Whither, Inspiration?

Wherever you will…

Yesterday’s Bonus Round: "Brass In Pocket" is a Pretenders song released in 1979 and became a #1 hit in early 1980. It was written by Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. I picked this non-acoustic song for the lyric “I’m special, so special” because it relates to today’s post and yesterday’s teaser. I have something “so special” in the works for a (hopefully near) future post - I hope you’ll enjoy it!!

For today, I want to explore inspiration in songwriting a bit. Where does it “come from”? There’s a question I can’t answer, other than to say “somewhere”, but I recognize it when it happens. There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, (I never really know with these things) about Chrissie Hynde’s inspiration for the song “Brass In Pocket”:

“The song's title came about after The Pretenders first-ever UK gig, when they were in the communal dressing room with The Strangeways, whom they were supporting. Chrissie Hynde wanted to know whose trousers were sprawled over the back of a chair. One of The Strangeways, Ada Wilson, said: "I'll have them if there's any brass in the pockets."

(credit: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/pretenders/brass-in-pocket). And it went from there.

In my experience, lyrics and chord progressions just sort of “occur” - I’ll hear or read something and a phrase pops into my head. It usually not a direct quote of something I read (plagiarism is a wicked and forbidden practice in my estimation), unless I’m willing to write some lyrics that somehow “credit” the author. But often, a phrase I hear or read suggests something else, even if I’m not aware of it in that moment. An example: I have a copyrighted song I’m hoping to release later this year (if only to make my accountant happy - the IRS says you have to sell a song to classify your undertaking as something other than a “hobby” - as if!!) titled “Long Road Back” (© 2020, 10 Songs Music, LLC, All Rights Reserved). The inspiration for that phrase, which became the hook that I wrote the song around, just popped into my head one day. When such things happen, I immediately write whatever it is in a note (Notes app on iPhone, I assume Android phones have something similar). I have quite a collection of phrases and “odds and ends” (that’s what I title the note I collect them in). Some seem utterly meaningless when I go back and look through them, having lost whatever spark motivated them, others seem to retain their meaning. Here’s an example: “Bad timing is my specialty” - yeah, no idea whatsoever, apparently I was thinking of something, probably embarrassing, and quickly typed it, then totally spaced whatever motivated it. I might change that upon reflection to “Bad timing, my specialty”, or “My specialty is bad timing”, though the latter is probably easier to phrase out with 7 syllables, and probably easier to to find a rhyme structure for. Something like:

My specialty’s bad timing,

No meter, or lousy rhyming,

But I’ll think of more tomorrow,

So feel free to borrow

Seriously, I’ll never do anything with (let alone copyright) that phrase, or the bit of doggerel that’s come of it, so feel free, if you’re moved to write a song using it - by all means have fun!!

Back for a moment to my song “Long Road Back”. Quite awhile after I wrote the lyrics and music for that song, I realized the “hook”, which was also the title, had likely been lurking in the back of my mind in a different form: the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band song “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream).

(Credit: "Long Hard Road" is a song written by Rodney Crowell and recorded by American country music band Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It was released in May 1984 as the lead single from the album, Plain Dirt Fashion. The song was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's first No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. - source: Wikipedia)

I am a big fan of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and “Long Hard Road” is one of my favorites. My song is far different in lyrics and melody, (certainly enough to withstand an allegation of plagiarism), but there’s little doubt the rhythm and chord progression of my hook/title in “Long Road Back” is certainly reminiscent of the chord progression and rhythm of the hook in Long Hard Road. Fortunately, chord progressions can’t be copyrighted (or no one would ever again be able to use a I-IV-V progression without paying royalties to somebody), but every songwriter owes something to those who came before us.

Where DID the blues (and all of its vast progeny of blues based music) come from? My favorite answer, though again, potentially apocryphal, is found in the book “Inside Blues Guitar” by Steve James (© 2001 Steve James, published by String Letter Publishing): “W.C. Handy first heard blues guitar played by a mystery slide man in Mississippi in 1903.” There are many other such stories, often predating 1903, and the origins are really unknown, but I like the idea of someone (other than W.C. Handy) whose name is lost to history as the actual “father of the blues”. The reality is our unknown “slide man” learned the basics of the blues from someone else, and the world will only ever know it was born in the South from older African American gospel and traditional songs.

I mentioned W.C. Handy, who is indeed a giant in the history of the blues:

“William Christopher Handy was an American composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.” - source: Wikipedia.

I mention him here not just because of the excerpt from Steve James’ book, but because you may have heard the name from a lyric in the song “Walking In Memphis” by Marc Cohn in 1991:

“W.C. Handy
Won't you look down over me”

Marc Cohn’s inspiration for the lyric seems to be rooted in the experience of being in the city of Memphis, an historically important location in the history of blues based music. We don’t know what Mr. Cohn might have jotted down to begin the writing process for the song, whether it was that lyric, or maybe the hook lyric “walking in Memphis”. Interesting question, but my guess is it started with a thought along one of those lines, perhaps written down for later content in the song lyrics he was beginning to form in his mind or on paper.

The important thing is that every song has a beginning inspiration for the writer - an experience, a memory, something maybe triggered by hearing a different song or reading a bit of prose or poetry. Write yours down when they occur, and listen and read widely to give yourself the foundation for your inspiration to come to you, then take it wherever you will go!!

Bonus Round: A “post-grunge” song with a very hooky acoustic riff intro…

Cheers, and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic