The Get-Out-the-Song Effort - Measure for Measure Blog - NYTimes. In 1979, I moved into a one-bedroom apartment adjacent to the Hollywood Bowl with my rental piano in tow and began trying to write songs. I didn’t have a clue how to get started in the music business, or even where to get good advice. But I had the blind willingness to put myself out there and see where life, love and God would lead me. The first of many mysterious events unfolded when I met a guy in my building who co-owned a recording studio in downtown Hollywood. The technology anyone can use now to record music at home was then neither readily available nor affordable. This person was a miracle find in my book. A miracle. Eventually I made him an offer: I would bring local clients to his studio and split the proceeds with him if he would let me use the studio for free for my own work.
It’s not that the jingles were great (they weren’t) or that anyone besides my family and friends knew that they were on the radio (they didn’t). I also kept reading music magazine and trade papers. The Ear of the Beholder - Measure for Measure - Opinion - New Yo. Last Plane to Jakarta | Hot Spots. I don't love the new Dionne Warwick as much as I wish I did - when you feel as strongly about an artist as I do about Ms. Warwick, you harbor unextinguishable hopes that she's going to just emerge from nowhere one day with a record so triumphant that all lesser singers are instantly compelled by their consciences to hang their heads in shame.
I imagine them taking the stage night after night, their necks evidently gone permanently limp, their eyes firmly fixed on their shoes, still belting out their limp drama-class read-throughs but unable to face the audience, knowing that some therein will have heard the unbelievable new Dionne album, and knowing that these same people therefore now know what good singing really sounds like. But the new Dionne album is not that album. It's a gospel record - I got pretty excited about that - but I am honestly dumbfounded by the song selection. "Jesus Loves Me"? So all that's true. No Depression: Peter's Postscripts. Candidate of Hope | Last Plane to Jakarta. So It Goes: How It Went - Measure for Measure - Opinion - New Yo. Joe Henry and I had been talking about writing together for ages, and even tried it once, circa 2000, with uneven results. But now seemed the right time. He started the engine, so he gets to take the wheel. I wrote him an e-mail. I am hesitating with the disclaimer I want to issue here, about how I never let anyone see my lyrics this early in the game, and how I haven’t written for a long while, so maybe it’s a little awkward and stiff . . .
Oh. There’s the disclaimer. I wrote one to Joe, too: February 28, 2008 Joe, this is SO rough and even a little juvenile, but there’s something here to pull out I think.. really. this is just an IDEA.. not a song yet. A note: It is not in my nature to co-write; I would rather go deep into the underworld alone, like Persephone looking for the pomegranate. Joe and I have already weathered the most uncomfortable moment in co-writing: the take-back.
That experience made this one, writing “So It Goes,” easier, and more compatible. Two Minutes and 42 Seconds in Heaven by Joshua Allen - The Morni. We Are Emotional Spies - Measure for Measure - Opinion - New Yor. Well, Actually, It Is Brain Surgery - Measure for Measure - Opin. I haven’t written a song in about a year. All of 2007 was a blur of pain, culminating in brain surgery last November. The surgery went fine, the recovery has been brutal, but I think I’m starting to get better, because just recently I’ve gotten excited about writing songs again. I didn’t get there by a happy epiphany, but by pain of another sort. My friend and great songwriting mentor, John Stewart (“Daydream Believer,” “Gold,” “California Bloodlines”), died unexpectedly in January.
When I heard the news, I pulled out a file I had saved with all the letters and drawings and faxes he had sent me over the years; I noticed that the dual themes of Love and Madness kept reappearing in his notes. He used to say to me, upon hearing a new song of mine that he thought might be too perfect or careful or contrived, either lyrically or structurally, “But where’s the madness, Rose?” His belief in songs, and his sense of liberation and expansion when he approached writing, was deeply inspiring. The Three Hs - Measure for Measure - Opinion - New York Times Bl. I had no idea I was going to turn out to be a songwriter. I would bet my next year’s royalty checks that when I was getting slapped on the butt and crying out my first melodies as a newborn, my parents were not dreaming of the day that their youngest baby boy would grow up to become a songwriter. The family business was an air freight trucking company.
So God bless my parents for knowing by my second year in grade school that music was my first love and it wasn’t going to be me driving around in the hot Arizona sun at 18 in an Econoline van full of freight to deliver. So with everything I have in me, I thank my mom and dad for letting me follow my intuition. First, honesty, because I believe that people will only put up with a lie for so long and I want my songs to last forever. For me, finding out if a song is honest or not is a gut thing.
Then, it has to be full of humanity, and by that I mean the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual sides of humanity.