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CHAPTER ONE

I’ve always been a sprinter. That’s what I was good at. The short burst, one and done.

From home to first base. From our building to the corner. Around the corner to the grocery store. And back. I’ve always been a fast starter. Finishing was my problem. Take fourth grade, Field Day. With the lead going into the final forty of the hundred-yard dash, my legs suddenly got heavy, like I was running through a vat of mashed potatoes. It was all I could do to stagger across the finish line in last place without throwing up.

I decided not to race competitively after that. But, in the middle of my junior year in high school, when my mother told me she’d arranged for me to see my father for the first time since the divorce ten years before, I got all motivated to beef up my resume to impress him. So, I went out for the track team. On the day of the reunion, a week before our first meet of the season, my dad didn’t even make it halfway up the forty-seven steps to our apartment above Grossman’s stationery store in Brooklyn before he and my mom got into a fight. Boy those sounds took me back as I hid in my room. He wound up leaving without saying hello. Or goodbye.

At the track meet, it was Field Day all over again. Still reeling over my missed opportunity with my absent father, I nevertheless had the early lead before dropping back to prepare for my thrilling final kick. For an instant I felt my legs lifting off the ground, the ground disappearing, the competition disappearing. Until I started to consider the competition, my four teammates and five guys from Bay Ridge, their numbers flapping on their backs, their hair flapping in the breeze. All of them with their perfect families, bound for something, sprinting toward a solid future. Me? I felt like I was bound and gagged, crippled by fantasies of my disappearing old man, immobilized by fear of being trapped inside my mother’s life sprinting one step ahead of the latest landlord, one step behind her latest boyfriend. It was too late to make my move now. I had too much ground to make up. Too many obstacles to overcome. There just wasn’t time. I slowed to a walk, crossed the finish line in last place, hands on hips, breathless.

Coach Bern got right in my face. He was short and fat. I could smell the meatballs on his breath. I could see the hair on his bulging stomach above his sweatpants. “What were you doing out there, Meyer, daydreaming?”

He didn’t really want an answer, so I didn’t give him one. “We’re going to have to do some serious thinking about your place on this team,” he sputtered.

As Coach Bern was going on and on about my lack of commitment, conditioning, will, guts, desire, and whatever else you were supposed to have to compete, I had an unsettling realization. The Coach was right. I had no idea what it took to compete. How to compete was something you learned from your father. How to compete, how to fight, how to swear in eight languages. My father left when I was six. If he’d have shown up again, he’d have brought me to his office, taken me to a wrestling match, bought me an hour with a hooker for my sixteenth birthday. Instead I learned from my mother. How to quit. How to argue. How to feel sorry for myself in eight languages.

As I pushed back any further thoughts of my family, I could hear Coach Bern still yelling. “For the rest of the season I want you out here at 6:00 AM. I want you working your tail off. Working on your technique, your endurance. You got that? The Flying Wombats don’t have the luxury of carrying a loser.”

In the midst of this harangue, a delightful thought struck me. Since team members were excused from gym, and I was taking only four major subjects, if I quit the team, all I had to do was ditch study hall and skip lunch, and I could be out of the building by 11:20 for the rest of the semester. Probably the only kid in the history of the former girls’ House of Detention to escape so early in the day. I knew I could use the time more profitably on my own than in school anyway. My fantasy baseball league draft was coming up. I had a bunch of classic TV shows and movies to catch up on. I needed to organize my comic books and video games and DVDs by title, genre, condition. By the time the coach got around to notifying anyone I was no longer on the team, junior year would be over.

“What the hell are you smiling about, Meyer?”

“Who, me? Nothing.”

 I didn’t want to get all overjoyed or anything, but this might have been the high point of my entire high school career.

The second highest point of my high school career occurred a couple of weeks later, when I slipped into my seat in the back of my 4^th period English class ten minutes late. Unnoticed, or so I thought. “Well, well, well,” said Mrs. Duffy, “look who decided to show up today, hiding in the back as usual?” she barked. “It’s ‘The Invisible Man.’”

While this wasn’t the nickname I’d been searching for all my life, it certainly could have resulted from a meeting between Mrs. Duffy and Coach Bern. Or my casual relationship to school. But I had a feeling it was Duffy’s sneaky way of commenting on my Midterm essay, which concerned the most unforgettable character in my neighborhood. With an advanced sense of the absurd, I had written about the great escape artist Sol Houdini, as if he were our garbage collector. Mrs. Duffy had considered my fine work “just plain stupid” and awarded me three out of possible thirty points.  

(As far as hiding in the back, I could have reminded her–but hadn’t so far–that she’d assigned that seat to me herself.)

The climactic moment of the morning occurred when I found myself slowly rising from my desk. “This Invisible Man you’re always comparing to my personality,” I said in a seriously deep accent out of Darth Vader in Star Wars. “Would that be Claude Rains in the original 1933 edition of the movie? Or perhaps David McCallum in the 1975 television remake of the British TV series based on the film?”

 Not used to hearing my voice on any sort of regular basis, and in fact never have heard it sounding like Darth Vader in Star Wars, she had to run her finger down the seating chart to see who was calling out so melodiously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Meyer.”

An encouraging undercurrent of revolutionary giggles prodded me onward. “I sincerely hope it’s not Chevy Chase in the unfortunate Memoirs of an Invisible Man from 2000.”  

 “Are you quite through?” she said, wielding her ruler like a saber. Her nun’s reproving glare and witchy trigger fingers also quelled any potential class-wide uprising.    

“Yes, I am. I will now take my seat, the seat that you yourself assigned me,” I said, switching into a film noir voice of a frustrated, down at the heels detective, and compressing all my rage into the last four italicized words.

This release of anger was perhaps the second-best moment of my high school career, and worth every minute of the half hour I had to spend in the dean’s office.

I was planning to see Dean Phelps anyway, over his concerns about my grades, to say nothing of my disastrous SATs. “You’re so much better than this,” he said with a kindly smile.

“Chance Meyer,” I reminded him, thinking he had surely mistaken me for someone else.

He ran his hand through his thinning gray hair as he glanced at my pathetic stats. “With these numbers, you’re going to have to really knuckle down if you have any hopes of getting into college. And, frankly, acting out like you did in class today will not help your case.”

“I don’t think I’ll need college,” I replied, as if I’d given the matter more than five minutes of thought. “I’m planning to ship out.”

Phelps nodded. “That could be a good idea.”

“With the Norwegian Cruise Line as a singing busboy.”

If I’d had a mic in my hand, I’d have dropped it on his desk. Nevertheless, Phelps’ sense of humor was no better developed than Mrs. Duffy’s. He suggested I think about my actions and my attitude for several more hours during my stay in detention after school.  Presided over, of course, by Mrs. Duffy.

As much as I was delighted to say goodbye to my junior year, 72 average and all, I was equally thrilled to put sixteen in my rear-view mirror. But shortly before that cursed anniversary in the middle of August, I got a registered letter in the mail that would claimed it could change everything. It was from someplace called the Edelman Institute of Experimental Instruction in Overreach, Long Island (The E.I.E.I.O.) Apparently, I’d been recommended for their top secret experimental three-day program for underachievers by good old Mr. Phelps. Having been assured of my vast potential by Phelps, they were prepared to offer me an all-expense paid scholarship to take the course, which was held on the campus of Eastern Long Island State College the last week in August. The seminar sounded just about as exciting as watching a documentary on the lost tribes of Abyssinia. But I wasn’t about to pass up a free weekend at Eastern Long Island State, which had a reputation as the area’s number one party school. 

“If it’s too good to be true, then it probably isn’t,” my mother reminded me about the   scholarship. I preferred to keep the rumors of all-night parties to myself. 

Just before I was to leave, we got another registered letter. This one was from one of my ex-uncles, informing my mother that my father had been shot and killed by burglars at the vacation home he’d just finished building in Guadalajara.

“I’ll believe it when I see the death certificate,” Mom said, thinking it was just a clever ruse to get out of renegotiating the alimony and child support settlement she’d been grinding on for years.

Knowing the guy’s habit of disappearing, I found her reaction perfectly plausible.  But I also knew, for one thing, if he was really dead then it meant my dream of the better life he represented was now hinging on whatever was supposed to happen at the Edelman Institute.

A songwriter can spend twenty minutes telling you where the coffee shop used to be before saying one useful thing about the bridge in a song. That is not a failure of the interview. It is often the interview. If you want to know how to interview songwriters, begin with this understanding: songs do not arrive alone. They come out of rooms, relationships, record deals, bad landlords, lucky accidents, touring bands, and the particular pressures of a Tuesday afternoon.

The job is not to pry a tidy explanation out of an artist and pin it beneath the song title. The job is to create enough trust, and bring enough preparation, that the songwriter can remember the working life around the song. A good interview preserves the mystery while making the craft visible.

Start With the Song, Not the Legend

Songwriters are routinely asked where they get their ideas. It is a polite question and nearly always a dead end. The answer tends to be a shrug, a joke, or a well-rehearsed bit of mythology. Better to arrive with a particular song in mind and a reason for asking about it.

Do not say, “Tell me about Sweet Baby James.” Ask about the unhurried motion of the lyric, the landscape in the opening lines, or the way James Taylor’s vocal seems to speak before it begins to sing. You are not showing off. You are demonstrating that you listened past the radio.

Specificity gives a songwriter something solid to push against. They may correct your premise. Good. They may say the line you thought was autobiographical was borrowed from a newspaper clipping, or that the melody existed years before the lyric. Better still. Interviews get interesting when the prepared question meets the inconvenient fact.

A useful opening question often contains an observation rather than a verdict: “That chorus sounds as if it releases pressure built up in the verse. Did you write the two sections at the same time?” It invites process, not self-congratulation.

Do the Homework That Lets You Improvise

The best preparation is broad enough to provide context and narrow enough to yield questions. Listen to the relevant recordings repeatedly, preferably in sequence. Read the album credits. Find the original release date, the producer, the musicians, the publisher, and the artist’s position at that moment. Was this a debut with no commercial expectations? A follow-up made under pressure? A song written for someone else and reclaimed later?

For a writer from the Greenwich Village folk circuit, knowing which clubs were active in a given year can matter as much as knowing the chart position. For a Brill Building veteran, the publishing company, staff producer, and deadline may be central to the story. A songwriter emerging from punk may have written against the assumptions of the preceding generation. Context changes the question.

Avoid treating old interviews as gospel. They are useful for locating recurring stories, contradictions, and subjects the artist has plainly grown tired of discussing. If a songwriter has explained the origin of a hit a hundred times, do not make them explain it a hundred and first unless you can bring a fresh angle. Ask what the familiar story leaves out.

Preparation should also include listening for the writer’s vocabulary. Some speak in musical terms – key changes, meter, harmonic movement. Others think in images, characters, or the sound of words in the mouth. Meet them where they work. Asking Leonard Cohen to diagram a chord progression would not necessarily get you closer to Leonard Cohen.

Ask About Decisions, Not Just Inspiration

The most revealing questions concern choices. Inspiration is elusive and sometimes private. Decisions are tangible. Why did the narrator become a woman? Why was the title held back until the last line? Why did the song end before resolving? Why did a writer replace a plainspoken phrase with one that cuts at an angle?

These questions honor songwriting as labor. They also make room for the useful answer: “I don’t know.” A writer may not know why a line works, but they may recall that it was the third line written, that the band hated it, or that it survived because the singer could not bear to lose it.

Ask about revision. American popular music is full of songs that sound inevitable only because somebody discarded the obvious first version. Laura Nyro’s work, for instance, can feel like it sprang forth in a single ecstatic rush. Yet the arrangements, harmonic turns, and syllabic precision suggest an exacting ear. The question is not whether a song was spontaneous or crafted. It can be both. Ask where instinct ended and editing began.

Also ask how the writer heard the song before anyone else did. Was it a lyric on paper, a bass figure, a title, a vocal phrase, or a guitar tuning? The answer tells you something essential about a songwriter’s internal workshop.

Let the Conversation Follow the Side Road

A prepared list is insurance, not a script. The songwriter may mention a discarded verse, an engineer’s suggestion, a late-night phone call from a publisher, or a singer who changed the emotional temperature of the material. Follow that lead.

This is where interviews become records of culture rather than promotional transactions. A casual mention of a room on West Fourth Street can open onto a vanished community of writers, managers, players, and hangers-on. A remark about a two-song single can explain an entire record company’s idea of commercial music. The side road is often where the history is hiding.

Still, do not confuse wandering with depth. If the conversation has drifted far from the song, gently return. “You said the band changed the tempo. What did that do to the lyric?” That small act of editorial discipline can turn a colorful anecdote into an insight about craft.

Silence is part of the technique. Ask the question, then wait. Journalists sometimes rush to fill a pause because they fear the tape has gone cold. But a songwriter may be searching for a memory, or deciding whether the truthful answer is safe to give. A few quiet seconds can be more productive than another question.

Respect the Difference Between Privacy and Evasion

Songwriters trade in emotional material, but they do not owe an interviewer a complete inventory of their private lives. A song may clearly grow out of divorce, grief, addiction, betrayal, or a family wound. That does not make the writer’s personal history public property.

Frame sensitive questions around the work whenever possible. Instead of demanding identification of the person behind a song, ask what it required to turn a private experience into a lyric that strangers could inhabit. The answer may still be personal, but it gives the artist control over the boundary.

There is a trade-off here. Push too hard and you get a guarded performance. Tiptoe around every difficult subject and you get publicity copy. The answer depends on the relationship, the setting, the artist’s history, and whether the question truly serves the reader. Curiosity is necessary. Entitlement is not.

Get the Facts Right Before You Get Clever

Nothing closes a conversation faster than a wrong date, a misidentified collaborator, or a question based on a lyric the songwriter did not write. Credit matters. In popular music, the public often assigns authorship to the person who sang the hit, while the actual story may involve a writing partner, an arranger, a producer, or a publisher with a contractual claim.

Confirm titles, dates, personnel, and songwriting splits before the interview. If the artist corrects you, accept it cleanly. Do not litigate your research in the room. Later, check the correction against reliable sources and, when needed, follow up.

Be especially alert to the gap between authorship and ownership. A songwriter may have written a song in a modest apartment, signed it away in a publishing deal, and heard it become a standard in someone else’s hands. That is not merely business background. It can shape every answer about the song’s meaning.

End on a Question Worth Carrying Away

The final question should not be a throwaway request for advice to young writers. Ask something that gives the artist room to place the song in a longer life: whether the song changed after years of performing it, what another singer revealed in it, or whether they still recognize the person who wrote it.

Then listen to the answer without scrambling for a neat ending. A songwriter’s best response may be unfinished, qualified, even contradictory. That is usually closer to the truth than the polished anecdote.

The useful interview is not the one that explains away a great song. It is the one that leaves the reader hearing it again – with the room, the struggle, the choices, and the human voice behind it newly present.

T