I’ve been playing with words and music for a long time. I think it’s safe to relate now that in my first job I used a lot of Office Memorandum sheets to write terrible poetry. Well … I guess it wasn’t all bad, else I would probably still be working in a large government department and wearing sleeveless v-neck sweaters. Every day I would write bits of doggerel and deep thoughts in a variety of forms and meters. It’s sweet to look back on some of it, but only some.
Of course, I gradually built the skills I needed to become a songwriter and performer. For anyone out there who thinks you need to be born with some sort of talent to write songs, to sing, to play … that’s bullshit. The worst kind of bullshit, actually: it’s marketing bullshit, built by PR folk to bolster the mystique of the latest hot new thing with knife-sharp cheekbones and a wild inability to identify irony when they see it. No, that’s not a dig at Jagged Little Pill.
I used to come home from a tedious day at work and spend an hour or two every single day re-recording vocals on my Tascam reel-to-reel 4-track. I had maybe six songs that I thought were strong enough to be on my first demo tape. Gradually I learned to sing vaguely in tune. Slowly I learned how to sing before or after the beat, how to phrase. At this early stage, when I was 18 or 19, I really didn’t have much of a range but I was teaching myself how to deliver a lyric with conviction. At least my guitar playing wasn’t too bad, and I was definitely learning how to use limited technology to get remarkably good outcomes.
I still have those recordings, and I still have a lot of that bad poetry. Why? Why not just erase all that amateurish tripe? Every now and then I think about getting rid of it, turning it into myth rather than actual flawed recordings. It wouldn’t be right though. I definitely don’t have fantasies that there’ll be a touring adeyjordan exhibition after I fall off the perch, but while I’m here it reminds me how far I’ve come.
It also reminds me how massively dedicated that young guy was. Re-recording the vocals for the same songs time after time for months is not for the faint of heart. Rather than acknowledging that I was shit night after night, I convinced myself that I was improving. That this was the journey to greatness, this … persistence in the face of failure.
And y’know, it kinda was the journey to greatness, because it turns out that you need acres and acres of willpower, staying power, persistence, doggedness to achieve any sort of success.
Even when that success is purely the self-belief that you’re achieving something worthwhile. I may not have an army of listeners, but I know when I create listenable music. Even then, I don’t judge its merits against any industry yardstick, I just know that I’ve created something that makes me happy. There’s no greater feeling.