They say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It appears to be true of writers, even aspirant, spasmodic, lazy and confidence-lacking ones like your correspondent. I may have made myself ready by sitting down a couple of weeks ago with a notepad to write 20 verses to a new song-in-potential and completing the exercise. This morning a prompting made me get up in time to pick up the notebook and write another page or two for a different song-in-potential, of a different calibre altogether, one where I feel for once I have something to say.
From a songwriting point of view I find the most powerful injunction, the one that makes the difference between writing that is fluent and free and the normal experience of sweat-and-struggle is Forget about rhyme. Rhyme can become, if you like, part of the post-production or editing.
In my earlier days however it was a driver and, more than that, a source of creativity. It would juxtapose elements my logical mind would never have juxtaposed. I occasionally – only occasionally – came clean about it, as when a friend asked about an image he found striking but unpleasant in the little-heard song Portobello Slam: ‘Why did you say the shot missed and killed a swan? It’s a great image – red blood on pure white and all that, but why a swan?.’ Me, in a rare fit of honesty: ‘It rhymed with gone.’
OK since you asked, here’s the whole song:
The Portobello
Slam
The sun was there for once this year
The grass was dry as ash
The bookies were disturbed by this
And the share price took a bash
And Liam from the Borders
With his cronies in the van
Was facing Jessie from
Kilmarnock
In the Portobello Slam
The crowd were at each others throats
They didn’t like the sun
Jessie put her helmet on
And promised them some fun
Now from up the wicker tower
She gave the scene a scan
Said she’d break some records, break some
heads
At the Portobello Slam
Play commenced at midday
With a roar of cheap machines
Liam’s team were cracking
And they left some bloody scenes
The
Aberdeen
Reprisals
Took the left arm off a man
Left it sticking upright in the ground
At the Portobello Slam
Liam looked across the field
The referees were gone
He aimed a ball at Jessie’s head
But missed and killed a swan
Thirteen points deducted
And a lifetime’s cocaine ban
He put a contract on the judge
Of the Portobello Slam
Some kid behind the Canons Gait stand
Held a mirror to the sun
Then dropped it by a pile of grass
Till the orgy round was done
Then Liam saw the wall of flame
And set off the alarm
And caused the biggest ever stampede
At the Portobello Slam
As the players scattered in the crowd
Jessie saw her chance
Hoisted Liam on a rope
And said ‘That’s the loser’s dance’
But that was the last we saw of her
As the firemen broke the dam
And swept away the evidence
Of the Portobello Slam
It’s a shame it couldn’t wait till next
year
It would’ve been live on Sky
It’ll still make the history books
Two hundred people died
Me I’m gonna take a photograph
To get the feeling of where I am
Norman Lamont, News at 10
At the Portobello Slam
Copyright and all rights reserved Norman Lamont