I Wrote You a Song

By Guy Simons

I Wrote You A Song is a book that has been constructed like an album with twelve original songs written by Guy Simons that provides a sub-text for lifes journey. The author discusses the underlying theme of each song from a social context using autobiographical reflections, social observations and philosophical musings, intermingled with a large dose of satirical commentary, quirkiness and humour. The author invites readers to be inspired to find their true place in this world through twelve songs that take them on a journey of self-discovery and personal recollection.

Covering topics of life, death, love, hate, joy, despair, health, sickness, hopes, fears, wealth and poverty, immerse yourself in an album unlike any other. Recall your own experiences within each song and reconnect to your past through subject headings that are actual popular song titles. Whether that is the Start or The End you are sure to find an affinity with the subject headings, and if youre looking for Good Vibrations or the Art of Dying you will find it here.

A prelude provides the insight prior to embarking on the journey through songs as diverse as The New Elvis Presley, You Say Youre Leaving to Another Bad Day at the Office and Cyber Spaceman culminating in the curtain raiser I Wrote You a Song. A coda followed by the encore brings the work to a close giving you a chance to confirm whether your soundtrack to this book mirrored the authors, or whether you would have chosen alternate subject headings to align to your own personal experience.

The author is a songwriter and he has written you a song.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781452530925

Guy Simons

Guy Simons, a songwriter, was born September 12, 1968, on a day when the Beatles were number one in the UK singles charts with “Hey Jude.” John Lennon’s murder twelve years later was the catalyst for a lifelong passion for music and writing that has culminated in Simons’ first book.

Book preview

PRELUDE

I am a songwriter.

So what? you say.

"There are a million songwriters, what makes you so special?

I’ve never heard of you and if you were any good, you would be up there with Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber or Robbie Williams.

Why aren’t you on TV and films and performing world tours and large stadium concerts?"

Well, what can I say?

This is not a book about a famous artist or a life story of a famous songwriter. This is a book by a man who writes songs, whose passion of songwriting consumes most of his waking hours and dreams. This is a book that takes you on a journey of twelve songs that tell their own story. This is a book that you could have written. There are not a million songwriters, there are seven billion songwriters and every one of them has stories to tell.

Although I can play guitar and piano, which is how I write my songs, I am not the greatest guitarist or pianist. There are millions of technically better musicians than me. I play well enough to write and perform songs.

I studied English Literature when I was at school and I had a wonderful English teacher who made me appreciate the value of words and the unlimited images that can be created by them. Language is a wonderful evolutionary gift that humans acquired and it’s through communicating that we have achieved so much. It’s through connecting that we can achieve so much more.

I write all the time in my professional career, although that is specific to Information Technology. That might be newsletters, Linked-In articles, tender responses, process and procedures and the dreaded email. Like every activity we can get moments of boredom, but I approach everything I do, as a representation of myself, and therefore I am a bit of a hard taskmaster. Writing in these environments also allow you to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted, as they are all time dependent and have deadlines to meet.

You all know what I am talking about, and it doesn’t matter what career you have, whether you are a hairdresser, an actor, a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker.

Have you noticed how candles have suddenly become vogue again?

They come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, fragrances and aromas. My oldest daughter was given one for Christmas, although she’s not allowed matches so she can’t light it. It’s tough being a kid.

It is the writing I do in my personal time that provides me with the greatest satisfaction. It is a great outlet for any subliminal emotion that might be grinding away in the dark recesses of your mind, and what better use for those thoughts than to get them down on paper, or in Word. I just happen to use songs as the final outlet for most of these thoughts, although a reasonable amount of thinking has gone into writing this book.

Diaries were very popular in my parents’ time and that seems to have become slightly passé although I imagine that many people old and young still write them. My oldest daughter has to keep a diary for school, but this has more to do with time management than writing her inner most private thoughts. With the explosion of the Internet and social media and the ubiquity of communication, people write more than they ever have, and it seems that those inner most private thoughts are now happily being posted on the Internet.

You can expose all your emotions to your friends on Facebook; you can relay your immediate thoughts on any given subject with Twitter; you can post an image immediately using Instagram with a comment; you can expand your professional networks with Linked-In and you can blog your way to your heart’s content on any subject you feel fit. Whether people read it or not is another question altogether. Sometimes it’s just great therapy to get your thoughts out.

The Word

When I was studying English literature, we were exposed to writers such as William Shakespeare, Samuel Coleridge and Charles Dickens amongst others and their ability to tell stories that the masses could relate to. Incidentally, I spent 2014 reading all of Charles Dickens’ novels chronologically. It gave me a tremendous sense of satisfaction knowing I achieved my objective as I finished the last chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood - a literal New Year’s resolution that I saw to the end. Unfortunately for Charles Dickens, he died before completing that novel and dramatisations of the book have derived the endings from clues within the book.

Their works stand the test of time as pieces of literature, but the stories they have written have been adapted for theatre, musicals, films and television. These adaptations have been produced based upon the emotional context of the words and the music has been arranged accordingly. The only difference between a poet and a songwriter is the ability to put the words to music to create a song.

Hang on, I hear you cry. Some songs don’t have words.

Yes I know that some songs don’t have any words, but we’ll call those instrumentals. A few familiar instrumentals are Apache by The Shadows, Take Five by Dave Brubeck, Strangers on The Shore by Acker Bilk, Albatross by Fleetwood Mac, Chariots of Fire by Vangelis and Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer that was used as the theme song to Beverly Hills Cop. It came back in vogue when it was re-released by Crazy Frog with lyrics added by the Frog such as ring ding ding daa baa etc. And you thought frogs couldn’t speak, let alone write.

Anyway, back on subject, sometimes the same person writes both the music and the lyrics, as is the case for me. Other songs have the lyrics written by one person and the music by the other. Bernie Taupin and Elton John are a famous example of this songwriting partnership with hundreds of songs. Bernie writes the lyrics and then Elton puts music to them. It is interesting to note that during most of their careers, Bernie would write the lyrics by himself, and then send them to Elton to compose the music without any further interaction. In recent times, they have collaborated a lot more face-to-face.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice are another example of this songwriting partnership style although the writing is reversed with Andrew Lloyd-Webber writing the music first and then Tim Rice writing the lyrics. Their collaborations have provided the world with famous musicals such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. I haven’t seen any of these shows live, although I do recall seeing bits of Jesus Christ Superstar on TV many years ago in the U.K.

I am not a complete philistine as I have seen Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Oliver in the West End. Both Les Miserables and Oliver are classic literary works by Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens respectively. Les Miserables has recently been released as a major movie featuring a couple of well know Aussie actors, Hugh Wolverine Jackman and Russell Gladiator Crowe.

Another reasonably famous composer by the name of Mozart would ensure that the words fitted in with the music in his operas such as The Marriage of Figaro, which was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. They also collaborated on Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutte.

Each chapter in this book represents the title of a song that I have written. I have then included the lyrics of the song to frame the chapter. I then reference the lyrics to varying degrees to provide context to the songs and the underlying themes, sound bites and observations that relate to the song or the lyrics. I will occasionally make reference to the key of a song and the chords that are used where appropriate.

The actual scores are available to download from my website, however this book is not specifically targeted for musicians, full of technical jargon around major and minor keys, diminished and augmented chords, tempo changes etc. although musicians out there can play these songs if they wish.

The objective of the book is to provide a story behind each song and give you the incentive to write songs yourselves. Try it and you will be amazed. Just getting your thoughts or emotions down on a piece of paper, your iPad, iPhone or PC is truly liberating. It might be a phrase, a single line or a couple of words. Once you have done that, look at it. Look at the words and you can see them looking back at you. They are saying something to you. It’s like looking at a reflection of your mind.

Start

How did it all start?

I was a twelve year-old boy living in Cheltenham, England, who was home from school when the news came on that John Lennon had been shot and murdered in New York. I’m sure many of you would recall that news too. I had never even heard of John Lennon or the Beatles at that time, but immediately after the news, they played the film Help. I was completely entranced by the music and the wit of the Beatles, and have constantly been inspired by the music and the beliefs that they held dear.

I was immediately turned onto songwriting, playing music, performing and in more recent times the recording, mixing and mastering processes to bring out the finished products. As soon as the film ended, my life was altered for all time. I was suddenly addicted to the Beatles. I asked my dad if he had any of their music to which he replied he hadn’t, hence the reason I wasn’t aware of them.

One evening, not long after the fateful day that John was assassinated, my dad brought home The Beatles Box, which had a large selection of their songs covering the years 1963 through to 1970. It was on compact cassette tapes that you would play on small cassette players or Hi-Fi systems. Referencing a book I bought a few years later called The Beatles, The Long and Winding Road Volume 1 by Neville Stannard, it informs me that this box set was released ironically in 1980.

It became a constant source of music all through my secondary school years whilst I did my homework and studied for my exams. I would play these cassettes over and over again so I would know all the lyrics, all the musical breaks, leads and idiosyncrasies and to the point where I would know the running order of the songs on each cassette. It was funny because I got so used to the running order of these cassettes that when I asked for their albums for Christmas, it was strange to hear the songs in the order they were originally released.

This has just triggered a memory I had when I was younger. I always thought it would be an interesting experiment if you raised a group of baby boys and girls on a remote island, and reconstructed their language by calling common objects different names. So a chair would become a table. A table would become a chair. A door would become a wall and a wall a door etc. You can tell I was mad then, and I’m still mad now.

As I became more and more exposed to the Beatles music, writings, articles, books and films, my passion for music increased to the point that I took up guitar. I cannot recall what age I was, but one Christmas I was rewarded with my first electric guitar. I cannot remember the make of the guitar other than the fact it was black with a white scratchboard. I know it couldn’t have been too expensive as my mum and dad were not wealthy.

In fact, I am sure my dad would have traded it in his shop. After all, he was a TV repairman when TVs could be repaired, and that’s the kind of article that would turn up from time to time. My dad would always be happy to trade anything he felt he could make a profit on. Although he was a trained electronics engineer, you would find all kinds of objects d’art in his shop, or tat, so that it become a secondhand shop by default. You could say that he was on the verge of being an antiques dealer, although the snobbery associated with antique dealers, and the down to earth traders who deal in secondhand goods are mutually exclusive.

The strange thing about my guitar playing was my lack of interest or inability to play other peoples songs at the time. You would have thought that being brought up on a rich diet of Beatles songs would have meant I would have strived to learn all their songs. For some bizarre reason I didn’t. I always found it far more appealing to fiddle about with chords learning the basic shapes, and then making something up as I went along. I did have The Beatles Complete: Guitar/vocal Edition that provided all the chords, lyrics and melody lines but still I found writing my own songs came more naturally to me.

My earliest memory of a song I wrote was called Peace is all we want. Yes, you’ve immediately spotted the John Lennon influence coursing through my pen at the time and you would be right. I used to hang around with a friend called Peter Hall, as we had both taken up guitar at the same time, and so we would play along together. I always wrote, sang, and played the chords whilst Peter would play the lead.

Before long, I had left school and was working for an insurance company called Eagle Star. My first paycheck was a princely sum of £112 and so the first thing I bought was—yes you’ve guessed it—a set of drums.

What, you guessed wrong?

Now this will provide you with another insight into the crazy mind of Monsieur Guy Simons. In order to have a proper band, you need a drummer. Now, most people could not afford drums, so my solution was simple. Just like Kevin Costner’s character in the film Field of Dreams, who hears a voice that whispers, If you build it, he will come, my logic was if I buy it, they will drum.

Now drummers came and went until an old school friend auditioned, and secured the gig. His name was Paul Creed, and my use of the term old school friend is constantly disputed by Paul, who claims that our only association at school was through a set of dead arms that he accumulated courtesy of my friends and me. This was down to the fact that we looked upon Paul and his friends as Nerds. It can’t have been all that bad, because we hit it off and played in bands on and off for a decade, and he was my Best Man when I got married. Not only that, he also wore a skirt for the occasion. Most people would be more familiar with the term kilt. My wife is Scottish.

A few years ago my songwriting was re-invigorated by my vocal teacher Mark Hall, a friend and inspiration to me, who is the Director of Music at the Warringah Performing Arts School. Mark also teaches piano, and before we had established our own musical relationship, he taught my oldest daughter Rachel. My wife normally picked Rachel up after she had finished her piano lesson, but this particular evening, I went to fetch her. They hadn’t quite finished the lesson, so I went in and listened. As I sat there enjoying the music, Rachel happened to mention to Mark that I wrote and recorded songs. He was very interested and asked me to send him some songs, which of course I did. The three songs I sent Mark were Rollercoaster, Joy Ride and Lemon Tree. After he had listened to them, he said that I had natural songwriting ability and that there was no reason why I couldn’t make a career out of music.

It is always pleasing to hear compliments but at the same time they need to be grounded in reality. I’d love to be able to make a living from music but we’re not always in a position to drop everything and follow our dreams. In my case, I have a wife and three children and the responsibilities that come with that. My focus has to be on their well-being and my children’s upbringing. Music forms a significant part of our lives as all of my three children play various instruments and therefore a melody is not far away. I have always liked writing and therefore the idea to write a book as you would lay out an album appealed to me.

Is there Anybody Out There?

The structure of the book looks at the underlying theme behind each song. The title of each song should resonate with you straight away, and give you a chance to evaluate what that means to you. Some will no doubt stir up memories or moments within your life that you can relate to. Some of the events portrayed within the song’s story may be occurring as you read them and therefore have greater relational significance. As I meander into different sub-topics underpinned by my own experiences, observations and occasional satirical commentary, I will head up the section with a subject heading. Now the subject heading will actually be a song title.

It’s been great fun for me to link song titles to themes, even if the links are tenuous by any stretch of the imagination. I hope you get a chance to listen to every song that I have used to support the text. I have a bias based upon my own upbringing so if there are any songs that are not your cup of tea, be my guest and substitute an alternate song. If we ever get the chance to correspond, it would be great to understand why you would have chosen a certain song for a subject heading. As I have maintained throughout this book, you will draw your own conclusion based upon your life experiences. My sole goal is to raise awareness to your own consciousness and unlock memories that have been hidden and use imagery and songs to liberate them.

I may also refer to organisations that can provide support beyond the friends and family circle that many people rely on. If this book sells more than a handful of copies, family, friends and close associates, second thoughts family and friends, um… family, then I encourage you to share the link to the organisation that provides support in your particular situation, and we will publish that under the following structure. Song; Theme; Country; State; City etc.

The lyrics of each song stand up by themselves as poetry and hence are not dependent upon the music, however the music provides the mood. Imagine you are a director of a film reading a monologue and you are looking to find accompanying music that complements the words.

What would that sound like?

What instruments would you use?

What pace would the song take?

What genre of music?

It’s an interesting thought experiment, even if you have had no musical training. Do the words make you happy, sad, angry, confused, elated or possibly frustrated?

Is the song in first person and if so do you assume the role of narrator from a personal context, or if it’s from a third person perspective, do you feel like a spectator, intruder, or voyeur?

When I was growing up, you would listen to albums rather than singles, and although most albums were a collection of songs without a consistent theme, other albums were like mini operas that had a storyline running through them. Pink Floyd was very much in that mold with albums like The Wall and Animals. Thanks for staying so far.

The first song I will introduce will be The New Elvis Presley, because that is the song that was really the launch pad or should I say, re-launch pad. We have lift off!

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour

I’m sure it does.

SONG 1 - THE NEW ELVIS PRESLEY

Here comes the new Elvis Presley, can’t believe my eyes

It is Elvis incarnate as I look towards the skies

Here comes the new Elvis Presley, hip swaying too

Iconic jump suit and cape, and wearing blue suede shoes

Some quiet please, a little less conversation

Get off your knees, rise up in celebration

Altogether now let’s sing

Long live the king, long live the king

Here comes the new Elvis Presley, gonna kiss and tell

Light up the lights of Las Vegas, book a room at Heartbreak Hotel

Here comes the new Elvis Presley, and he’s doing fine

Unlock the gates of Graceland and free your suspicious minds

Some quiet please, a little less conversation

Get off your knees, rise up in celebration

Altogether now let’s sing

Long live the king, long live the king

Long live the king, long live the king

Some quiet please, a little less conversation

Get off your knees, rise up in celebration

Altogether now let’s sing

Long live the king, long live the king

Long live the king, long live the king

Everybody sing, long live the king

Everybody sing, long live the king

Hold On Tight

I will take you on the journey of my song The New Elvis Presley from inception to its global release on all major digital download outlets on the 8th January 2012, to coincide with Elvis Presley’s birthday and as part of the 35th anniversary celebrations.

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

First, a question.

How do you begin to write a song?

You ask a hundred people and you’ll probably get a hundred different answers. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way, but for me there is my way.

Dependent upon your age, you like me may have conjured up in your minds the song made famous by Frank Sinatra. I can visualise Frank as well as Sid Vicious crooning their way through it. That particular song has deeply ingrained memories for me as it was always played every New Year’s Eve in Hunters, a public house in Cheltenham, England throughout the mid 80’s and early 90’s, along with Frank’s New York, New York, although I don’t know why, and your traditional staple of Auld Lang Syne. What songs bring New Year’s Eve flooding back to you?

My songs are almost always created whilst strumming the guitar or playing the piano. This fiddling