Friday, April 17, 2015

Love Somebody!






Love Somebody started its life as a rather dodgy albeit well-intentioned and affectionate Bob Dylan parody. Purely for my own amusement, I'd strapped on my acoustic, slipped a harmonica holder around my neck and barked out "You don't need a therapist to show you how to love somebody; don't need to be a poet or evangelist to love somebody true" in my best Bob impression.

Like most Dylan impressions out there, mine isn't very good and it soon had the dogs suitably howling and running for cover, but I was quite enjoying myself and continued the stream of consciousness warbling undeterred. Before I knew it, the lines, "You don't need to be a Beatle or Bee Gee to love somebody; you don't need permission just to let it be" popped out and although I was amused by the silly impudence of it all, I also wondered if I hadn't stumbled on something that I could use.

On my Away For The Day CD, I'd done something similar with a Syd Barrett-style goof that eventually became the song, Bright Side Of The Moon, so I wondered if this too might have the germ of a decent song beneath the goofiness.

So, I turned on my recorder to capture a hastily recorded snippet for future reference and went about my business. In this case, my business was coaxing the dogs out from beneath the furniture.

Upon subsequent review, I discovered that the lyrics and melody sat quite well with me and set about fleshing it out a bit. I set up a repeating drum machine pattern to play along to so that I could find more of a groove for the song and it fell into place quite quickly. To avoid running afoul of the local neighborhood association (and possibly the SPCA), I dropped the mad, affected Zim-like vocal sneer and wailing harmonica and sang it straight, so to speak.

A bridge section and some harmony parts later, it was starting to sound quite promising to my ears. So, I had Ed come over with his trusty Epiphone Casino and we went out to my old garage apartment where he deftly added some lovely electric guitar parts. From there it was sent to Dave Mattacks at his home in Massachusetts where he promptly gave the song the feel and groove it needed. A bass track and a little dollop of orchestration to taste (again, courtesy of Ed) and Bob's your uncle!