Musings

Regrets

Last night we went out to dinner with some friends. They brought their young daughter with them to meet us. She is a songwriter and wanted to “pick our brains” a little. Since we enjoy the mentoring process… and we were getting a free meal… we gladly went.

This happens a lot these days. Young people. Brain picking. I used to think that it was my reputation, my many years in the industry, that drew the young ones to me for advice. I’m starting to realize that it’s probably because every year that passes I look more and more like Yoda. Who better to get advice from? Sage council I am.

(I really need to moisturize)

Last night the young one asked me a great question. She asked if I was going to finish the fried artichokes and if not….could she have some? No, wait. That wasn’t the question. She asked:

“Do you look back on your career and have any regrets?”

My first, knee jerk answer was to say no. Honestly… my life has wildly exceeded my wildest dreams so why would I have any regrets?

Then I stopped and thought for a while. Then I realized, like the Sinatra song says:

“Regrets, I’ve had a few…. da doo doo doo… something else…”

There was the time my friend asked me to write with her because she was writing that day with a teenager (which can be exhausting) and wanted another “real” writer in the room. I told her “No. I have just written seven days in a row and I need a day off.”

So I didn’t write that day with her and Taylor Swift.

I regret that.

There’s the fact that I never learned the business side of my profession. For many years I had a large corporation to take care of all that. I was the “artist” and above the day to day minutia. I would create the art, loftily hand it off to someone who then would protect my ownership, get it recorded, collect my money, send it to my accountant, who would then pick out a nice new car and have it delivered to my driveway.

When I stopped working for “the man” I had to take all that on myself. Did you know that when you write a song, record it and then save it to your hard drive..…it does NOT end up on the radio the next day?  I did not know that.

I never took classes in the music BUSINESS.

I regret that.

When I dropped out of college (no regret there) I headed to California with my band. We were going to be the house band at the Troubadour and back up Jackson Browne and become the Eagles a year before they did. We were just going to maker a quick stop in Santa Cruz. Really quick. In and out. You can wait in the car.

We never left. That town sucked us in and we stayed for three years. The band broke up. At that moment I had to decide whether to go on to LA and The Troub (as I liked to call it)…or go back home to Connecticut with my musical tail between my legs.

I went back home. I never got the chance to play the Troubadour and see how I stacked up against the Jackson Brownes, the David Crosbys…become besties with Michael Nesmith and sleep with Joni.

I regret that. (Not the Joni part. Not my type. But if LINDA had been hanging around….)

We all have regrets. They are the score cards that tell us where we are in the game. I have many more regrets than just the three listed here.

“But then again…too few to mention!!!”

Just remembered the next line.

70s Songs

Benny Bartek gave me a suggestion for one of my Monday Morning Musings. He opines that the 60s, 70s and 80s had all the best songs and songwriters and wanted to know if I had any opinion as to why that was. Better producers? Better musicians? Healthier snacks?

Time to settle this question once and for all.

In my opinion it is a whole lot of little things…

Back then:

Everything was new. A song came out and you said…”Wow. I never heard anything like THAT before!”  And you HADN’T.  Everyone was making shit up as they go and not sitting down to write and saying, “Let’s write something today that sounds like….”

What you heard on the record was a bunch of guys all in the room playing the song at the same time. Now it’s a guy with a laptop overdubbing one instrument at a time…a lot of times the same guy playing all the instruments so there is never a chance to say, “Hey…I never would have thought to play THAT!”

There is an argument that labels let artists mature and grow into their style…today if you don’t get a hit right out of the box you are probably back bagging groceries before you can say “Wha Hoppened?” That makes artists aim for bigger targets so they don’t miss… it makes them scared to try something outside the box.

There was an artist down here in Nashville that cut a great song. A “Song of the Year,” in my opinion. But his promotion people told him it would take a lot of hard work to get that great song up the charts as opposed to putting out something light and fluffy that would fly up the charts.

Radio got a heap of light and fluffy that month my friend.

Plus, on the minor advantage side of the ledger…. those decades had some darn good writers. Who you might ask? (go ahead…ask.)

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Billy Joel, Elton John, Buddy Holly, Phil Everly, Goffin /King, Mann/Weil, Neil Diamond, Mick and Keef, Barry Gibb, Otis Blackwell, John Prine, Roger Cook, Sam Cooke.

Shall I go on?

Okay

Gamble and Huff, James Taylor, Doc Pomus, Harry Nilsson, Henley/Frey, Bernie Taupin, Laura Nyro, Sly Stone, Jimmy Webb, John Fogerty, Jackson Browne, Burt Bacharach/Hal David, Pete Townsand, Dolly Parton, Woody Guthrie, Randy Newman, Pete Fucking Seeger, Van Fucking Morrison, Robert Fucking Johnson, LIEBER/STOLLER!!!, Holland, Dozier, Holland, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder.

That’s about it. No Wait…

Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson….

Anyone want to put up a list of great songwriters of the last ten years? Hell, I’VE  been writing during the last ten years and I wouldn’t put my name anywhere NEAR this list.

This wasn’t a Musing. This was a rant. But I kinda dug it….

See you next week.

Monday Morning Musings

You know what I love about my life? I was lucky enough to write the right song at the right time and it allowed me to be a professional songwriter for the last 3 decades.

You know what the best thing about that is? I go to sleep on Sunday nights not having to get up Monday morning and go do something I don’t want to do. I did that for years. It was either school, (not for long. I quit college after one year) or work ( I was an electrician in Connecticut until I got my break).

So now that I am in the cocktail hours of my life with total control over my destiny and schedule…what am I about to do?

I’m going to start writing Monday Morning Musings. Every Monday morning I will send out a blast about my week, my goals, my breakfast…whatever the f*#k I want to talk about. Maybe I’ll let you in on what my upcoming week looks like and what song ideas I may or may not have. (Spoiler alert: I generally don’t have shit)

So much for Sunday nights spent blissfully devoid of concern. My sleep will now be restless and intermittent. I will dream of mocking keyboards and empty screens.

Nah.

I’ll sleep like a baby.

p.s. Even though I am sure you all realize that receiving an email does not force you to READ the email… if you don’t want my weekly ramblings… hit unsubscribe at the bottom of the email. It could be like one of those “close doors” buttons on an elevator. It probably won’t do anything… but you will feel empowered.

Just kidding. You will be blissfully Gary Free.

It won’t hurt my feelings. I’m a rock.

Breaking & Entering

Last weekend I did a little B&E. Yeah. You heard me. (read me) Breaking and Entering. A felony. Or a misdemeanor. One of those words they used to say on L A Law.

That’s right, I’m a badass.

I went to my old hometown, Meriden, Connecticut to do a show and visit with old friends. I go up there a couple of times a year. Hit all the old spots that fill my heart with joy and my arteries with cholesterol…Les’s Ice Cream, Ken LeMay’s Steamed Cheeseburgers. I give myself about three days in town before my old habits truly become life threatening. Breakfast? Dunkin™ Donuts. Lunch? Steamed cheeseburger with fries. Of course with fries. What am I? A farmer? Dinner? Pizza. A good New England diet plan.

I always drive by the house I grew up in. My father built this house. I didn’t help build it but you might say it’s the house that constructed ME no wait…TRANSFORMED me… no…damn. There’s a song in there somewhere. This time when I drove by I saw overgrown grass and bushes and a paper stuck to the door. I pulled in the driveway and realized that it was deserted. The paper was a notice telling the world that the property was foreclosed. I got out and started walking around the property. A neighbor saw me and told me that the family who owned it last lost it in the recession on 08 and the bank took it back.

There was no one to tell me not to (That is a perfectly valid defense if you ever murder someone.) so I wandered around and reminisced.

I stood on the little hill that used to be a huge hill when I was six and perched on a silver saucer ready to sled down after a winter snow. I stood on the back porch where green vinyl used to shade me while I played with my chemistry set and began my lifelong obsession and fear that someday I was going to put something in my mouth that was going to kill me. I climbed to the top of the hill where we played baseball and football and where my Dad put in a pole vaulting pit so I could practice the sport that would one day lead to me coming in third and scoring 1 (one) point for the Platt track team. (height: 6′ 3″). Upon that hill I saw…holy crap…they put in a pool! Okay. No memories here. Moving on.

Wai… I DO remember that my Dad put an ice skating rink up on that level area…until the sides broke when the ice melted and all the water ran down the hill and flooded the house. Cross off  TWO Olympic events I will never be good at.

I saw the steel hatch doors that led down to the basement. My Dad and I put those in after we decided that it was never NOT gonna rain in New England and flood the cellar with the old wooden doors in place so we might as well man-up and put in something sturdier (and more weather-proof).

I tugged on the basement door. Hullo! It opened…revealing a wide open door at the bottom of the stairs. No wonder ne’er do wells perform B&Es. They’re so easy!!

Just like that I am in the basement room where Dean and I started our first band. Not all that different. A few boxes and bits of trash on the floor but essentially the same.  The fridge where we kept the Moxie was long gone. The creepy room where Mom kept all the canned goods and decomposing bodies was still there but I was scared to go in there when my mother was ORDERING me to…so now that I’m an adult I have no intention of opening that door and letting the monsters get me.

I came up the stairs to the living room. I walked down the hall that I wrote about in my Conway Twitty song “That’s My Job”. They had closed the end of the hall off and moved some doors around but it felt eerily the same. I remember hiding in that hall after I was supposed to be asleep… watching The Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man.” I was about ten. I stopped having nightmares about it when I was 17.

My bedroom was intact. It was my sister’s room actually… until I broke my leg and they moved her out and me in so I could be on the ground floor. Tiny. So tiny. I was about to type “How could so many big dreams come out of such a tiny room” but as I started to type I threw up a little in my mouth so I stopped.

Rinse. Spit. Repeat. Good to go.

I climbed the stairs and checked out the room that was mine all through high school. I could superimpose my memory over the empty room in front of me. Posters of CSNY and a Daily news front page saying “Traffic Uptight At Hippiefest!!” A small gabled window (I almost dyslexed that word and typed “bageled” window. That could be a delicious alternative for the housing market. I’m an idea man. You’re welcome) I used to climb out that window and sit on the roof to watch the fireworks go off over Hanover Pond. I stood in that window many a summer day and watched my neighbor sunbathe in her bikini. (bikinis were new then.)

I opened that window all summer to the sounds of quarter midget race cars roaring around the tracks down the hill…and the train in the distance chuggin’ thru town on it’s way to somewhere that wasn’t Meriden, CT.

I didn’t take anything. I didn’t leave anything, (I did pee in the yard. Full disclosure).

I snapped a few pix. Made a few calls to my siblings to tell that where I was. I’m pretty sure that will be the last time I will ever be in that house since I am currently in the cocktail hours of my life.

If the bank wants to prosecute me for trespassing…come on! I’m sure Jimmy Smits can get me off. (I was gonna type “I’m sure Susan Dey can get me off,” but that looked dirty.)

Let’s Say Dallas

Every song I have written has a story behind it. Not every song has an INTERESTING story behind it, but there is some sort of tale to be told for each song. Someday I will be putting all these stories into a book. Someday I will clean my gutters. Let’s see which someday comes first.

In 1982 I was lying on my couch. My wife Sandy and I lived, with our two small children, in a house the size of my current computer screen. When I lay down on the couch to watch TV I could actually turn the channels with my toes. This was a teensy little house my Grandmother lived in till she passed away and my Mom sold it to us. I worked all day as an electrician and wrote songs at night and on the weekends. That night I was watching a ballgame with the sound down low and doodling on my guitar in search of something to turn into a song. Cause I really didn’t want to be an electrician no more.

I heard the announcers have the following exchange:
If it was up to me I would
Well,it’s NOT up to you!
Well, it oughta be up to me

I perked up and said to myself…
Ought to be up to me… hmmmm. That sounds fun rolling off my tongue.

I have a friend who met John Lennon at a party (before he died) and John allowed him to ask one Beatles question. My friend asked, “In ‘I Am The Walrus’ when you sing ‘Expert texpert choking smokers don’t you think the joker laughs at you’ … what did you mean?”

John replied, “I didn’t mean anything. It just felt good coming off me tongue.”

As a writer I have always tried to be aware when something feels good coming off me tongue.

I tried to use it in the context I heard it but I couldn’t find a song in that. I decided to split it up and end lines with them and find other phrases that also tripped lightly off me tongue. It turned into:

Is it life lived separately?
Is life all it ought to be?
Oh if it were up to me
I’d make my life with you

I slapped those bad boys onto a pop synth ballad and had me a song. Earlier that week I had sat on the swing set in the backyard and wrote half of a song called “Love’s Been A Little Bit Hard On Me” (Only half cause I thought it was stupid and not worth finishing).

That song became my first song recorded by an artist and was a Pop hit that let us buy a nice big house with a TV the size of Kansas. The “Ought to be up to me” ballad became my first country number one when it was released by the Oak Ridge Boys. Because it was a big pop synth ballad.

I don’t remember who won the game. Let’s say Dallas.

Teaching Songwriting

I like helping songwriters get better. I think I have a knack for it. I wrote a letter to Paul Simon last week with some very salient and insightful suggestions on how to improve “Sounds of Silence” ( spoiler alert….it needs a bridge.)

What I mostly enjoy about teaching songwriting is that it seems to only work in glorious places. I have been flown to Belfast. To California. I am currently writing this on a beach in Hawaii. I grieve for the songwriters in Detroit or Ann Arbor who will be cursed to forever search for rhymes for the simple reason that there hare no palm trees where they are. I can psychically see you all jumping up and shouting ( I picture you as all fairly limber) “There are no palm trees in Belfast!” Well, you got me. But that’s not the point. The point is…to learn ANYTHING you have to go at least fifty miles from home. That’s why college was invented. Look it up.

This conference was terrific. Lots of talented people needing just a slightest nudge to get the in a position to replace me. How is THAT for an ironic position to be in? Let me show you how you can write well enough to get the last available slot on the next Kenny Chesney CD. If that is their dream….I am the guy to talk to because I am more than ready to hand the reins of power to someone younger and more vital.

Here’s an interesting fact…wherever the conference is held dictates the kinds of songs you wil hear. There are many locals at this conference so they write a lot of songs about nature and the sea and the beauty that surrounds them…you know the kind of crap I’m talking about. I try to show them that the insertion of “pickup truck” and/or “beer bottle” in their lyric will get them that slot on Kenny’s record.

Here’s an example of the kinds of things I teach:

The student has the title “clambake” to reflect his/her island heritage. I immediately suggest matching it to the rhyme “cake” because when seafood is presented as the main dish of a soirée it is, nine times out of ten, paired with some form of pastry. It is a historical fact that when they opened King Waimea’s tomb they found crockery containing petrified oysters and another containing Entenmanns. Look it up.

Once the rhyme is established we create the scenario. Who is singing and why? Why on earth are they singing? Can we politely ask them to STOP singing? Are they at the clambake because of some natural disaster? Is the beach at clambake time the refuge for the last five tourists left alive in the world? (Vin Diesel movie idea). Are they in love? Is a love affair an appropriate activity during the beach apocalypse? We wrap the whole song up with a catchy chorus…possibly ending with the lines:

“We face the west and mourn our loss..
Someone pass the cocktail sauce!”

See how easy that is? For THAT I get flown to Hawaii and California and who knows where else to pass that kind of insight to the next generation.

We are here for two more days. When I get home I look forward to a Thank You note from Paul Simon.

 

(NOTE:  Management would like to state, for the record, that this note is, in fact, not real. Just so you know.)

Birthday Blog

Today is my birthday. I will not be saying which birthday it is. A girl needs to keep a little mystery. The approach of this event has made me highly reflective, like the burnished metal of a Ferrari.

I have had an amazing life. My parents were great. I went to a retreat once, a few years ago on the west coast, where they tried to make you confront the terrible things your parents did to you that made you the twitching pile of friendless aggression you are today. I had nothing. I had to call my sister and ask her to tell me anything they did that was less that terrific. We came up with this: once my Dad really wanted Hormel Corned Beef Hash on Saturday. He took the last can we had left and hid it behind some bags of flour so he was the only one who knew we had it, ensuring a corned beef hash kind of weekend. This is not Charles Manson here, folks. (Known fact: Charles Manson hated corned beef hash. The original writing on the wall of the first house was “Kill Hormel,” not “Kill The Pigs.” Squeaky Fromme edited it to make Charlie seem more of a Bon Vivant). (Too soon?)

Look at my life. I was a preteen when the Beatles hit; that guaranteed me an entire teen age of incredible music. My entire puberty was the Playboy era. Think of it. Before me… no Playboy. After me… Playboy. You’re welcome. Thanks to a sympathetic cashier at a local market I had access to all the latest and greatest naked women.

I worked every summer at a YMCA day camp where my primary job was teaching small kids the difference between poison ivy and poison oak (both delicious, but oak has a serrated leaf, and ivy grows in a distinctive three leaf pattern. “Leaves of three, let it be”… this was the song we learned in Connecticut when making poison oak soup), and my other job was apparently keeping track of boob growth among all the female counselors who were just hitting that wonderful, magic, switch-to-a-bikini-from-a-onesie stage of development. Fifty years later all the girls (now women) confessed they had crushes on me. Too little too late, ladies!

I went to Woodstock. I walked on the moon. My memory is getting hazy. Now that I think of it, I doubt my mother would have let me do both of those things in the same year… so I am going to go with… walking on the moon. Where I totally saw Janis Joplin and Credence play.

I’ve had my share of bad stuff. Don’t think it was all roses and Bisquick. But it seems like everything even remotely bad brought me something good. Real “a door closes, a window opens” stuff… you know that bullshit?

I broke my leg/I learned the guitar. My parents bought me a great car that my sister crashed/I got a piece of junk that taught me how to fix a car. I flunked out of college/I moved to California and learned how to scoop ice cream and be in a band with a heroin addict. See? Windows everywhere.

I have two great, amazing kids… and now two amazing grandkids. When my grandkids get old enough I will TOTALLY let them borrow my flying car and look through my vintage Playboys. I have had several lovely wives. (The current one being the front runner, hands down)

I have lived in Connecticut (cold), California (weird), and Nashville (home). I have had something that I laughingly call a “career” and managed to watch an appropriate amount of TV while doing it! I’ve stayed away from most drugs, while maintaining an imagination second to none. I have stayed away from alcohol because it all tastes like Binaca to me. All my life my friends have tried to find a drink that will make me join in the fun, (apparently throwing up in the back seat of my car is a “blast!”), but they have failed. Black cherry soda is my vice, and that is why when I do kick it, I will top the scales at 420 lbs; but thanks to the good people at AntiGravCorp I will be as graceful as a ballerina.

Yes,  I have had a rip snorting life. Oh, don’t think this is me wrapping it up. I already know when I’m going to shuffle off this mortal coil. I’ve got a good forty years left, at least. On my last day, I will be waking up next to my still amazingly hot wife, Georgia, (we are still consistently “wild in the sack” though I am hoping  in the future they have a cooler, more Jetson-like euphemism for it…possible suggestion…”Zoinking the Potato”). I will hop in my jet car (REALLY counting on that, Toyota!) and fly to my job harvesting floating chickens. Motto: Free Range? Free EVERYTHING!! I will still have my teeth… my hair… my artificial knees will have grown back to organic joints years ago, thanks to a pill called, “I Can’t Believe They’re not Graphite,” or something. In the middle of my work shift I will take my obligatory state mandated two hour nap and drift off to the great Unknown.

Toodle-oo suckers!

 

Note: This blog (and many more) first appeared on the Blue Sky Riders website.

The Beatles

I really thought I should sit it out. Everyone is talking about the Beatles on Ed Sullivan… what they meant to us… what they meant to the whole country, so soon after Kennedy’s assassination. Kids in front of TVs who swear their lives were changed forever. Why should I chime in on this? A new perspective? The opinion of a twelve year old?

I remember my sister was very excited. When the show started she began to scream. Well, THAT was different. She always made strange sounds when Stiller and Meara appeared on the show… but THIS was different. She was not screaming in a vacuum. She joined the hundreds of kids screaming in the Ed Sullivan Theater that night.

You know the stories. George, sick back at the hotel while a stagehand steps into his place and gains immortality. Several hours of rehearsal and careful marks on the mixing board all wiped away at dinner break when a clueless cleaning person scrubbed the board clean. That’s why John’s mic was turned too low to hear. Kind of made Paul seem like the leader of the band but that can’t be true. He’s off to the side and playing the bass! That’s not what the leader does. This is gonna take some figuring out, we twelve year olds thought.

My sister had the record. She wrote little notes about each Beatle on the sleeve next to their photos. Well, THAT was different! No notes on the Peter, Paul and Mary album.

Did I think, when I was 12, that this night was one for the ages? A night to remember five years on? Ten years on? Fifty years on? I was a few years away from maybe going to Vietnam. My lottery number was 172 and they only went as high as 165. I could have joined my Dad’s electric company and had a straight job my whole life. The idea that this night opened a door and what was once vanilla ice cream was now 72 glorious favors just there for the scooping did NOT cross my mind yet. Did I think those songs were still going to taste like Rocky Road FIFTY years later? Naah.

I’m a grandfather. I was the short haired kid in a black t shirt six rows back from the stage in the Look Magazine picture of Woodstock… and now I’m a grandfather.

Holy crapballs.

I got to write and play with Ringo over the last ten years or so and it’s always a thrill. He is still the world’s greatest drummer and has a pocket so deep that you can find keys in there you lost in 1976. I’ve bee blessed to hear some really cool stories about those days that I will take to my grave or put in a book for a large enough advance.

I’ve met Paul a few times. He always looks at me strange like he thinks he should know me but it’s just because I have shook his hand a few times and then slunk back into the crowd. My videographer friend, Brent, and I flew to London to record Paul singing a verse of a Birthday song that Brent and I wrote for Ringo’s 70th. He looked at the lyrics… looked up at me… and said “You did this? It’s great!.”

And he winked.

The guy on the left onstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater winked at me. He might have given me the Macca thumbs up… at that point I was swooning. I may have peed myself a little. On our way out the door he asked if I needed anything to drink or eat. He gave me a bottle of water and a strawberry. I considered asking for a pork chop just to make sure he remembered me. I saved the strawberry.

A friend of mine once challenged me to go one day without the Beatles. He said I could not go 24 hours without hearing someone bring up their name or names… hear a Fab song played… something Beatle related. I gave it a shot and I failed within three hours. YOU try it. One whole day. What? You’re not gonna hear “She Loves You” on the radio? Someone isn’t going to make a quip in a bad Liverpool accent? I will win that bet. Any other artist you wanna play the game with? I didn’t hear a Stones song all day yesterday… no song, no mention . Same with Garth. The Zombies. You pick the band.

The lads are different.

Nothing more to add to our collective retrospective. I have had some contact with two of the lads and I don’t think this anniversary affects me any more or less than any child of the 60’s. Which means it affected me a lot.

Interesting side note. At the big TV show taping a few days ago… it’s the first time I ever heard Ringo say the word Beatles. He always says “The boys” or “The lads.”   In all the years I have known him, its the first time I heard him say The Beatles.

 

Note: This blog (and many more) first appeared on the Blue Sky Riders website.