Originally Posted by Andrew Dee
Hi Ron!
A great song! I have a lot of affinity with the lyrics - girls I liked but didn’t care for what I offered and were more interested in the excitement of other young men. I am so happy with the girl who liked me, then loved me, then married me …

Your mention of the toms made me listen more closely. They gave me the impression, along with the jangly guitars, of how life seems to pull you along at a speed that sometimes seems thrilling and at other times too quick to control. In 1981, I was 19 and life felt like that.

Knowing you write to your brother’s lyrics - do you ever edit his words to fit, or repeat a line to make it work musically? Or do you make them work musically as is? From his lyrics - what becomes the chorus, or has he already indicated this? I guess I am asking if he wrote poetry/prose or did he know he was writing song lyrics?

My only nit is I would have loved the closing guitar solo to go on longer - but that is small considering how good the song is overall. Well done to you both.

Andrew

Thanks, Andrew! To answer your question, the lyrics in the original post are a cut-and-paste from the lyric sheet he sent me. This is standard for us. I don't ever change the lyrics (on purpose) but I do often recycle a line, title, chorus, etc to serve the song. On this one I recycled the "We were kids..." section at the end instead of ending at "...more than friends from the start" as I thought it provided a nostalgic bookend. Plus the song was running short. smile

I also sometimes will ad lib an accent like "yeah" if it serves the song. Once I ad libbed a line ending in "Hindu" with a "doo doo doo doo" BGV. That was fun, too.

You got the toms exactly as intended, which is cool for me. At any rate I did update the mix to intersperse the tom fills with another RealDrum from the same drummer. It provides a different overall feel from what I originally intended, but I like the effect.

The outro guitar fills were just a way of letting the song unwind a bit after the "We were kids..." section (and those toms!) pumped the dynamic up. If I had added another 4-bars I likely would have placed a harmonized second guitar over the same theme. But if I'm out of lyrics at the 3:00 minute mark, I usually quit. And so I did here.

DC Ron
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