Let me start off by saying that not all musicians are egotistical maniacs. Having gotten that out of the way, this article is kind of a life story, if you will, of my experiences with other musicians. Obviously, having been in this business for over 35 years, I can’t cover all my experiences but I am going to touch on what were the main ones for me. If nothing else, I hope you find this article amusing. No real names will be used in this article in order to protect the innocent and the guilty.
My first experience with another musician was back in 1979 with my friend Rory. Rory was a guitarist. He played mostly acoustic but did have an electric as well. In fact, he had an acoustic 6 string, 12 string and an electric. He was a fairly decent guitarist, if not great. Of course none of us were great back in 1979.
I wanted to write songs. Rory was up for that. So we attempted to write songs together. It turned into an absolute disaster. Why? Simple. Our musical styles were so drastically different that we just didn’t gel together. We tried for years to make this work but we never really could. His best songs he wrote himself and my best songs I wrote myself. It was during this relationship that I realized that collaboration was a very difficult thing to pull off because of musical differences.
My second musical experience was with my friend Will. This was in the early 80s. Will played drums and played them like a beast. He was an amazing drummer. He then took up the piano and he was a natural. He could also sing very well. In short, Will had talent to burn. In fact, he was much more talented than I was or will probably ever be. That’s what made our relationship musically so difficult. Had I been at a similar skill level, we might have actually done some amazing stuff together. After a while we kind of drifted apart. It was inevitable.
At this time I was pretty much kind of done with musicians. Not that I had anything against them. I just realized how difficult it was for two people to have enough in common for their talents to gel together. So I stopped looking for musicians and started looking for lyricists. Why? Well, because I knew that my lyrics just plain sucked.
This search for a lyricist was a painful one. A friend of mine who I had known since childhood wrote lyrics for me but quite honestly, they weren’t all that good. Some were downright awful. Of course my music wasn’t anything to write home about either. Point is, I found I had trouble writing music to other people’s lyrics. This was probably because I would usually write the music first and then write lyrics to the music. I had never done it the other way around and discovered it was a very different and, for me, difficult process. This probably explains why all my subsequent collaborations with lyricists over the years were such disasters.
Except for one.
At my last job just before the turn of the century, there was a girl who I worked with who wrote some very inspiring lyrics. They lead to a song called “Dangerous Games” which is probably one of my better tunes at that point in time. I had hope that maybe someday I would be able to collaborate with another person and do something really special.
What was probably the most frustrating part of collaborating with other musicians was the disparity in skill level. I never seemed to find somebody who was at my own level.
For example. I met this one guy, we’ll call him Joe, who wanted to collaborate with me. He said he had this great idea for a song. I said, cool. Can you play it for me? He said he would sing it for me. I said, cool. He started singing.
What followed is still, to this day, so hard to describe that I don’t even know where to begin. Imagine taking a slow ballad and playing it at 1/4 speed and removing all sense of tonality from it. That’s what came out of his mouth. It was beyond dreadful. This was somebody with zero talent. None. To this day (it’s at least 30 years later) I have never forgotten that encounter.
Then there was this guy who my mother knew. He was a teacher at the school where she was an itinerant pianist. We’ll call him John. John was so talented it was scary. I still have his recordings here somewhere. Well, no surprise. He was, after all, a music teacher. He knew his stuff. Played rings around me and wrote some very catchy tunes. There was just no way I was in his league and could ever hope to do anything with him. I didn’t even ask.
And this went on continuously. I could never find somebody who was right where I was musically. I’ve since given up looking. It has been about 14 years since I’ve collaborated with anybody and probably never will for as long as I live. In fact, I am amazed at all the groups out there who have made it big. How did they ever find a room full of people who actually complimented each other? It still boggles my mind.
Would I love to collaborate with somebody and produce something really special? Of course I would. I mean working alone is okay, but to share something with somebody else. To create something with somebody else. That’s special. Look at what Lennon and McCartney did. Granted, there aren’t a lot of Lennon and McCartney duos in the world, but still, it IS possible.
I don’t know what the future holds. Maybe my dream of working with another person and becoming successful because of it will someday come true. Until then, I’ll just keep cranking out my royalty free music and working on my dance tracks and see what happens.
For whatever it’s worth, it’s been an interesting ride.
And it ain’t over yet.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim