Crafting a Novel with a Songwriter’s Soul
By Gary Burr
A songwriter wrote a book? That’s not unusual. The songwriter wrote a book that is NOT about songwriting? Well, that’s a little crazier but we all seem to be holding onto our hats. Wait. It’s not an autobiography? Now you are flat out talking crazy.
Maybe it’s because I’m not that interesting. I mean, yes…I am in the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and I have written fourteen number one songs…but I am a member of an industry that lives in the parenthesis. When you pick up a record, you have to squint very hard to see our names under the song titles. You have no idea who we are. That’s okay. The checks clear.
So what did I have the nerve to write? A novel. That’s right. About what, you inevitably ask? I have two big areas of interest.
Seinfeld and The Beatles.
I knew that, if I wanted to write a book, it would have to be about one of those two things.
Unfortunately, I realized I do not actually KNOW Jerry. I don’t even know Newman (though I met him in the green room of a TV show once. Very nice. We took a picture together. I have it here somewhere).
But I DO know a Beatle. I may be one of only a handful of people who have ever seen Ringo Starr in a Speedo.
I started to work with Ringo when he was promoting Vertical Man, his 1998 release. We apparently hit it off, since it is now almost twenty years later and we are still working together, writing and recording songs.
My book is titled “Reunion.” It’s a rock and roll fairy tale in which a twist of fate keeps John and his assassin apart and twenty years later a SECOND twist leads Paul McCartney to pick up the phone and ask the lads to get back together to “put on a show.”
My favorite part of the book was having Paul insist that he and John sit down and write a song together. Like the old days. Lennon and McCartney, knee to knee.
That’s a world I know a lot about. The nervousness. The dumb ideas you have to blurt out in order to clear the way for the good ideas to hopefully follow. The flashes of inspiration. The empty paper slowly filling up with words and phrases that, for the life of you, you can’t remember how they got there.
I wrote that song. Why not? I’m a professional songwriter, right? So I wrote the song that my “Reunion” John and Paul sit down and fictionally write.
I’ve been ripping them off in my writing for forty years. NOW I’m suppose to stop?
The song is called “Peace and Love”. “That’s kind of our motto, isn’t it? Paul says to John in Chapter I Can’t Remember. I reminded myself to “think Beatle thoughts” (very Peter Pan) as I recorded the basic instruments to a click track. I brought in a great electric guitar player to play some George Harrison slide guitar on it.
Then, just for a little icing on the cake…
I had Ringo play drums on it.
So there it is, on a page that follows the “The End”. A QR code that lets you download and listen to “Peace and Love.”
I have had a lovely career telling stories in four minutes or less. This story takes 300 words in fifty seven chapters. And I had to write a four minute song on top of it! But it was a true work of joy.
Readers are telling me “Reunion” (I have been told to say the title as often as possible) made them remember what Beatlemania felt like.
I wrote this one because there was a pandemic and I don’t like writing over Zoom. The technology did not allow me to tell my co-writer how wrong THEY are and how brilliant I am.
I may write another book. I don’t know.
Anyone have Seinfeld’s number?
