Songs Are Like Kids
Recently I had the great, but unfortunately all too rare, pleasure of playing with my old mate Klaus Weiland. He was breaking in his brand new, beautiful sounding Deerbridge guitar (built for him by Martin Wieland) and I was playing my battered, old – but stilll beautiful sounding – Bailey (built for me in 1964 by John Bailey). We were working on a two axe arrangement for one of the songs I’d recently written when Klaus said he had an idea for a groovy lick to come off my basic riff. He played it, and it certainly grooved, giving the song a whole new instrumental feel, but in no way diverting from the inherent melancholy of the tune and lyrics.
I really dug it.
We played it over and over until the changes sat.
Klaus expressed surprise at my allowing him to reshape the original structure of the song. He had, he said, played with other songwriters who were absolutely adamant as to how their song should sound: “That’s the way I wrote it, that’s the way it stays, no altering anything.”
Which seemed a fairly stiff-legged attitude to me. I believe that in many ways songs are like kids: you give them life, love them, then one day – unless you’ve got ‘em locked away in a top back room – they move on, attain independence, be affected by certain outside influences, experience alterations, and although you still recall and cherish them as they were, unless you’re totally self-absorbed you embrace the new without grieving for the old.
Songs are like kids: you give ‘em life, love, and hope they’ll flourish when they leave home. In the same way that it’s always fascinating, sometimes worrying, sometimes nerve-wracking, but constantly exciting to watch a child develop, go through various phases, take wings and fly, so it is – at least for me – with songs. When I hear another performer do one of my songs, I’m always intrigued, mayhap a wee bit anxious, but unfailingly alert to their interpretation. Different ears hear in different ways, discern different sounds, have different takes on tempi, perhaps on instrumentation and accompaniment, and the result is (one hopes) entirely dissimilar to the way one does it oneself. I can see absolutely no point whatever in merely copying. Cover bands that pride themselves on doing material exactly as the artist whose work they’re covering are, I reckon, a waste of space. These “revival” bands leave me stone cold; people have told me about the so-and-so revival band who: look exactly like the group they’re “reviving”, dress exactly like them, sound exactly like them, play riffs and solos exactly like them – so fucking what ? What is the point ? If I want to listen to “Won’t Get Fooled Again” then I either listen to the Who, or want to hear somebody else who has got an individual take on the number, and has pumped fresh ideas into their version, the last thing I want is a complete copy of the original. There’s a big distinction between being influenced, and copying. Lots of excellent musicians will tell how they spent hours learning chops from records, but the successful ones then went on to develop their own, and to me that’s what it’s all about, not slavishly imitating, but injecting new thoughts into songs. It’s great when Fred Stick gets up at a party and wows everyone with his amazing impersonation of…whoever; it’s wholly different when a band (having charged entrance fee) spend an entire evening copycatting. It might be clever, but then so is farting “Annie Laurie” through a keyhole!
The greatest compliment a songwriter can receive is for other performers to like the material so much they want to add it to their own repertory. Obviously I can’t speak for the reaction of another, but whenever I hear someone else sing one of my songs (whether or not I dig their particular interpretation) it never fails to give me a charge: and give that old ego a bit of crucial polishing.
From the 17th century on, Britain had a flourishing whale fishing fleet, which fortunately began to dwindle in the early 19th century until it became non-existent. As is to be expected, our tradition contains a number of songs concerned with whaling: most of them telling about how the men are preparing to sail for Greenland, or how terrible the conditions are on the whaling grounds (for the men, ov kosst, not the murdered mammals) ballads of the hunt, of whales that escaped the slaughter, but none – as far as I could ascertain – told about returning to Britain. Thinking this was a gap, I wrote a song called “Icy Acres” which told of the men leaving the whaling grounds, with a chorus which partly ran: “…Fare ye well ye Banks o’ Greenland, Weary whalers homeward bound…” I wrote it, and Shirley and I sang it in concert (and on record with the Gunther Leimstoll band) as a brisk, uptempo number.
Gary and Vera Aspey, who added it to their repertoire, then stuck it on an LP, sang it in a completely original way, not like me and Shirl,: they did it unaccompanied (I walloped the Bailey) they also sang it fairly slowly. It was a gorgeous interpretation, but nothing like I’d initially intended (Shirl and I did another, pretty far out recording of it with the wonderful Albert Mangelsdorff free jazz group, where Joki Freund really gives it the treatment with an astounding soprano sax solo)…….songs are like kids: you give ‘em life, love ‘em, then one day…….
“Icy Acres” has since been recorded by several groups, many of whom treat it in a similar way to the Aspeys. However, when the Marske Fishermans’ Choir recorded it they altered the chorus from “Weary whalers…” to “Whitby whalers…” and even added a new verse! I received a copy of their CD and was knocked out by the fact that they’d personalised the chorus, and added an additional verse – that old folk process, alive and well, and working. On the downside, though, was the fact that I wasn’t credited as writer, and the sleeve-notes read: “Recalls Whitby’s fame as a whaling port in the eighteen hundreds and reflects the hardships endured on the ice-bound seas of Greenland…” thus making it appear to be a traditional song from that town. Unfortunately this led to a wee bit misunderstanding, but eventually…Oh no, bugger that for a game of soldiers! Why should I succumb to pleonasm when there’s a much simpler solution ? If you’re interested, a Mudcat Cafe thread explains, more or less, what happened – you can skip a lot of entries (though some are quite interesting) if you wish, because the nitty-gritty is embedded in the final one:
