Tuesday
Feb282006
inspiration
Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 08:11PM
I keep thinking about that Daniel Lanois show I saw a couple weeks ago. The word I kept using to describe it was "inspiring." What was wild was seeing this guy who produced "In Your Eyes" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" playing songs on his guitar just like anybody else (that is, if everybody else plays through a Vox the Edge gave you, but that's not the point...) For whatever reason that got me thinking about why I started doing what it is I do.
I clearly remember one night in my junior year of high school sitting in my friend Elliott's living room watching Zoo TV, the U2 Achtung Baby tour video. The stage was this insane tower of giant tv's and hanging cars, and I was overwhelmed by the spectacle (on VHS, mind you.) Then the band took a little break and walked out to this little island of stage in the middle of the stadium, Bono grabbed an acoustic guitar and played the song "(Stay) Faraway, So Close."
I will never forget that moment. He played E, then F# Major, the kind where you just scoot the E up two frets and leave the B and E strings open, then A, the same way, over and over again, and he just sang words over them in a simple melody. It was beautiful, it was passionate, and most importantly, it was three chords that I know under english words that I knew sung to notes I could sing.
"I could do that," I thought.
Now, like anything else, the things that look the easiest are often the most complex, and a song that can hold the attention of 80,000 people with nothing but two acoustic guitars has got to be a pretty stellar song. Still, that moment was life-changing for me. I had written songs before, but they were stupid and I didn't really care or think through anything. At that moment I knew I had to write songs, like that one. Songs that could be huge and stadiums could sing to and that would stick in your head for weeks. Songs with words that bled from a heart beating at the top its lungs. Songs that could change somebody's life, like that one changed mine.
A few days later I started on that journey. In Ms. Bush's English class, while attempting to keep myself awake through endless BeaWolf discussion, I wrote what became one of the worst songs of my public recording career (a little piece of cubic zirconium called "Daddy's Girl" off the first Normals' album). The quality of the song isn't really the issue, though, for me, that song was a first step and I knew it. Just like Ella Friday afternoon, that first step was exciting because I knew then that I could take more steps and I'd soon be walking.
So here I am, I've just finished my third solo album, after three Normals' albums, two Caedmon's records, and various other tunes here and there, probably 60 or 70 songs in front of everybody, backed up by 200 or 300 in the bedroom and the basement nobody ever heard. And new steps all over the place. "Mother India" : my first key change. "The Best I Can" : the first time I named a specific place and person. "Kara" : the first from somebody else's point of view. Each step a little scary at first, but leading to a wider world the next morning.
And I'll keep taking those steps. I'll probably never get a tune as good as "Stay" but the journey is more the point. It has taken me to other countries, into conversations with my heroes, into lawyer's offices full of knives and tears, and into your ipods and living rooms.
So what about you? Was there a moment of inspiration that led you to be a teacher, or a pastor, or a doctor? A construction worker or a dentist? What was the step you were so afraid that now you take every day without thinking about?
I clearly remember one night in my junior year of high school sitting in my friend Elliott's living room watching Zoo TV, the U2 Achtung Baby tour video. The stage was this insane tower of giant tv's and hanging cars, and I was overwhelmed by the spectacle (on VHS, mind you.) Then the band took a little break and walked out to this little island of stage in the middle of the stadium, Bono grabbed an acoustic guitar and played the song "(Stay) Faraway, So Close."
I will never forget that moment. He played E, then F# Major, the kind where you just scoot the E up two frets and leave the B and E strings open, then A, the same way, over and over again, and he just sang words over them in a simple melody. It was beautiful, it was passionate, and most importantly, it was three chords that I know under english words that I knew sung to notes I could sing.
"I could do that," I thought.
Now, like anything else, the things that look the easiest are often the most complex, and a song that can hold the attention of 80,000 people with nothing but two acoustic guitars has got to be a pretty stellar song. Still, that moment was life-changing for me. I had written songs before, but they were stupid and I didn't really care or think through anything. At that moment I knew I had to write songs, like that one. Songs that could be huge and stadiums could sing to and that would stick in your head for weeks. Songs with words that bled from a heart beating at the top its lungs. Songs that could change somebody's life, like that one changed mine.
A few days later I started on that journey. In Ms. Bush's English class, while attempting to keep myself awake through endless BeaWolf discussion, I wrote what became one of the worst songs of my public recording career (a little piece of cubic zirconium called "Daddy's Girl" off the first Normals' album). The quality of the song isn't really the issue, though, for me, that song was a first step and I knew it. Just like Ella Friday afternoon, that first step was exciting because I knew then that I could take more steps and I'd soon be walking.
So here I am, I've just finished my third solo album, after three Normals' albums, two Caedmon's records, and various other tunes here and there, probably 60 or 70 songs in front of everybody, backed up by 200 or 300 in the bedroom and the basement nobody ever heard. And new steps all over the place. "Mother India" : my first key change. "The Best I Can" : the first time I named a specific place and person. "Kara" : the first from somebody else's point of view. Each step a little scary at first, but leading to a wider world the next morning.
And I'll keep taking those steps. I'll probably never get a tune as good as "Stay" but the journey is more the point. It has taken me to other countries, into conversations with my heroes, into lawyer's offices full of knives and tears, and into your ipods and living rooms.
So what about you? Was there a moment of inspiration that led you to be a teacher, or a pastor, or a doctor? A construction worker or a dentist? What was the step you were so afraid that now you take every day without thinking about?
