I had a little pattern that I would play on my guitar to warm my fingers up. Get the blood moving in those little sausages.
I was writing with my dear friend Vince Melamed one day. He walked in just as I was going thru my little exercise and he said… “What’s that? Is that something you’re working on?”
I told him no and he started playing along. We decided that was going to be what we worked on.
I had this idea about a song called “The man behind the curtain” and it would be taken from the scene in The Wizard of Oz where they say“Pay no attention…”
I thought it would be a guy breaking up with his girl. She’s packing her car while he watches from the second floor window. He knows she’s doing the right thing so he sings “If you look up and see me…pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…keep packing.”
We worked on it for a year and a half.
We got nowhere.
Finally we threw the whole idea out and kept “Pay no attention,” and tried to figure out what THAT phrase could be if it grew up and became a song.
It turned out to be “What Mattered Most” and it went on to do wonderful things.
The Wizard was no help at all.Total fraud.
Sorry. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the movie.