LISTEN HEAR
“Songwriting is the hardest
intellectual pursuit in my life.
It’s the hardest thing, the most
painful thing. The thing I avoid
like the plague.”
STING by Chris Schwegler - Atlas Icons
I was talking with Les Paul and talking
invention. I said, “Do you see these things
complete in your head, or do you thinker
until you get it?” Les says, “Oh no, I just
wake up and go. That’s it. Mary we’re
taking the car and going to Ampex and
we’re gonna make this thing.” Is that how
it happens with songs for you?
That’s not the way it works for me. I wish I
could just walk in the garden and a song would
occur to me. Sometimes a fragment of a song
can just come to me while making breakfast.
Just a fragment. But really the business of
songwriting is building from these fragments.
And that just takes getting down to work at
9:00 in the morning and tinkering. Using that
fragment with that fragment, and trying to join
them together, either lyrically or harmonically
or chromatically, trying to add things up to
make something of substance. It’s not. I never
see the whole thing. I wish. That takes genius.
But no, I have to work hard. Songwriting is
the hardest intellectual pursuit in my life. It’s
the hardest thing, the most painful thing. The
thing I avoid like the plague. I’d rather be on
tour. I’d rather be a sportsman. I’d rather be
a gardener. And yet the whole structure of
my life is based on this very ephemeral thing.
48
GUITAR TRICKS INSIDER
DIGITAL EDITION
I think of a melody and I think of a piece
of doggerel and I add both things together.
That’s what my whole life is based on. And
also everyone around me’s life is based on my
thinking of this stuff. So in a way it’s a constant
source of anxiety. Yet a constant source of the
greatest pleasure.
What is the pebble in your shoe that gets
this oyster goin’? If you could you would
avoid it.
If I could I would avoid it. A sense of
responsibility. A sense that if I actually do
put my nose to the grindstone after a certain
amount of time there will be a jewel.
You will take time. You say I’m gonna turn
it on like a light switch or try to? It’s 9:00
I will sit down at whatever instrument.
I’ll work till 12 and maybe there will be
one fragment that I’ll keep after all that.
That’s like a writer.
I give myself a deadline. I phone my musicians.
I say on April 12 you are going to come to my
house and we’ll have ten songs to work on.
It’s now February. I have to do that amount of
work in that time. I’d rather be on holiday.
OCT/NOV