Originally Posted By: rharv
You know how many Motown bands performed songs they didn't write?


As many as how tired I am of hearing that?

Do you think Notes would have been interested in being signed by Motown to teach people how to dress? He's a performer, in a band recruited because of their music, not some college QB who is drafted and then moved to wide receiver....

I am not a chef in a restaurant. That doesn't mean I can't cook.
I am not a carpenter. That doesn't mean I can't build things with wood.
I am not a welder. That doesn't mean I don't know how to weld.

Just because you don't doesn't mean you can't. And if you truly can't that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to learn how.

I dreamed about being both, but if I had to choose between either famous performer or famous writer, I would take writer every time. Diane Warren sings like an air raid siren but she is the best pop music writer ever. Sales says so. Bacharach can't sing at all. How did his writing career go?

I want to be Diane Warren.
I want to be Burt Bacharach.
I want to be Jim Steinman. (RIP Jim.)
I want to be Todd Rundgren.
I want to be David Foster. Sting. Brian Wilson. Carole King. Smokey Robinson.

How many of you saw Jersey Boys? There was a scene in that play where Bob Gaudio sat Frankie Valli down and told him that he was never really all that comfortable on stage or on tour anyway, so Frankie should get some new guys, bill the act as Frankie Valli and the 4 seasons, and Gaudio would keep writing his hits.

That's where I wanted to be. Bob Gaudio, not Frankie Valli.

There's a band called Animals As Leaders fronted by some speedburner guitar guy named Misha Mansour. What he does is very impressive, but it's muscle memory and nothing more. You play those scales that fast long enough and it will become easy for you. Writing is not muscle memory. Writing is English literacy, musical knowledge and storytelling all in one.

Why does everybody want to tell me how wrong I am because I have way more respect for the people who write the songs than the people who just play them? You are free to play Margaritaville and Brown Eyed Girl EVERY night to get paid. I have told you many times that money means nothing to me. (Do you not believe that?) I want to die the day I can't afford to pay for breakfast. I have no concerns with an illness sending me to bankruptcy. I don't care about saving for the future (which might be as short as 1 day). For what? All the expensive travel I do? I barely leave my yard! I have no interest in going to remote corners of the world to be bored out of my mind. A tank of gas lasts me 15-17 days. I don't even HAVE a savings account. I am a consumer. I spend, not save. Save money? To give to nobody when I die? I have no interest in being the richest corpse in the graveyard.

The "Don't know what I'd do with myself if I retired" is pretty much whistling in the graveyard BS. I absolutely LOVE my life. I don't have to do ANYTHING. EVER. 2-3 days can go by when I know I don't have to go anywhere and I don't even put pants on. The argument made by musicians that "I have no bosses." is also a load of crap. Um, yeah you do. The people who make you play Margaritaville and Brown Eyed Girl are your bosses. You play a gig in a big club and you have 400-500 bosses. When you don't have bosses is when you say "I play what I want to play." I am my boss. Nobody else. If you don't like what I write, get the f*** (I censored that) out. Audiences are NOT my friends. They are faceless people in chairs who paid the venue to be entertained and that is their job. To sit there, buy drinks, and be entertained.

If I wrote something good enough that Underwood or Clarkson wanted to sing it, I would just give them the song with the only stipulation being that my name is listed as the writer. (And in essence THEY are doing a cover!) They can keep the money the song earns. Once again, and I don't know why I have to keep saying this, I don't care AT ALL about money. I have enough. What I don't have is a legacy. I care about people knowing my name for my songwriting prowess. I know they never will, but I tried. To say "I can't" about ANYTHING... wow. "Can't" and "don't" are not the same thing. To say "I can't write" is not the same as "I never tried to write". And neither of those is the same as "I CAN write but I choose not to." (Is this where you tell me again that Sinatra didn't write? What arrogance to ever compare yourself to Sinatra.) I respect people who tried and failed WAY more than those who never tried. I have faced the slow death of silence after doing an original before (too often), but I also got applause for them too. It's so much fun to hear people talk out of both sides of their mouth when they say "I don't play music just for money" or "I'd do this for free". And then they say "If you don't play what the crowd wants you won't get booked." Well, if you don't do it for money, so what? Those 2 things are 180 degrees opposed. You can get booked to play original music. Just not at the same places. And for way less money. (But, you don't PLAY because of money, right, so...)

If anybody will get the analogy here, know that when I get a new video game I play it on expert mode first. I don't want to do things I know I can do. I want to be challenged. Mustang Sally was never challenging.