Songwriters on Songwriting: Bruce Hornsby
“In hindsight, everyone said, ‘Oh, I know that it would be a hit.’ But they didn’t — they said it was a B-side if anything.”
“In hindsight, everyone said, ‘Oh, I know that it would be a hit.’ But they didn’t — they said it was a B-side if anything.”
I wrote my first song when I was 14 years old. Over the years, I’ve composed hundreds of songs. It was that interest — music — that led me to take a year off from pursuing a doctorate and led me down the circuitous path that has been the rest of my life.
I don’t write songs much nowadays, more focused on screenplays and writing about writing, but I can’t help but think at least some of who I am as a writer derives from all that time studying and composing songs.
Which is why I say that one of my favorite ‘screenwriting’ books is “Songwriters on Songwriting,” a collection of interviews by Paul Zollo with some of the great songwriters of our time, from Mose Allison to Frank Zappa. For what are songs but stories?
Each day this week at this time, I will post insights from a songwriter about their craft in the hope their words may inspire us as writers.
Today: Bruce Hornsby.
Do you recall writing “The Way It Is”?
Yes. I had the lyrics first with that one. Inspired by intolerance and the narrow-mindedness of the small town I grew up in.
My memory of that is a little hazy. I wrote it in the fall of 1985 in my garage in Van Nuys. Little tract home on Heartland Street, every house looks the same. Could see the golden arches from our house. I’d write and put things down on cassette. I had this song I was working on called “The Way It Is.” I put it down on cassette and felt really good about this song. I really liked it. I never had any notion that it would be a hit or anything. I had never played any of these work tapes for anybody. But I brought the tape into the house for my wife to hear, and said, ‘Hey, Kathy — listen to this.’
I played her this tape, and she listened to it, and all she said afterward was, ‘That’s pretty funny.’ Pretty funny? What a reaction. It was just something perfunctory for her to say to have something to say. And that lack of enthusiasm and saying that inexplicable statement sent me into months of self-doubt about the song. I thought that maybe it was nothing. Because you’re writing it but you don’t really know. It took me three or four months to recover from that and come around to the other side of thinking it was good. And then I ended up recording it for a demo that ended up getting me signed. So that’s a good example of this whole fragile emotional and psychological mindset that is songwriting and presenting your songs in public.
Did she ever revise her opinion of that song?
Well, sure, after it was a hit, which is pretty easy. In hindsight, everyone said, ‘Oh, I know that it would be a hit.’ But they didn’t — they said it was a B-side if anything.
Writers live with critiques. We do it to ourselves with every line we write. Page after page, draft after draft. Then after assembling what we think is a serviceable story, we screw up our courage and offer our creative effort for public review.
Have you ever heard that saying: Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.
So the trick is not to get opinions, but sound opinions, informed opinions.
In this respect, I would humbly suggest, unless your spouse or significant other is a writer, they are unlikely to fit the bill. Plus, there’s the whole “I gotta live with this guy/gal” dynamic, so there’s a good chance they’ll hedge their bets. Or drop some “perfunctory” comment like “That’s pretty funny.”
Now if you’ve written comedy, that reaction takes on a whole different meaning, but better to seek out professional writers or readers to give you an informed take on your material.
Thankfully, Hornsby came around to see “The Way It Is” for what it is: A great song.
I have a special connection to this song for a few reasons. First, as I was driving around California in 1986, going from stand-up comedy gig to gig, I listened to certain songs over and over and over again, this being one of them. I associate it with K-9 because that’s how I broke the story: Talking it out into a cheap cassette recorder as I drove up The 5 and down The 101. Work the story. Listen to music. Work the story. Listen to music. Hours on end. Second, I met Bruce Hornsby and his brother at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival a few years later. Bruce is a big UVA basketball fan and as I got my degree there, we talked a good bit of hoops. Funny to think about all those times listening to his music in my beat-up Ford, then watching his set at Telluride from backstage.
How about you? Any favorite Bruce Hornsby songs? Associations with “The Way It Is”? Thoughts on whether your loved one should critique your writing?
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