Stories to Tell

by Richard Marx

  40 “BETTER LIFE”

  A few months after the Emerson Drive debacle, I took solace when “Better Life,” a song I’d written with Keith Urban, hit number 1 on the Country charts and stayed there for six straight weeks.

  Keith and I met in Nashville in 2001. A guy who worked for the publishing company Keith was signed to thought we would make a good writing team, so on one of my regular trips to town, we got together at the company’s offices one afternoon. I had heard his debut album the year before and liked it, plus I had done some work with keyboardist Matt Rollings, who had produced it.

  Keith and I hit it off very quickly; for whatever reason, I have had a lifelong kinship with Australians. Maybe it’s a shared sarcastic humor. It seemed clear we would be easy friends. Our writing, however, wasn’t so effortless. I had come into the session with a musical chorus idea that I showed him and he liked. But after a couple hours, we didn’t really have much more than that.

  We took a break and had lunch down the street at a place I think is still there called Midtown Cafe and bonded further through a couple of club sandwiches and fries.

  “You know, I do have to confess something to you, Richard.” Keith said. “About ten years ago, my debut record came out in Australia on EMI.”

  “That’s my label down there, too,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. Here I am, a young act no one ever has heard of, ready to be put out by EMI, they have all these big plans, until—”

  “Uh-oh. Until?”

  “Until a guy named Richard Marx announces he’s coming down for a tour to support his massive hit, ‘Hazard,’ in Australia. At that point, my record became a buried casualty,” Keith said.

  My face turned redder than the ketchup on the table.

  “I’m… sorry?”

  We soon changed the subject and went back to the publishing offices to try to finish our stubborn song. After another couple of fruitless hours, we agreed it just wasn’t supposed to happen that day and that we’d stay in touch and get back together on my next visit.

  A few months later, I returned and essentially the same thing happened. This time we got together at the house he was renting and started another idea, only to end up staring at blank legal pads with silence bellowing through the room. Instead, we shot a few games of pool and drank beer. And started telling jokes. It became one of those great memories where you’re laughing so hard at each other that your sides ache and you can’t catch your breath. I ended up heading back to my hotel late that night, with a decent beer buzz, but no finished song.

  The next evening, Keith was playing a club in town called 3rd and Lindsley and asked if I’d be up for sitting in on a song with him. We decided on my first hit, “Don’t Mean Nothing,” and that we’d just wing it with no run-through whatsoever. It was actually a really fun and inspired performance with just two acoustic guitars. Someone filmed it and it’s on YouTube to this day.

  The following year, Keith’s career broke into the big time with his follow-up album Golden Road. It yielded several huge country hits, including his number 1 “Somebody Like You.” I was a little bummed out that I hadn’t written a song on it, but we stayed in touch and would always grab breakfast or dinner whenever we were both in the same town.

  Then another year later, he called me and asked if he could come to my house in Chicago so that we could try once again to write together. Super Bowl weekend was coming up and we decided it’d be fun to write a bit and hang out and watch the game. I picked him up from O’Hare Airport and upon his arrival to my house, he met Cynthia and our three sons. We had dinner at home and called it a pretty early night.

  The next day, after some hanging out, we wandered down the long hallway to my recording studio. We each picked up an acoustic guitar and started playing some absentminded chords and riffs when Keith noticed the new instrument I’d bought: a banjo strung like a guitar. Nicknamed Ganjo, it was something Keith had used a lot on his breakthrough album. I’d loved the sound of it and decided to keep one at my studio. He picked it up, and within fifteen minutes we had nearly all the music for what became Keith’s song “Better Life.”

  Historically, the music always comes to me first, and more easily. I’ve got literally thousands of melodies stored away that just haven’t had lyrics put to them yet. Lyric writing is harder for me, partly I suppose because I am always trying to say something a little differently than I’ve heard it said before. I try diligently to avoid clichés. So, when it comes to cowriting with someone, it usually either just flows effortlessly or is painfully laborious. With Keith, the music always flows quickly, and the lyrics are like pulling teeth.

  As I was singing the chorus we’d written, I just kept singing gibberish. Vowel sounds. It’s what a lot of us writers do until we write actual lyrics. I kept singing, “Someday, baby… you and I’r gunna be da ones…”

  And Keith said, “Oh, that’s good, I like that!”

  I stared at him. “You like what? I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, yeah you did. You said, ‘You and I are gonna be the ones.’ ”

  “I did? Well, okay. But you and I are gonna be the ones who what?”

  “No, no, it’s just what you said. ‘You and I are gonna be the ones.’ ”

  “The ones who what?!”

  “Richard, it’s just ‘we’re gonna be the ones!’ ”

  “Oh.”

  After that moment of divine inspiration, we got stuck again.

  Even though we were in my million-dollar, state-of-the-art recording studio with every current piece of digital recording gear, we were recording the ideas for our song onto a small cassette tape recorder. I shit you not.

  Keith and I both had these old-school tape machines because there’s just something about the ultra-compressed sound when you listen back that replicates the radio. We were, however, out of blank cassettes. So we jumped in the car and drove to a Best Buy, all the way there and back singing our song in the car and coming up with lines of lyrics as I drove.

  Though Keith had recently had big breakthrough success on the country charts, he wasn’t yet the superstar he would become. As we were checking out at Best Buy, a girl came over to us and said to me, “Are you Richard Marx?” I acknowledged I was, and she then looked at Keith and said, “And are you Keith Urbane?” Keith smiled at her, then at me, and said, “Almost!”

  We went back to my place and somehow still hadn’t finished the lyrics to this fucking song. Keith had to leave the next morning to head back to Nashville, so we arranged to meet up when I came there to work a few weeks later.

  Keith came to my hotel, and thanks to a chance to clear our heads and a change of scenery, we finished the lyrics quickly and easily.

  There’s a place for you and me where we can dream as big as the sky

  I know it’s hard to see it now, but baby, someday we’re gonna fly

  and this road we’re on

  you know it might be long,

  but my faith is strong

  it’s all that really matters

  someday baby, you and I are gonna be the ones

  good luck’s gonna shine

  someday baby, you and I are gonna be the ones, so hold on

  we’re headed for a better life.

  A month or so later, he had recorded the track for his album and was doing his lead vocal when I happened to be back in Nashville. I accepted his invitation to come to the studio and check it out.

  It sounded killer and like a big hit song. I stayed an hour and then had to go meet someone at another writing session. As I was driving there, an idea came to me for Keith’s track. It was basically a counter chorus at the end of the song, just one more new, catchy piece of information for the listener. I called Keith from the car and sang him my idea.

  Hey, we’re gonna leave this all behind us, baby…

  wait and see…

  we’re headed for a better life…

  you and me…

  He loved it and went right into t
he vocal booth to sing it, adding a couple lines of his own. He also came up with a melodic ending to the section where he flipped up into falsetto and held this beautiful long note. I still get chills at that moment in the record.

  Featured on his next album, Be Here, our song “Better Life” was the last single released from it. I was getting frustrated because I believed the song was really great and commercial, but either Keith’s label or management kept passing it over as a single for other songs. I couldn’t really argue because not only was it not my call, but the songs they were choosing were all becoming hits: “Days Go By,” “Making Memories of Us.” But then they released “Better Life” and it quickly went to number 1 and stayed there for six straight weeks. I had cowritten my first number 1 Country song since 1984.

  * * *

  About a year and a half later, Keith called me and said he was finally off the road and if I had any time in the near future, he’d like me to come to Nashville and try writing a new song or two. Within a few weeks I booked a flight and headed down from Chicago.

  Keith had recently married Nicole Kidman, and they’d moved into a beautiful home just outside of town. I’d regretted not being able to accept his invitation to their wedding in Australia due to my work schedule, so I brought along a wedding gift to their new house and after a coffee and some small talk in the kitchen, we wandered into the living room and grabbed guitars.

  As usual, we hovered around a few random musical ideas for about an hour, occasionally and temporarily zeroing in on a melody he responded to, or a groove idea, but nothing was forming into a coherent song. Back to the kitchen for more coffee and a chat, and I remembered that I’d had an idea for him I’d forgotten to mention. Not really a melody but a vibe.

  “Do you know ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!),’ by U2? I was thinking we should write something for you in that zone.” Keith stared at me. “Dude, that’s so fucking weird. Just yesterday I played Dann [producer Dann Huff] a bunch of songs for inspiration, and that was one of them.”

  A very common practice among those of us who make up songs for a living is to use other existing songs as inspiration. As long as you’re careful not to outright steal someone else’s idea, it can be a great way to discover new songs you might not have written otherwise. There may be some songwriters out there who say they never do that, but they’re lying.

  So, we picked up our guitars and started playing a rhythm part and chords that sounded like a distant cousin of the U2 song. At some point within the gibberish that occurs while searching for actual lyrics, I absentmindedly sang, “Everybody… needs somebody… sometimes.”

  Keith said, “Wow, that sounds great with that melody and chords.”

  “Yeah, but it’s an old Dean Martin song. Plus, it’s trite. As fuck,” I said.

  “One man’s trite can be another man’s universal message. And that Dean song is a million years ago. I like it, Ricardo.”

  Complete non sequitur, but at this juncture I should point out that ever since I moved away from home at eighteen, person after person has invariably nicknamed me “Ricardo.” Not sure why, but it’s what everyone calls me, with the exception of my mother, my wife, and Fee Waybill, who has always referred to me as Ricky Boy.

  Keith and I finished “Everybody” in about ninety minutes. Usually, it takes Keith and me days to finish a song if we ever even do finish an idea. This one felt good, and right, quickly.

  With Nicole out of the country making a movie, Keith asked if I wanted to go hang out later, and that evening we ended up at the Ryman Auditorium to see James Taylor play a solo acoustic concert. I’ve seen James in concert several times over the years and have met him. He’s a consummate performer, incredible songwriter, and a gracious guy.

  Keith and James shared a manager at that time, so we saw the show and stopped backstage to say hi afterward. James greeted us warmly, and when we mentioned we’d been writing together that day, he said, “Well, well. I certainly look forward to hearing what the combination of you two will bring us this time.”

  Keith dropped me at my hotel and said, “Ricardo, I gotta tell you, man. I fucking loooove the song we wrote today. We nailed it. Thank you, brother!”

  I was thrilled, not just because I, too, liked the song, but because I had great respect for Keith as a musician and considered him a friend. I really wanted to deliver for him as a collaborator.

  A few weeks passed and I knew Keith was starting to record his new album, but I’d not heard from him about when he planned to record “Everybody.” Another week or so passed, so I called him and asked how recording was going. “It’s going great, man. But hey, listen, I’m not going to record ‘Everybody.’ It just doesn’t hold up for me.”

  I recall muttering something like, “Hey, bro, no worries. Just checking in.” But inside I was bummed out. Not as much for creative or financial reasons, but personally. In fairness, I myself have had several instances of writing a song (alone or with someone else) and being pretty into it at first but then deciding against recording it later. Maybe the song just didn’t wear well, or maybe it didn’t really fit the direction of the album.

  Coincidentally, I was soon due in the studio myself with Keith’s producer, Dann Huff. Dann and I had known each other a long time but had never worked together, and I asked if he’d be into cutting a couple tracks with me. I went to Nashville, and we had a meeting to listen to a stack of my new songs and choose two to record together on me as an artist, with the two of us producing. The first song I played Dann was one I’d just written by myself called “Loved.” Dann flipped over it.

  “We’ve gotta do that one,” he said. “That’s a really great song.”

  After listening to two or three more songs, I saw on my laptop the MP3 of the recording of Keith and me writing “Everybody.”

  “I hadn’t thought of this, but Keith and I wrote this about a month ago. I love it, but I guess he’s not into it anymore.”

  “Wow. Really? It’s killer. He needs something like this. But, hey, if he’s not doing it, you should.”

  The next day we began a two-day stint at Blackbird Studios in the Berry Hill area outside Nashville, and we recorded both songs with a brilliant array of session musicians. Steve Brewster on drums, Jimmie Lee Sloas on bass, Tom Bukovac and Dann on guitars, and I played piano. By the end of day two, both tracks sounded like near-finished records, and I was thrilled with them.

  Dann called me early the next morning. “Hey, I’m seeing KU [as in Keith Urban] today and I want to see if you’d mind if I play him what we did with ‘Everybody.’ ”

  “Ummm, no. Fine with me.”

  About three hours later the phone rings. “Ricardo. Keith here. Dann just played me the track. I’m an idiot. I’d really like to cut it. Is that okay?”

  Of course it was, despite the approximately $10,000 I’d already invested into my own recording of it.

  Keith included “Everybody” on his Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy Thing album. It was the last single lifted from the disc and became a Top Five Country hit.

  * * *

  Keith’s career went straight into the stratosphere soon after that, and deservedly so. Aside from his exceptional talents, his work ethic and relentlessness are on par with a select few. A few years went by where we saw little of each other and he did not reach out to cowrite with me. His albums continued to do very well, and I was working pretty hard at both rebuilding my touring career and advancing my writing and production for an array of other artists.

  Then one day soon after the devastating floods that put much of Nashville literally under water, Keith rang me and said, “It’s been awhile. We should get together and write. You up for it?”

  I headed down to Nashville a few weeks later, and we met up at a rehearsal studio called SIR. Nearly all of Keith’s guitars had been damaged or destroyed by the flooding that overwhelmed a local storage facility that housed his and several other country artists’ equipment. Keith had to borrow a guitar from a friend fo
r our writing session.

  We caught up on each other’s lives for a few minutes and dove into throwing ideas around. Keith had a drum machine brought in and programmed a simple up-tempo groove, and in no time we started playing and singing what became the verse to a new song.

  I can’t sleep

  Ain’t no sleep a-comin’

  I’m just lyin’ here thinkin’ ’bout you

  This under an arpeggiated guitar riff reminiscent of the Police’s “Message in a Bottle.” After an hour of fleshing out the verse, the gibberish of the chorus that followed became Keith singing, “It’s gonna be a long hot summer… and we should be together…”

  From there we started calling out images of summer. A girl’s pretty bare feet up on a car dashboard, singing loud to songs on the radio, tanned skin. We had a pretty good start of the chorus lyrics by the time we had to call it a day. We agreed to meet up again about two weeks later in Chicago where I was living. Keith had a gig opening for the Eagles there. We would steal an hour or two on his tour bus and finish the lyrics.

  When I arrived at Soldier Field that afternoon, I was directed to park next to Keith’s bus. We had just opened up our legal pads to work on lyrics when there was a knock at the door and onto the bus walked the one and only Joe Walsh. He was coming by to say hello to Keith and had no idea I’d be there.

  I hadn’t seen Joe since that day in 1986 when he was kind enough to play the guitar solo on my first hit, “Don’t Mean Nothing.” We gave each other a big hug, and he sat and talked with me and Keith for a few minutes before he seemed to notice the legal pads. “Hey, you guys, I hope I didn’t interrupt something!” We explained we’d agreed to get together to try to knock out lyrics to a new song but that we were both thrilled to see him. “No, no! You guys get back to it! We can yap about nonsense later!”