Patrick O'Sullivan, Introduction to Love Death and Whiskey

Introduction

A song is like a three legged stool. I am the lyricist, I write the words, and this is my book. So, I will speak first. The song lyric is the first leg of the stool. I am told that there are some people out there who believe that there can be a song without words. Tut.

The second leg of the stool is the music. Writing is mostly a lonely business. So I enjoy the partnership that develops between lyricist and musician. Of course in the beginning of any partnership there is a testing, a sounding out process.

The third leg of the stool is the performance. Lyricist and musician, words and music, work towards performance, preferably live performance. We put our work into the hands of the performers. And we bless them.

I love to write songs for a specific performer – more than that, for a special stage presence, for a stage persona. A look, a tone of voice, eyes. I especially like writing for women performers. A song is like a soliloquy in a longer play – there might be, in the background, a longer drama that can be hinted at in the text. For the most part, I honour the dramatic convention that in the soliloquy we hear the truth. The text need not spell everything out, if we know that the performer can inhabit the gaps. In these texts the I is not necessarily me. But I did write all the words.

There are songs in this selection that would not exist if there had not been, waiting for the text, perfect performers for the lyric I had in mind. Obvious examples in this book are You taught me to cry and Irish night. I suppose that this also means that there are, in my notes or in my head, songs as yet unwritten, waiting for their performers.

It follows from all this that, if this book is to be something more than a collection of one legged stools, you, musicians and singers, must take these lyrics, set them and sing.

This book offers a selection of my song lyrics, written in varying circumstances over many years. Sometimes I was working with musical partners, sometimes I was alone. These are not poems. But it has happened that musicians have taken poems from my table, and have then come back to me to say: Can you please re-write this so that I can set it? And I do re-write. I have allowed some of these more intagliate texts into this selection.

When a number of song lyrics are collected together in one place like this – and not left scattered in guitar cases or on the tops of pianos – patterns and predilections become apparent.

I think that these songs inhabit their own ground. But the traditions, the reference groups, with which the songs connect themselves become obvious. The linked folk traditions of Ireland, Britain and North America. French chanson. Music Hall song. The lyric tradition in English language and literature, with, perhaps, a special bow to Robert Herrick, the master of the very short line.

There is an interest in craft and technique and form. Some musicians, the pop and rock folk, are most comfortable within the verse-verse-middle-eight-verse structure. And it is a good structure – like the sonnet it gives a place where the thought must turn, the volta. Some musicians prefer the crafted form of the literary lyric. Other musicians like a less strict form – their music likes something that the music must rescue, or their music likes to impose its own will on the text. Some musicians like a clean and fragrant line, others like jagged edges. I am easygoing about all this. I like to hear my songs sung.

A song lyric is made up of words, words have meanings, and songs have subject matter. There is, in these songs, an interest in what might be called the traditional, or even the familiar, subject matter of song. There is also an interest in taking song into unfamiliar territory. There is no fear of difficulty and experience, emotion and, indeed, sentiment. I give the musicians and the performers something to work with.

There is, you will see, a certain tenderness towards songs built around the names of places – though I have, wisely I think, rationed these in this selection. I have included some songs written for stage plays, where the analogy with the soliloquy becomes more than an analogy.

This book, a selection of my song lyrics, is dedicated to the musicians and performers I have worked with. It is offered to them with my thanks.

Patrick O’Sullivan

Narrowboat June

October 2010

Pages 5-7

Love Death and Whiskey - 40 Songs

Patrick O’Sullivan

PPP Published by Patrick Pinder Publisher

Bradford 2010

ISBN: 978-0-9567824-0-3

For permission to make further use of the song lyrics collected in this book contact pad@osull.com

Google Sites

Report abuse