The Book

Back in the day, there would often be three guys who wrote a broadway musical: the composer, the lyricist and ‘the book’. So for example, with Fiddler On The Roof you’ve got music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein.

OK, so to laypeople (like me for example) the music and lyrics are pretty obvious but ‘the book’ may not be. The book is essentially all the bits that occur between the musical numbers. As followers know by now, I’m always looking for analogs between opera and Broadway and I think a good way to think of this is that the music/lyrics are the arias and the book contains all the recitatives. As with opera, the music/lyrics describe the characters feelings and the book drives the story. Or to put it in the context of Hollywood, the music/lyrics are the action and love scenes while the book is all that dreary ‘setup’ and ‘expository’ stuff which I love and which producers are always leery of because it tends to put people to sleep.

As with recitativo and expositions in opera and movies, the guy who writes the book tends to be overlooked. After all, people remember ‘If I Were A Rich Man’ and ‘Sunrise, Sunset’, not all the talking in between. But without that story, there is only some pretty songs. Pretty meaningless songs in fact.

I absolutely loved Fiddler On The Roof as a kid, but it wasn’t until I did the show Fiddler On The Roof that it dawned on me that the story is about my grandmother’s situation: a Jewish family stuck in the pogrom’s of Tsarist Russia, trying desperately to escape; having almost no hope for themselves but praying that they can find a way to make life better for their kids. It wasn’t until that struck home that I started appreciating what a masterpiece is Fiddler On The Roof—and how important the book is to making it as moving and as funny as it is. (You can’t have this level of humour without this level of poignancy, but that’s a rant for another day.) And I had been listening to the thing for over a decade and playing the thing with a full band before that realisation came home. If it took me that long, no wonder producers freak out about too much exposition in a movie!

As I work on Detroit, what’s currently kicking my heinie is the book. See here’s the part I don’t get and number 4,801 on my List Of Things To Ask If I Get To Heaven (you know, that thing where you can find out anything you ever wanted to know—who really killed Kennedy, why gas is 20c more expensive in some neighbourhoods than others.) Where was I…oh yeah: “How does The Book work with The Composer and The Lyricist?” See I know how a lyricist could work with a composer. But I have no idea how the book writer works with the others. I mean, does he write the book first with little bits that say <insert sad ballad here> Or does he come in after the songs are done to try to tie it all together. Or is there a truly collaborative situation where the songs and book develop holistically. Obviously it isn’t 100% any of these options, but there must be a general modus operandi that seems to work best for the great shows and I sure want to know what is!

Now, it’s not a question of multiple personality disorder. I can’t divide myself into three separate functionaries, even if I wanted to. But I sense that having some better understanding of this process will make a far more organic end result. And as I’ve written before, the last thing I want is a show that is disconnected. It all has to mean something. To that end, I’ve been doing all manner of things, from the sublime to the ridiculous, to learn how to approach the problem. One thing I’ve been doing is leveraging my love of movies to give me some insights. Namely, watching all the deleted scenes from movies on DVD.

Almost all DVDs now contain a “Director’s Commentary” and when you watch the deleted scenes you can get their thoughts on why the scene was cut. The interesting thing to me about that is how the overwhelming majority of these scenes are not crappy; in fact they are often the most elaborately staged bits of the show. But at some point, the Director realises that the thing just doesn’t work. And here’s the really interesting part: nine times out of ten? They have this realisation very early in the process. In fact, sometimes they have this epiphany during shooting but carry on anyway because they’re so emotionally invested in that gag. In the end however, when you’re alone in the editing room and realise that there is a bigger picture involved (no pun intended)? Every good director has what it takes to make that cut. Maybe the ability to leave things on the cutting room floor is just as important as the ability to film, period.

So… exactly what are you trying to say?

What I’m saying is that, right now, I have lots and lots of material.  I have an overall arc to the story. I have the main musical and dramatic themes as well as some pretty snappy tunes if I do say so myself. I’m seeing these as organs in the body like in one of those “The Visible Man” models. But what I’m not seeing yet, just like none of us see when looking at an MRI (or The Visible Man) is how it all connects—how the various tubes and wires communicate to make a bunch of parts into something that builds great things and types out stupid blogs like… er… well…

My biggest fear at this point is losing that “big picture” because there are so many details. I can easily see how one could finish something like this and feel very proud at the technical achievement, but still feel that nagging voice which says, “you wrote a bunch of songs and some words and called it an opera.”

I’m putting all my money on one simple bet: In every great show, It’s The Book that is the glue that binds together a great work of music drama. Or rather, it is the circulatory systems and vital fluids in the body that give purpose to the immediately visible organs. Without that healthy dialog between the big numbers; the what of the story that makes it possible for the arias to explore the deeper why, all you can possibly have are some pretty tunes. And not that there is anything wrong with that, except that pretty tunes ain’t opera, pal. So  I’m hoping that by studying the books of many great musicals—as well as recitatives and movies, some sort of inner guidance will sink by some manner of osmosis and give me a bit of that inner sense of structure that good film directors seem to have. Until then? I’m just gonna continue to live by the words that have always stood me well as a musician: Fake It ‘Til Ya Make It! Because even more important than that last sentence is this one: Inspiration? Inspiration Can Kiss My Ass! Just Keep Writing Every Day.

Detroit: An Opera

I’ve started work on an opera called ‘Detroit’. Really.

No really.

A Fearful Background

I have been wanting to do a large scale piece since I was in college. But frankly, I never had the material to work with. I remember reading how Brahms struggled so hard to publish his first pieces. He felt so unworthy and ‘unprepared’. And if Brahms felt unworthy? I mean we’re talking Brahms. Have you ever seen a picture of Brahms? Well, I just happened to have one in me back pocket…

I mean seriously. Unprepared? This is a guy who looks like he prepared just to take a dump every morning.

The thing is, the more that I’ve learned about writing music, the more I understand how he felt. Because the more you write, the more you realise how easy it is to cheat.

Look at most Hollywood film scores. Even the best ones tend to be weak these days. Why? Everyone learns in their first composition class how to take one or two melodies and then ‘thematically develop’ them into wall to wall sound. Big deal. When Beethoven took four notes and made a symphony? That was thematic development.

It struck me that the only way to do a long form piece was to wait until I had an idea that was big enough. Otherwise, I would be either:
a) Stringing several small ideas together just to make a ‘show’ or
b) Stretching one idea out like taffy as in crap movie music.

Neither of these are worthy approaches. The material itself had to provide the answer. And it took until I was fifty-ish to find something I feel I can do.

Music Drama, Broadway or Opera?

The five or six of you out there who are following my recent rants on various ‘operatic’ themes know that something is up with Detroit. It ain’t like I’ve got a deep, dark secret about it. What it is, is more a matter of ‘packaging’ or rather approach.

I’ve written that, although I love opera now, the reason I didn’t love it in my youth (aside from all the fat people screaming in Italian) was that I didn’t know that it was already dead. And by ‘dead’ I mean, no longer a currently relevant art form. Oh sure, people still write operas, but people still try to finish Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Big deal. It doesn’t mean that these pieces have anything to say to me. This is tough talk as I know that Adams, Glass and Corigliano win all manner of fancy schmansy awards for long works about Einstein and Nixon and so on. How clever. But just between us girls? The last real opera; the one that will last beyond the composer’s lifetime? That was probably written by someone of the era of Stravinsky or Debussy.

What I have always loved, even as a kid, was Broadway. The King And I. Oklahoma. West Side Story. The Music Man. And I further hadn’t realised that Broadway had evolved into something just as deep as Falstaff and just as complex as Siegfried. And as a bonus? It was immediately entertaining! It is the gesamtkunstwerk of the twenty century.

But as the years have gone on, I am having second thoughts about the relevance of Broadway. Frankly, I don’t enjoy most of what’s been done in the past twenty years. And I wonder if that is just the style of writing now (which seems tired and cliched) or if, as with opera, the medium itself has outlived it’s time of creativity.

I don’t have the answer yet, but I do know that there is an idea I have. And the idea is big and important to me. So I don’t want to put it out there; and devote so much of the time I have left; towards a medium that is not in the now. I don’t want a good idea to not reach it’s potential because it was held back by an outdated form.

I still believe in the gesamtkunstwerk. I used to believe that this was film. But now, as much as I love the cinema, I’ve realised that live singing, acting and dancing can project levels of emotion that simply cannot be reached on a screen–no matter how large. Sure you can overwhelm people with technical details in film, but you can’t get to the raw emotion and true subtlety of feeling for which live performance allows.

There’s a message I want to send. And I can see it reaching people through songs on a real stage. It’s not an opera, because that speaks to an aloofness that can’t reach down to where things are today. And I don’t know if it’s Broadway, because even Broadway has reached a place that takes itself far too seriously.

In short, how does one put something out that simply makes people feel without being constantly aware of (and distracted by) the ‘show’.

Now There’s A Guy Who Lost His Job

I wrote that line back in 1994 as a response to the then current downsizing of GM. Ten years later, that ended up on What A Wonderful World, one of the most popular songs from Superpower.

The guy who screams:

“I’m fifty one years old… Are you gonna pay these bills?”

Is my best family friend of that era. He worked at Clark Street (Cadillac) in Detroit and although he himself did not lose his job (well… at least not until he got leukemia) he was fifty one years old and it was easy to channel the proper emotions from his experience (and those of many Detroiters; the air literally reaked with the smell of a dying era.)

As the auto industry continues to die in America, I’m struck by how even more poignant the lyric is today. Sorry if that sounds conceited, but that was the right song at the wrong time. The thing I’ve noticed about that song is that it was never as popular with Detroit crowds as, say, an audience in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is something about Detroiters that is inherently optimistic… or at least… doesn’t want to hear anything that sounds like someone’s running down the city or it’s centrepiece industries.

That ‘pride’ (for lack of a better word) prevented the people from seeing the writing on the wall and doing something to re-make the city. There was always a lot of blaming and a lot of grand initiatives to kick-start (pun intended) the car companies but not even the workers could listen to a song like this and say, ‘Yeah, the car companies are crap. We must demand change. Part of it, of course, is that the workers were sucking from the same gas-guzzling teat as the politicians who screamed for ‘reform!’ so no one really wanted ‘change’. Actually, that was the last thing people wanted. What they wanted was a return to the good ol’ days of 70% market shares.

I have seen sailors exhaust themselves trying to bail a sinking boat. Seriously. When the smart thing to do would’ve been to abandon ship and swim for shore. But when you work so hard on something that can’t be saved you make it impossible to live to fight another day. And that’s how I now see Detroit. And perhaps…

The irony for me is that, in many ways, I now am the fifty one year old guy in What A Wonderful World. It’s been over two years since my hand-breaking-experience and I have probably played ten gigs since then; each one a little less nimble than the one before it. As I’ve commented before, people now illegally download my songs by an order of magnitude greater than they actually buy ‘em. I’m sure it’s the same for everybody out there. In the new razor and blades world of the music biz, one gives away the ‘content’ (razor) and makes money off of the performances (blades). Those of us who either cannot or will not subscribe to the new order of things are, in my current depressed view, a bit like Detroiters who are simply fighting a sinking boat and digging an ever deeper hole by so doing.

What to do, you ask? For Detroit… I really haven’t got a clue. If you’re above a certain age, you just milk what’s left. If you’re not, you tend to get out and thus make it harder for the next guy who’s left. Which means that those who are left are often those least able to do anything to better the situation.

For myself? I also don’t at this point, have a clue. I suppose the first thing to do is to stop trying to bail. Like those Elves in Lord Of The Rings, just grieve for the end of an age and get mentally prepared to move on. But where to? The guy in What A Wonderful World, blows his brains out in his garage (for some reason I envisioned this on the hood of a ’78 Trans Am with the full flame paint job; you know the one I’m talking about.) No thanks, pal. (Note to self, maybe ,that’s why the song never hit it big with audiences.) But unlike the Elves, I don’t have a Valinor to go off to as a respite from the woes of Middle Earth. I gotta figure out how to get back in the black right here, without the aids of CGI and a really cool British accent.

The question is: Is there a reasonable way to leverage what I’ve already done into a creative career that fits the current zeitgeist and makes some decent coin? GM thinks that it has what it takes to re-make itself as the company that makes Chevrolet Volts. If a company that has made as much pure crap as GM can do it? Hit it, Judy…

Why… oh… why… can’t… I?

Why I Like Opera But Not Metallica

…even though both are quite ‘operatic’.

When I was in school (way back in aught ’75) we all had to learn something about ‘opera’. But of course, it was all a big joke. I mean seriously: fat people trying to play ‘cinderella’; screaming in a way that no ‘normal’ person sings; with plots so ridiculous even Harlequin Romances wouldn’t publish ‘em. And they’re in… wait for it… eye-talian to boot!

And if that’s what I thought—someone who was trying to like that shi.. er ‘music’, heaven help the man in the street!

I now actually enjoy many of the classic operas, though no modern ones as of yet. And I think I’ve figured out why by watching some good ol’ Swedish Death Metal. In one phrase: alternative reality.

See what I couldn’t dig when I was 18 was that opera has to be appreciated strictly on it’s own terms. It’s an alternative world just as real as being inside ‘The Matrix’. You have to agree to it’s rules or it’s just no go. But once you do, once you stop judging it according to ‘the real world’ and surrender to life on this other plane, a different range of human experience opens up to you.

OK, now dig the average guy who goes to an average Swedish Death Metal concert. He dresses like Vincent Price on a bad day, and sings along to lyrics about exterminating… er… whatever it is they’re exterminating in that particular song. Lots of faux blood flows, many cow skulls get crushed and a good time is had by all.

Here’s the difference: The well-known operas are great art and Swedish Death Metal is crap.

See I thought opera was supposed to hit me the way it does Julia Roberts in that hooker movie… you know, she goes to her first opera and just starts bawling because there is something ‘ineffable’ about Puccini that gets to everyone with a heart. And I was wrong. Opera is not just about visceral emotion; in fact, that’s like the smallest part of it. And that’s why great opera will always be miles ahead of any entertainment that speaks only to the heart and not to the head.

Opera has to be in this alternative universe and the plots have to be what they are in order to get to a deeper truth. A Swedish Death Metal show, or for that matter any alternative reality, including video games like Quake or whatever don’t get ya there.

Why am I going on about this? Because ‘operatic’ has become synonymous with traits that are just not at the core of what opera is about; ‘operatic’ is about what people who don’t get opera think it’s about: overblown melodrama.

What turned it around for me? Ever have a thought that sticks with you for years? Well, something stuck in my head from a music history book I read way back in 1975. The anecdote was that a confused listener complained to the composer Gluck that his most current work was no good because, during an aria, the orchestra was playing an ominous theme while the soprano sang a happy melody over it. The listener demanded that since she was singing a happy song, the orchestra should also be playing a happy tune. Gluck explained it to him this way: ‘She is lying. It is the orchestra that is telling the truth!’ That stuck with me; that in opera you could have many psychological layers going on all at the same time in a way that no other art form (before film) could match. I still didn’t actually like Gluck, but the thought intrigued me and I kept trying occasionally to give a listen and then, one day, I found myself actually enjoying a bit of Pelleas Et Melisande.

The older I get the more I appreciate the message inside these pieces and how much work is incumbent on me to sample what they have to offer. It’s sort of the musical equivalent of a great mushroom hunt. Lots of work, but in the end, great reward. But first you have to learn to like mushrooms!

If you’re skeptical and new to opera, I hope you’ll check out my Links page for a couple of operas to get you started. They are not only great listening, but every one is like an advanced course in one aspect of human psychology.

Post Script: I want to touch briefly on why, for me, there has never been an modern opera in english that works. Or maybe there has been, but the ones I have heard, by Adams, Corigliano and all those minimalist guys just drive me nuts. I’m beginning to think that english is just not the language of opera. It may be that being fluent in the language prevents me from losing myself in the alternate world. Of course I’m not saying that Italians can’t appreciate Italian opera, but what I am saying is that there is something within the sound of Italian that sure helps.

I also think that, like other older art forms, opera should be left alone. Most modern operas, to me, seem like they would be far better off as Broadway Musicals. Back in the day, composers knew when to stop doing Concerti Grossi and start working on more ‘modern’ forms. Maybe it’s time to accept that shows like ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘West Side Story’ are the Twentieth Century’s great contribution to the Gesamkunstwerke and stop trying to make contemporaneous figures (eg. Nixon) sing arias like Don Giovanni.

Why am I on about ‘Opera’ at this juncture? Well there’s this little thing I’ve had in the back of my mind since I wrote the line… “I’m a guy who loves his job” back in 1994.