On Great Songs…..

I wrote the following back in 1998 when I was churning out songs one and two a month and then recording them. That was a period from February 1997 to February 2001.

Sometimes when I hear Barbra Streisand sing a series of songs like You Don’t Bring Me Flowers  I am so moved that I say to myself, “What in the the world are you doing, trying to write great songs?  There are enough of them out there to last anybody in their right mind.  Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy them?”

Of course, the great songwriters who wrote some of the really great songs could have said that same thing and then there wouldn’t be all of these other marvelous, moving, enchanting songs.I guess the real truth is that I never wrote my songs because I choose to but because I had to survive.  Otherwise, when they came to me and I ignored them they might explode inside me and I would probably have died.

And when I wrote down those lyrics and captured the melody on my little $20 Casio keyboard I would probably not be able to survive if there was not Greg Brayton. I would take my rough concepts to him and have him work with me to turn them into what was rolling around there in my imagination to begin with. Somehow, though, the results were far beyond my original conceptions. We would get through this process of creating and recording a song in just four hours. I guess this was my therapy.

I’ve often explored the idea that most people who have addictions are blessed with special talents and quite often their addictions and abuses come from the frustration of suppressing that greatness that is stirring up inside them.