by Paul Zollo
I love the song “Blue Sunday.” There are great details in the lyrics, like “Her backseat could have been a hotel/I slept for a thousand years/every now and then she’d laugh out loud for no reason/I pretended not to hear…”
Yeah, that’s kind of a story song. It’s kind of a little short movie, that one.
Do you enjoy writing story songs?
Sometimes, yeah. If I’m lucky. They’re hard to come by. “Something Big,” on Hard Promises, which we’ve spoken about, is the same kind of thing, it’s just a quick short story. And the trouble with them in songs is you don’t have a lot of space to get it in. So you’ve got to be lucky enough to get the lyric where it hits, and it has a pretty wide scope, where maybe one line can create multiple images in a person’s head. And that way, you can kind of squeeze a movie into three minutes. It’s a lot trickier than writing a whole story out, like a narrative. So I don’t usually set out to do that, but when it starts to happen, it’s a lot of fun to follow it down the road and see where it goes.
And it is more a sense of following it than leading it?
I think so. With me, most of those come in and I am literally following it and writing it down. And then I don’t really know the ending, and then the ending appears before me.
A lot of novelists have said they write their books that way, following the story, but unsure where it’s going to end up.
I have to. I don’t think I’ve ever written one where I knew how it was going to end up. So the endings sometimes are kind of ambiguous. But I think in song it’s got to be. You don’t want to nail it down too much. In songwriting, I think the better ones have some element of ambiguity, where it allows the listener to create his own picture. And those are the ones I like.
I also like the song “The Man Who Loves Women.” Which starts with ukulele, which is nice. And reminded me of George Harrison, who I know loved the uke.
Yes. I actually wrote it on a ukulele that he gave me. I like the chords in that. I really came up with a lot of good chords that I don’t think I would have hit on guitar. George taught me to play the ukulele, and he taught me a lot of cool chords and inversions on it.
Is it easy to play?
Yeah. If you’re a guitar player, it’s not a big leap to learn the ukulele. Because it’s really just the top four strings of the guitar. You have to get into a different head to play it. But you do find yourself going into different kinds of chords or different progressions than you do on guitar. I love the ukulele. You can’t be sad and play the ukulele. [Laughs] It always brings a smile into the room. George was playing one all the time, wasn’t he?
Yeah, he was mad about them. Loved them.
Another song from that album which is really nice is “Have Love Will Travel,” which has three sections to it.
Yeah, it was almost a summary. We’re getting farther down the line in the story. The DJ comes back into the picture. And there’s a girl named Maggie, that shows up, which is a little hard to understand, because I’d written this whole song that introduced her, but I didn’t use that in the end. [Laughs] It got kicked out. So I kind of sweated, that they’re not going to know who Maggie is, because [Laughs] she’s never really introduced. She’s kind of the girl in “Blue Sunday.” But there was another song that really explained her. But it never got into the record. Because in the end we just didn’t think it was good enough. I kind of overwrote that album. I wrote several things that didn’t make the final cut.
“Have Love Will Travel” has that beautiful second section, “If I should lose you in the smoke…” That’s really lovely.
Yeah, that came out good, that song. I love playing it live. And I love that last verse. The audiences always love it: “How about a cheer/for all those bad girls/and all the boys/that play that rock ‘n’ roll/they love it like you love Jesus/it does the same thing to their souls…” They love that.
“Can’t Stop The Sun” is also a strong song. And one you wrote with Mike.
Yeah, that was mostly Mike’s. He even wrote some of the lyrics, which has never happened before. He had written that out completely. One of the rare times he gave it to me with a vocal on it. I swung it around a little differently. I rewrote probably ninety percent of the lyric. But I did keep the title. He had that lick: “Can’t stop the sun from shining.” And I thought it was a good way to end the album. It was a good “up” song.
Unusual that he would have the title, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. Though I think he was calling it “Can’t Stop the World,” which I didn’t think was right. [Laughs] But I kind of twisted it around. But he agreed with me. He wrote the melody and the chords, everything. So it’s mostly Mike’s song.
When you finish a song, does it give you a feeling of triumph?
Yeah, I love it. I love it.
How long does that feeling last?
It can last for years, if it’s really good. Yeah, sometimes I’ll hear something on the radio and I just can’t believe I wrote that. I’ll say, God, that was a good one. [Laughs]
It always feels good to finish an album, because I’ve done it long enough to know these things are gonna be around a lot longer than me. It’s something that wasn’t there and now it’s there. That’s what is great about music and composing in the first place. Something that wasn’t there a few minutes ago is there. I love that about art. You just created something, and now it’s here and it could be here longer than you.
epilogue
A note from the author: As this book was about to go to press, I received a phone call from Tom. He was in a happy place… in the middle of a successful summer tour and having recorded several songs for his forthcoming solo album, Highway Companion. He was thrilled with the music he, Jeff Lynne, and Mike Campbell were creating and he invited me to come have a listen to their work in progress. It was the eleventh hour in the production for this book but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear a few new songs. So, I headed to Malibu, listened to some songs, and asked Tom a few more questions.
—Paul Zollo
highway companion. 2005
You have been working on an album with producer Jeff Lynne. It’s another solo album, tentatively titled Highway Companion. Did you write all the songs and then start recording, or are you writing during the sessions?
I think I wrote most of it before the recording. I had a good chunk, maybe eighty or ninety percent of it before we started recording. I think I only wrote one completely while we were in the studio, “Damaged By Love.”
“Turn This Car Around” is a great opener. It’s a powerful song.
Yeah. It says “opener” to me.
It’s got a great chorus, and a different use of the title than usual. Did that come while writing?
That was one of those nice gifts you get where it just really just fell into place. I started singing it, and I think I got a verse and a chorus. Then I spent a little time working on the lyrics. I wrote more verses than I needed, actually, so I had to sit down and pare it back a little bit. It came out beautifully. And it was one of the first couple we did. And I remember Jeff saying, ‘I’ve really never heard anything like this.’ [Laughs] And we were pleased with that. He said, ‘I really wouldn’t know what bag to put this in. I’ve never heard anything like it.’
It’s cool in that it’s in E minor, but starts with a complex chord.
It’s a very odd chord. Jeff said he’d never seen it used before. I don’t really know what chord it is. It’s almost an E minor 7th, but with something else in there. [Picks up guitar and plays an E minor 7th with a suspended 4th.] I just started playing that one day, and I loved that chord.
Did you write these all on acoustic guitar?
Yeah. I think so. It was all on the acoustic.
The theme of time passing reoccurs throughout the album.
It does. I don’t know why. I guess it’s just subliminal. Subconsciously I did it. I didn’t intend to do that. Maybe it’s just getting older. You start realizing that you have
a certain amount of time to deal with. And I’m at that age where I realize time is really precious. Maybe that was in the back of my mind. It was not something I set out to do.
The slide solo on “Turn This Car Around” by Mike is so languid and nice.
Incredible, isn’t it? He’s just incredible. He does it so effortlessly. He just makes that sound. He was very clever with how he used the guitar. He went after different textures. He used different amps. Sometimes he used a stereo amp. Sometimes for one track he’d take [the amp] out into the big room and mike it at a distance, to get a bigger sound. He’s just a genius with guitar sounds. Beautiful sounds he got.
He felt that maybe we were doing too much slide guitar. But I urged him to keep doing it, because I thought it gave the album a character. I wanted the album to have a somewhat similar sound throughout. I didn’t want it to be one of these, and now one of those. We’d done that before. I wanted this to have a thread of character sonically. So I urged him to do the slide a little more than I think he naturally would have done. But I liked it. It became another voice to me. The album does have a beautiful sonic character.
Well, that’s Jeff.
Yet it doesn’t have the typical Jeff Lynne sound at all.
I think it’s certainly the most different thing he’s ever done. You’d never even know that it was Jeff necessarily. He doesn’t have to put his classic stamp on it. But I think he’s really stepped forward in a way as a producer. It’s some of his best work, I know that.
It’s much sparser than his typical work.
I wanted it to sound like a combo. I didn’t want this to be a big production. I wanted it to sound like it could be played by a combo. Like five guys could do this. And therefore that helped us maintain a lot of space in the music.
Jeff played the bass?
Yes. And he’s a really good bass player. Sometimes you don’t really even notice how good the bass is, because it’s doing its job, and you’re not paying attention to it.
Yet it’s anchoring the whole song.
Yeah, like crazy. With a bass, even knowing how long to let a note ring is so important. It’s not just that you hit the right note. It’s how long you let that note ring and where did you cut it off. He’s just a genius at that. He’s so good at that. He plays that great bass solo at one point too.
Yeah, on “Night Driver.”
[Laughs] He said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go off on that.’
And I said, ‘No, we’re keeping that.’
He said, ‘Really? I thought maybe I was being over indulgent. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take off on that.’
I said, ‘No, it’s great. It’s beautiful.’
And nice to have a bass solo.
Yeah, you never hear one.
And you played all the drums throughout?
I did. I think I could play these songs. I mean, you would never see me onstage playing the drums. But these days, with the luxury of all the equipment you’ve got in the studio and the engineers, they can really forgive a lot of sins. [Laughs] But I managed to get through it. Jeff encouraged me to do it. At first, it was done just out of necessity. We were there, and we didn’t have a drummer.
But I’ve got to admit, I really enjoyed doing it. I don’t think I’d do it a lot. But for this project I really suddenly thought I’m gonna try to do it all. It probably could have been done better by a real drummer, but I did my best with it. And I had fun doing it. But like I say, the engineer forgives a multitude of sins. Because they can fix all my mistakes. So I would never try to do it live.
Though I’m not that bad. I practiced a lot. While we were making the record, I would go in the drum room and practice a lot, just to try to get used to being a drummer.
You did it to a click track?
Yeah.
You put down guitars first?
Yeah, we’d do the guitars, and maybe even the bass sometimes. And then I’d do the drums.
Did Jeff play keyboards?
We all played a little bit of keyboards. We split them up. Jeff played most of the piano and a bit of organ. In the things we did here, I played all the keyboards. And I played that electric piano on “Night Driver.” That’s me. So that was just whoever had a good idea, though Jeff did the lion’s share of the piano. We’d all put our heads together and figure out the piano part. And then whoever could pull it off could play it. [Laughs]
And did you do the vocals before finishing the tracks?
I did the vocals very early on. Because I don’t like the idea of building a track and then having to glue it all together with the vocal. So it’s better to base it around the vocal. So I usually did the vocal as soon as we had a rhythm guitar down.
The harmonies are very subtle, and so gently mixed into the track.
That’s just Jeff mixing them in the right spot. He’s very good at that. Better than I am at placing the harmonies in the mix. Sometimes we might turn them up and down depending on the song. He and the engineer would do the mix for most of the day, and then Mike and I would come in for the last few hours of the mix. And then if we heard something that they hadn’t heard, they might make an adjustment. But [Jeff] is quite good at putting them in the right spot. And I love singing with him. We have so much fun singing.
Did you do any demos of these songs?
I did one for “Big Weekend,” but I never played it for Jeff. I just played it on guitar. And there were a couple of things I started, and they just took that track and finished it, rather than starting again. Things like “Square One.” I did that here [Tom’s home in Malibu]. “This Old Town,” I did the guitar and the vocal here. And “Jack,” I did most of that track here, and they finished it up.
“Square One” is a beautiful song. Very tender, with no drums.
It’s funny. It came together when I was here in the studio with my engineer. And I had that song, and I sat down and recorded it, and then I didn’t like the way the verses were going. And then on the spot, just because I thought it didn’t matter, I changed the chords around in the verses. And we did another take, and that was it. So the unfortunate thing for the producer was that I didn’t realize I was making a record, and I played the guitar and the voice into one mike. So it was nearly impossible to separate them. So [the engineer] had to do a bit of editing to get it all right. And I did sing some of it again. But I think most of it is the track I did here.
I just wrote that one night. Kind of late at night, just thumping on my guitar, and that came to me. And once I got the chords for the verse, then it all fell into place.
It’s a beautiful chorus: “Square one, my slate is clear…” And I love the line, “Always had more dogs than bones.”
Yeah. I know a lot of people like that. It’s a good song in a way. I guess it’s about finding some kind of redemption, and getting back to square one, and feeling good about it. Starting over, I guess, is the simplest way of saying it.
The song “Night Driver” has a haunting opening: “There’s a shadow on the moon tonight/I swear I see your face up there with the satellites looking down from outer space…”
I saw the album in that way, in a loose way, about traveling and about driving. I’ve done songs about driving in the past. But I wanted this to have a different mood. And the driver in that song is going through a lot in his head. And I thought that would set the mood: “There’s a shadow on the moon…” Really, it all kind of came easily after I had that.
I was lucky. I didn’t really struggle a lot with these songs. I looked up one day and I had ten songs. I was surprised by it. Because I would write them, and I’d have them in my head, but I wasn’t sure if I’d really written something or not. But when I got to Jeff’s, I did have that song done. And “Night Driver” was the first song we did. And then I thought, ‘Wow, this is really working.’ And then it was just a natural move. It was like, ‘Hey, we should record something.’ So we went over to his place, with Mike, and we recorded that, “Night Driver.” And then I was
like, ‘Okay, we’re pitching our tent here. This is going really well.’ And then we did “Turn This Car Around.” And I remember them saying to me, ‘Do you have any more songs.?”
And I said, ‘Yeah, I think I have about ten.’ And I did. So we just went to work, finishing them off.
The songs have great lyrics, and some beautiful melodies. The chorus to “Down South,” for example, is such a sweet melody.
I wrote two different choruses for that song. The other one was pretty good, too, but it was too long. It’s a wordy song. And then it hit me that the chorus has to be more or less a turn-around, instead of going into this big long thing. And that got me onto the other chorus, which is so much better. But I did have a little bit of a hold-out on that song, because I knew I was onto something, but until it was perfect, I didn’t want to try to record it. About midway through the album, I got the chorus, and I was really excited.
The other chorus has different words and music?
Yeah, it had different words and music. I think it said the same thing, basically, but with different words. So I found a way of quickly getting it in there, and it’s so much better. “If I come to your door, let me sleep on your floor…” It made a much better picture.
I have to admit I’m very fond of that song. I read this book [Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis] by a guy named Warren Zanes, who I’d known years ago. [Zanes was a member of the Delfuegos from 1983 to 1989. He is currently the vice president of education at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.] And he sent me this book on an album that Dusty Springfield made, Dusty in Memphis, which is a classic R&B album. In his book he really didn’t write about the album as much as he wrote about the South. It’s a very romantic place, but it’s also a spooky place. You’d think a lot of ghosts still linger down there. And I enjoyed reading his book, and that got me thinking about the South. I’d written about the South years ago. And I wondered, ‘What would I write now? Now that I’ve been gone so long?’ Then I got my head into thinking about, what if I went back? What would be my impressions? And then it came pretty easily. I wrote all the lyrics before I wrote the music. It’s the only one on this album that I did that way. I wrote all the lyrics. And I think as I was writing them, I heard the tune in my head. And then it was just a matter of picking up the guitar and finding what chords were under it. It took me a little time to get a melody, but I got one. ‘Cause it’s very wordy. But I think every word counts. So once I had the chorus, I was really happy. [Laughs] I’m still happy about that song.