In a comment two posts below Watski asked:
"Is writing music like writing a blog, except you get paid for it? In that you sometimes just go blank? What happens when you go blank?"
I had no ready answer for any of these questions, possibly because my willingness to reflect on blogging is fairly limited, probably because I haven't thought analytically about writing music for a long time, although I used to before I did a lot of it. I was intrigued, so I reflected.
Personally I get something very different out of the two media, leaving money aside, but there is a common factor. At its best the journey from blank page to end product can feel very similar. You start in an empty room and, if all goes well, at some point soon afterwards you are no longer alone but facing something self-sufficient that had no previous existence, that no one has ever seen but you, that has some surprises in it, that feels like it needed doing and you did it. That moment is highly addictive and it is the artiste's reward throughout the creative world. (Hello there Pseud's Corner.)
The joy of blog is the informality. No deadlines, no wordage limits, no employers. An evening in the pub can easily be substituted for a shift at the blogface if necessary, without guilt or penalty. Indeed such an evening may well provide the material for the blog, typed up later with eccentric spellings in abundance. Blogging has all the chief glories of amateurism: no compulsion, no drudgery, freedom from pressures commonly found elsewhere. Also freedom from the prospect of reward beyond the approval of the community, and this is the hidden factor in the blog, the true brake on self-indulgence. Blogs are not diaries, which do not hone one's sensitivities in the same way, they are for consumption, for others to read, and so must be worked on a little harder.
Because of this, anyone who runs a blog for any length of time must become aware of the technical process of writing prose; a similar awareness does not usually come to those who only ever speak. In that sense I think taking blog writing seriously is a mind-altering experience. I have certainly got much more out of blogging than I ever learned from my training in essay writing through standard schooling.
And what does the presence of money do for a writer? For me the main difference between amateurs and professionals in the creative arts is not so much a matter of talent or quality but more a question of polishing and finishing the work. A great many people have half finished novels, sitcoms under revision, bits of pottery, half-baked poetry, songs in need of lyrics, sleeveless jumpers, occasional rock bands. Professionals have the finished articles, because someone has paid for them which means that any doubts or problems have been forcibly confronted and resolved, a process that is often too painful or baffling to endure for the joy of creation alone. Without money only the most highly motivated among us finish anything. Those moments at the end of the process when exhaustion dominates, when distance and detachment are lost, are the absolute opposite of fun, a barbed wire fence which the underdressed do not willingly approach.
Writing music for money against the clock is not for the nervous. It necessarily involves the processes I have just described and as a life option it should come with bold type warnings not to be lightly enterprised. No proper appreciation of the experience is possible until you are well and truly in it, much like child rearing where the starting position does not relate intuitively to the end position. One minute you're mucking about, the next - WHAM!
If someone gave out a really detailed, brutally truthful account of the changes that parenthood can bring I don't think many men, let alone women, would ever embark on such a course. A savage jump cut in the film of life from happy couple, with leisure and disposable income, time for each other, a clean car interior, lie-ins on Sunday etc, to the same couple five years into parenthood would be too harsh to entice anyone, leaving procreation to those too poor or confused to use contraception.
And so it is with music, where a similar contrast could be made between carefree amateur musician, playing what he wants when he wants to, who stops when it's not fun, and the the pro, trying to fit everything in, chasing up money, disliking the work he has yet wondering where the next work might come from. Again, such an edit would surely be too daunting for any but the foolhardy young or habitual cocaine users. Ah...
Professional word writers complain that the most common question they get asked is: "Where do you get your ideas from?". I once heard Keith Richards attempt to answer this and his reply was a judicious mix of modesty, gobbledegook and Jack Daniels. It was something to the effect that the ideas were somehow out there and he merely opened himself up on some level, channelling them so that they appeared fully formed and complete through his hands. That might work for two bar riffs but it is clearly not true of songs, which need crafted and hard won words, or of longer instrumental pieces like symphonies, and it's especially not true of film music, which must fulfill a shopping list of technical requirements and restrictions.
Ask Paul Simon the same question and he might say that his ideas for 'Gracelands' came mystically channelled through a recording studio in South Africa and several lifetimes of experience (none of them his) playing township music.
As for what happens when you get stuck or go blank, this is a truly fascinating area and one I have not seen written about anywhere. Blog writers face this problem in a variety of ways. I simply don't post, or answer questions in my comments. Zed recently wrote a remarkable piece which began with a stated intention to write about nothing. Others put up lists of possible subjects, or threaten to quit thus raising the stakes a little and injecting some survival adrenalin. Or they do memes.
In music terms, at least in the pop area, this blanking experience doesn't really exist, because the nature of the medium is imitative and there is always something out there to imitate. The question is then more like: "Whom do you get your ideas from?". Being hopelessly high-minded and too guilt-ridden to steal, this approach to inspiration remained hidden from me for many years until I started consorting with what could be described as 'professional' writers and producers.
I once had a fascinating conversation with Jimmy Lea of Slade who told me that 'Merry Christmas Everybody' started out as a rewrite of 'Penny Lane'. It got twisted round in the process but the harmonium intro makes its parentage abundantly clear. This sort of thing is entirely acceptable in the pop world, as long as the end result does not infringe the original copyright.
When this 'tip' had soaked in I finally understood many things from my teenage years, like why 'Blockbuster' resembled 'Jean Genie' so closely, a fact we all put down at the time to some sort of Keith Richards 'in the air' theory. I suddenly realised Suzi Quatro's first two hits (Can The Can and Daytona Demon) bore detailed resemblances to Gary Glitter's 'Rock and Roll Pt 2' and the Dave Clark Five's 'Glad All Over' respectively. The bassline to Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' is a note for note lift of Colonel Abrams' seminal 'Trapped'. No one has spotted it*. (I didn't either: I was told.) More recently Hearsay's semenal first single bore a, hem-hem, striking resemblence to an Oasis song. I've mercifully forgotten all the titles. All Oasis songs bear a remarkable resemblance to something. So there it is. Pop writers don't get stuck, they do memes.
That's probably Level One of the questions answered. If anyone wants more I can approach the really deep, tricky stuff, but I will leave you with the words of a musician friend who once said: "I don't like writing. I prefer having written."
* Except Mike. I bet he has. He spots everything.
I very much enjoyed my latest return to Blogworld and feel much stimulated by the long and varied string of comments it produced. For future reference: unless I say I'm leaving I will be coming back. If I really wanted to stop I would just disappear. Unfortunately I cannot at present foresee a time when I could return to daily blogging, fun though it is.
I was considering writing about foxhunting or "Bush 2 - Just When You Thought It Was Safe..." but I consider these topics have been well covered in many places. So I have finally decided to write about something generally less well covered in the global media - namely Me.
I am not personally famous at all, nor do I want to be. I cover up my ambition with proper middle class fig leaves, like declaring I would be happy with personal pre-eminence within a specialised sphere. Or failing that, lots of money that no one is aware I possess. These are my fantasies.
Of course I see now, over my quarter century working in the fame mines of London, that precious fame yields itself entirely on its own terms. No one, and I mean no one, who is a celebrity is reluctant about it. It is the easiest ride in the playground to step off. It's also the hardest to scramble onto, because at any one time all the seats are already taken. Celebrity is as competitive as any event in Track and Field.
I can drop names and I will shower you lightly with these second hand rose petals occasionally if you so wish, but I know the hidden price of that game. I have noted over the years how the name droppers among us assume that fame burns so brightly that it lights up the lives of those who merely name its owners, without realising that it also throws their own lives into deeper shade. Or to put it less pompously, if you really wish you were tall then don't go out of your way to stand next to people much taller than yourself. Fame doesn't actually rub off any more than height does. Fame is a business that deals in stark contrasts.
I have always found it hilarious when people drop names inaccurately, an ever present peril for those in whom ambition exceeds capacity for detail. I knew an aspiring pop star (c. 1982) who was very keen to impress me with a list of producers who had volunteered to work with her. She proudly named Phil Wyman and Anne Dunkley. She meant Phil Wainman, of massive 70s pop success, and Anne Dudley, of Art of Noise, brilliant string arrangements for ABC, FGTH etc. I never corrected her, but rather unkindly got her to repeat these names as often as possible by whatever devious means I could devise.
So. I once walked past Freddie Mercury in a corridor in Townhouse Studios. He was smaller than I had pictured, had very sticky out teeth and was surrounded by a large number of people all laughing at his banter, issued in a soft, rather nasal voice. Excitement factor: not much, although I admire his work.
I once walked past Tom Jones in a corridor in Battery Studios. He was very brown and he smelled lovely. Excitement factor: very high, which I can’t explain, because I don't see him as an icon of supercool. I actually think of him as a complete clod who shamelessly jumps on to the nearest bandwagon at painfully regular intervals. His forays into covering Lenny Kravitz songs or latching onto the dirgy Stereophonics show him up as a glorified holiday camp singer. If you put Bohemian Rhapsody next to Young New Mexican Puppeteer I think you'll see what I mean.
Having said that, he is a thunderously awesome singer and had the engineers at Battery in absolute thrall. "He just comes in and sings, the levels are perfect and it's one take!" they told me. And the sad thing is that most of them had never seen such skill before. Or since, I dare say.
I was at Battery that day to play on a track for an album of his (white cover, early 90s, forget the title). In due time I found myself personally thanked on the cover of the record. This was undeniably pleasing but it baffled me too, because the song I had played on was not included in the final track listing. The truth was inescapable: I was being thanked for not appearing on the album.
This was a new and unfamiliar situation, leading me on to wonder whether I was entitled to a flood of credits from other artists for not appearing on their albums either. Over the years, though, the only such namecheck I ever collected was for not playing on a Mandy Smith single, which service yielded me a handy royalty of about fifty quid re use of the video on TV. Since then I have never taken credits very seriously.
The family are fine, thank you. Jake makes his public debut on violin this afternoon, though tragically I shall not be there to hear him. Zoe has started to choose her Xmas presents and so far we seem to be looking at several hundred pounds worth of Lil Bratz Ski Lodge with accessories, and a dog.
Next up: writing blogs vs writing music.
Reports of my demise, though rare and not unkind, have nevertheless been a little exaggerated
I'm going to try again, but this time with slightly revised ground rules. The main difference is that I am now going to refer to work, what I do, and how it affects me. This is because I have been finding it increasingly difficult to describe my daily situations while tiptoeing around the large central hole left by my unwillingness to refer to my working life. So I will aim for a fuller picture, but with the standard internet precaution of anonymity all round. No names.
And why have I been so coy? Mainly because the original aim of this blog was to take the absurdities of actual family life and relate them in some wider form to the problems thrown up by liberal values. This interested me and still does, though now that I have explicitly stated as much I accept that most of my few remaining readers are quite entitled to feel that I have spoiled the game (if they had spotted this), or to feel cheated (if they hadn't). But let me assure you, we are all real people, exactly as described.
Except me. I felt when I started that my life outside the family was not relevant, and would probably be too distracting if specific, too actionable if truthful. Furthermore I considered that if I were going to write about work I would have to include triumph as well as its imposter twin, but I shied away from the demands of that full range. The purpose of this blog was never to glorify myself. One of my problems with Belle de Jour was on exactly this point. By contrast I decided to characterise myself in a less than favourable light, a role with which I, as blogmeister, was entirely comfortable. Incidentally I only realised later that that was what I was doing, and it only struck me quite recently that this general approach is also a standard model for depression, namely viewing your own life as a narrative in which you portray yourself as an irredeemable villain. Hmm.
As I became unusually busy from the middle of the year I began to find it more and more dificult to write about a family that I saw less and less, that made weekend expeditions without me, that did its homework without my help, that no longer served me the easy pickings that I needed, as a writer with no skill in fiction.
I did, in fact, change my sidebar text several months ago to read "Writes music for a living" in an attempt to address this thicket of unwillingness and uncandidness. No one noticed, or at least no one commented, but by then, of course, most people weren't even reading the body text, never mind the sidebar.
I have always loved music, and I made a crucial decision many years ago to turn my hobby into my living. I don't know many people who have done this except musicians, which is what I am. I don't advise it. Yes, I have played on hits and yes, I have met famous people. I still don't advise it.
Writing music for a living is no picnic. In fact very few things are actually a picnic, including picnics, what with wasps, nettles, the large percentage of clothing left on barbed wire, cowpats and the general lack of toilet facilities (for humans). And the weather. The famous Underwater Picnic (Cumbria, Aug 2003) springs to mind here, a salutary lesson in what the real thing can be like. How different, how very different from those jaunts up onto Hampstead Heath with two bottles of wine and a pain rustique which speckled my thirties. But I digress.
I dislike the word 'career' when used in the music business. It seems inappropriate to describe something so defiantly unstructured. Take note of who uses the word and you'll come up with a list stuffed with Shania Twains, Posh Spices and Britney Spearses, and entirely lacking in Beatles, U2s and Bob Marleys. My own path graduated slowly from playing to arranging to producing and latterly composing music for TV and film.
And just in case anyone thinks this all sounds like a glamorous, extended skive I will tell you what I have been doing recently, what it was that took up so much of my creative energy. In the last two months I have delivered a score for an hour long TV documentary, written a mini-opera for a feature film and provided the incidental music and nine songs for another feature film. And yes, it takes eleven hour days and more to do so. And yes, you might not see any of them.
Moving on, it was our wedding anniversary on Sunday. I was on the way back from delivering a few last pieces on Saturday evening when I realised that I had no card for the occasion, so I bought one at Fulham Broadway tube station. Clintons, the shop called itself, and I was charmed. I wasn't sure what to expect but entered hoping I might find a card that read "You're new here, aren't you? Do you like cigars?" but none came to hand.
