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How did great songwriters write great songs?


Entre_Perpetuo
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Does anyone have any articles or know of any interviews where a great songwriter has been asked how he/she wrote a great song? Like someone asking Paul McCartney how he wrote Hey Jude, or someone asking James Taylor how he wrote Fire And Rain.

 

You see, as an architecture student, I spend some of my time learning about how the great architects conceived their great buildings, what the though processes were that they went through. Now I've learned a lot of this can be read by analyzing their buildings closely, but it becomes a lot easier to do with a professor asking you the right questions to get the right answers. Meanwhile, I may spend weeks analyzing an incredible song like Baba O'Reily, and come no closer to understanding how Pete Townshend wrote that masterpiece, only how it goes. So I want to know...

 

How do you guys think great songwriters write great songs? Do you have any examples of interviews or articles where a great songwriter talks about the process behind writing a great song? What are their approaches?

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Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) talked a lot about it in interviews from the '70's and early '90's. I have them all on cd's and don't know where the person who sent them to me got the interviews from.

 

What you are wondering is something I often wondered - how a song is created. I find it fascinating.

Edited by Lorraine
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Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) talked a lot about it in interviews from the '70's and early '90's. I have them all on cd's and don't know where the person who sent them to me got the interviews from.

 

What you are wondering is something I often wondered - how a song is created. I find it fascinating.

 

:hi:

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Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) talked a lot about it in interviews from the '70's and early '90's. I have them all on cd's and don't know where the person who sent them to me got the interviews from.

 

What you are wondering is something I often wondered - how a song is created. I find it fascinating.

 

:hi:

 

:hi:

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To start, there's an innate talent or sensibility to music. And then, for many, there's drugs. Start around 8:48, where Brian talks about seeing notes in his mind after first smoking pot, then how he used LSD to expand his perceptions. Eventually, it cost him his sanity, but in the short-term it helped him to produce some amazing music.

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For some, it's an innate gift of melody. for others it's sheer practice. I wrote about a dozen songs or so in my early 20s, and some had fairly catchy hooks. But it was so m***********ing hard to write lyrics that didn't make me want to puke that I eventually gave up. I would've given my left arm for a writing partner back then. Maybe I wouldn't be a truck driver today.

 

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Many great creators talk about inspiration coming to them in a dream and then rushing to get it on paper before they forget. Plant said that STH came to him like automatic writing while he was hold up in that castle with Page.

 

Most of the time it's a good idea that gets worked on and contributed to by many over quite some time until it works.

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Many great creators talk about inspiration coming to them in a dream and then rushing to get it on paper before they forget. Plant said that STH came to him like automatic writing while he was hold up in that castle with Page.

 

Most of the time it's a good idea that gets worked on and contributed to by many over quite some time until it works.

 

Yeah, in his autobiography, Keith Richards talks about waking up and finding he recorded the riff for "Satisfaction" on his bedside cassette recorder. He apparently did it while he was asleep . . . :heart:

Edited by blueschica
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Many great creators talk about inspiration coming to them in a dream and then rushing to get it on paper before they forget. Plant said that STH came to him like automatic writing while he was hold up in that castle with Page.

 

Most of the time it's a good idea that gets worked on and contributed to by many over quite some time until it works.

 

Yeah, in his autobiography, Keith Richards talks about waking up and finding he recorded the riff for "Satisfaction" on his bedside cassette recorder. He apparently did it while he was asleep . . . :heart:

 

Or in a heroin induced stupor. Lol

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EP, your question made me think of this, when Neil Young was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. It's entertaining and he talks some about the process of writing. My husband and I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame years ago when it first opened. We both thought that the exhibits of hand written songs, with their cross outs, etc etc were some of the most interesting things there.

 

Back in the day, the story behind "Fire and Rain" was always that James Taylor wrote it after a girl he was friends with from a psychiatric hospital committed suicide. The "Fire and Rain" supposedly referred to electroshock therapy and the cold showers afterward. He is supposed to have mentioned this is different interviews; I don't know if I've ever read them; although it is well known he was hospitalized for depression as a teen.

 

Neil Young:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A0jJR5IAy4

Edited by blueschica
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EP, your question made me think of this, when Neil Young was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. It's entertaining and he talks some about the process of writing. My husband and I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame years ago when it first opened. We both thought that the exhibits of hand written songs, with their cross outs, etc etc were some of the most interesting things there.

 

Back in the day, the story behind "Fire and Rain" was always that James Taylor wrote it after a girl he was friends with from a psychiatric hospital committed suicide. The "Fire and Rain" supposedly referred to electroshock therapy and the cold showers afterward. He is supposed to have mentioned this is different interviews; I don't know if I've ever read them; although it is well known he was hospitalized for depression as a teen.

 

The Fire and Rain story is pretty well known, yeah.

 

Taylor wrote this in 1968 at three different times. He started it in London, where he auditioned for The Beatles' Apple Records. He later worked on it in a Manhattan Hospital, and finished it while in drug rehab at The Austin Riggs Center in Massachusetts. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor explained: "The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend (that would be Suzanne - explained below). The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs which lasted about five months."

 

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/james-taylor/fire-and-rain

 

Here's a cool interview of James Taylor sharing the back stories of some of his other songs...

 

http://www.rollingst...an-1967-224931/

Edited by goose
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Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) talked a lot about it in interviews from the '70's and early '90's. I have them all on cd's and don't know where the person who sent them to me got the interviews from.

 

What you are wondering is something I often wondered - how a song is created. I find it fascinating.

 

Good to see you again Lorraine

Hope you are not in any pain

please, please don't ever feign

it's never ever the same

.......without you...Lorraine

 

:D

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One thing I hear over and over from songwriters is that they were "just the conduit" and the song came from what is intimated as a higher plane through them.

 

Mike Pinder once said that. He said that songs float along in the cosmos. If a person doesn't grab it, it floats on to the next songwriter.

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Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues) talked a lot about it in interviews from the '70's and early '90's. I have them all on cd's and don't know where the person who sent them to me got the interviews from.

 

What you are wondering is something I often wondered - how a song is created. I find it fascinating.

 

Good to see you again Lorraine

Hope you are not in any pain

please, please don't ever feign

it's never ever the same

.......without you...Lorraine

 

:D

 

Awww! :blush:

 

All we need is music. :sundog:

 

Thank you. :heart:

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Great thread. I often think how great songwriters write the greats. I suppose examples of the greats help define what is great songwriting. For me it would be songs like God Only Knows, Bridge over Troubled water, Yesterday.

 

I'm intrigued with songs like this as there is something magical going on. The perfect combination of vocal melody, lyrics and a very strong emotion, that just makes the song overwhelming. Most good songs have one of these aspects but rarely contain all at such a high level.

 

I remember Marvin Gaye talking about What's Going On? saying he didn't actually write the songs, they were channeled to him. As someone mentioned, the songs were picked up from the ether, wrote themselves almost. Noel Gallagher also said something similar saying the great songs wrote themselves very very quickly.

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I thought Zeppelin's process was to listen to an old blues song and then . . . you know, copy it.

 

 

 

Just a little lighthearted fun . . . ha ha ha . . .

Edited by toymaker
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Many great creators talk about inspiration coming to them in a dream and then rushing to get it on paper before they forget. Plant said that STH came to him like automatic writing while he was hold up in that castle with Page.

 

Most of the time it's a good idea that gets worked on and contributed to by many over quite some time until it works.

 

Yeah, in his autobiography, Keith Richards talks about waking up and finding he recorded the riff for "Satisfaction" on his bedside cassette recorder. He apparently did it while he was asleep . . . :heart:

 

McCartney said something similar about writing Yesterday. He had a dream of the melody, woke and quickly captured it.

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