Awards Part 1
• Gift From Mom

Bill Haley and the Comets

It rapidly expanded to the following:  Here they are by category.

TOP 3 CLASSICAL
1. Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki

Górecki said of this, “Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music […] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed.”

Why this first?  Because with it, I was inspired to fall in love with my wife.  An easy pick.

2. Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky

Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said of one passage, “That page is sixty years old, but it’s never been topped for sophisticated handling of primitive rhythms…”, and of the work as a whole, “…it’s also got the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms and whatever else you care to name.”

I agree.  This piece of music, more than any other in my life, changed the way I conceived music.  It took the endeavor, for me, completely out of the technical and placed it smack dab in the middle of the drama of the subject, in this case nature.

3. Adagio For Strings by Samuel Barber

In January 1938 Barber sent the piece to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, and Barber was annoyed and avoided the conductor. Subsequently Toscanini sent word through a friend that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it.

At a time of deep grieving, so deep that I was immobilized beyond action of any kind, I lay on my living room floor and listened to this piece over and over and over again for three days.  It enabled me to finally get up again and face life.  I was the music; the music was me.

TOP 3 ROCK
1. Rock Around The Clock – Bill Haley and the Comets

“Rock Around the Clock” is a 12-bar-blues-based song from 1952, written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers (the latter under the pseudonym “Jimmy De Knight”).   Although it was probably not the first rock and roll record, nor was it the first successful record of the genre, it is considered by many to be the song that put rock and roll on the map in America and around the world.

In 1955, when “Rock Around the Clock” was used under the opening credits of the film Blackboard Jungle, I was there sitting in the Osage Theater on a Friday night in Kirkwood, Missouri.  We’d never heard rock n’ roll music (our music) played in a movie.  When it came on at the beginning of the movie everyone in the movie theater (90% kids) immediately got up and started dancing in their seats and in the aisles.  It was so wild and untamed, they had to start the movie all over again and it all happened again.  I’ll never forget the moment.  It was a root moment in my love of music.

2. What’d I Say – Ray Charles

The song was improvised one evening late in 1958 when Ray Charles, his orchestra, and backup singers had played their entire set list at a show and still had time left; the response from multiple audiences was so enthusiastic that Charles announced to his producer that he was going to record it. It earned Ray Charles his first gold record and has been influential on many legendary musical acts that followed him in rock and roll. It was ranked at #10 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

I grew up a drummer.  It was the song I most loved to play along with.  Later, it was always my band’s closer.  It never failed to rock the house.

3. A Day In The Life – The Beatles / John Lennon & Paul McCartney

The orchestral part was recorded on 10 February 1967, with McCartney and producer George Martin conducting a 40-piece orchestra. The recording session was completed at a total cost of £367 for the players, an extravagance at the time. Martin later described explaining his improvised score to the puzzled orchestra:

“What I did there was to write … the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note…near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar … Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad.”

This song blew us all away.  It was the Beatles at their best – poetic, fascinatingly obtuse,  creative far beyond their time, and totally capturing the times and cultures of the age.  It broke the molds, but remained tough and commercial all at the same time – a perfect example of the genius of the Beatles.

Runners Up: “Hey Ya!” – OutKast,  “Roll Over Beethoven” – Chuck Berry,  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – The Rolling Stones

TOP 3 FOLK
1. If I Had My Way – Peter, Paul and Mary / The Reverend Gary Davis

Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was a blues and gospel singer and guitarist.  The folk revival of the 1960s re-invigorated Davis’ career, culminating in a performance at the Newport Folk Festival and the recording by Peter, Paul and Mary of “Samson and Delilah”, also known as “If I Had My Way”, originally a Blind Willie Johnson recording that Davis had popularized.

“What”, you’re probably thinking, “not If I Had A Hammer?”  No, for me, If I Had My Way was the song, feel and energy that I couldn’t get out of my head, out of my bones.  In my folkie days, if we opened with If I Had A Hammer, we closed with If I Had My Way.

2. The Times They are A-Changin’ – Bob Dylan

Dylan recalled writing the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the moment. In 1985, he said, ”This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads ‘Come All Ye Bold Highway Men’, ‘Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens’. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.”

For me, this is a song that has never stopped being relevant to present time.  Its melody is classic and its words simply the words of one of the great poets of our time.  Still, after all these years, every time I hear it, I’m thrilled by its majesty.

3. Tie – A Case Of You and Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell

Mitchell wrote and recorded A Case of You in 1971, during her early folk period. The song was first released on the 1971 album Blue. Some Mitchell biographers believe that the song was inspired by her love affair with Leonard Cohen.  It is also believed that it was her formal goodbye to her partner Graham Nash.

Judy Collins made the first commercially released recording of Both Sides Now in 1968 (shortly after Mitchell wrote it); Collins’s version reached #8 on the U.S. pop singles charts and won a 1968 Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.

I loved the song (Both Sides Now) when Judy first sang it.  It was an instant classic, but where it really killed me was many years later when Joni re-recorded it on an album of the same name released in 2000. It is a concept album that traces the progress of the modern relationship through Mitchell’s orchestral renditions of classic jazz songs. Two of Mitchell’s own songs are also included, “A Case of You” and “Both Sides Now”. The orchestra was arranged and conducted by Vince Mendoza.

Again I lay on my living room floor, closed my eyes and fell deeply in love with Ms Mitchell and her two incredible songs.  I mention Vince Mendoza (above) because his arrangement of Both Sides Now on this later CD is simply one of the best things I’ve ever heard and Joni’s depth of soul and wisdom of age performance is astonishing.  One of my all time favorite pieces of music of any genre.  As for A Case Of You, well, it’s just a great great (that’s 2 ‘greats”) lyric and a hellava love song.

So there you have it.  Please keep in mind that these are not necessarily my favorite songs of these genres, but the most inspirational, although many of them fit both categories.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at Top 3 Pop, R&B, Gospel and Broadway.

Even More Inspiration

• The Ira Awards Part 2
• Michael Jackson
• Top 3 Inspirational – Part 2
• Even Now
• The Ira Awards Part 3
• The Ira Awards Part 1