A Word on Words; 4006; Ralph Murphy

And now, from Nashville Public Television's StudioA, celebrating authors, literature and ideas, for more than three decades, this is A Word on Words with John Siganthor. Hello, I'm John Siganthor and welcome once again to A Word on Words. My guest today is Ralph Murphy. Ralph began his career in music at the age of 14 as a singer. He went on to be an accomplished record producer and is also a very successful songwriter who's consistently charted songs over five decades. He's been a vice-president with ASCAP and currently Murphy Music is a consultant for ASCAP. He fights to protect the rights of songwriters and he's here today to talk about his book,

Murphy's Laws of Songwriting, the Ultimate Guide to Writing a Hit Song. Don Schlitz, the Grammy award-winning songwriter, has said that Ralph has taught us, and I mean by this countless grateful students, and he still loves the art, the craft, and the process. And he's taken the time to write it down now. Lucky for us, Don said. And lucky for me, he joins me here today. Welcome to A Word on Words, Ralph. Good to be here, John. It's great to have you to talk about something that so many people take for granted. I mean, you turn it on the radio. You're in the car, music floods you, surroundings, and either you like it or you don't like it. Maybe it's the singer or you like it, don't like it. You know, so seldom we put our minds to the person who put it down to begin with. And you've taught so many in this country and around the world.

And now you've written it. Yeah, I basically, the book, Murphy's Office of Songwriting, it is called the book because every lecture, someone would say, when you're going to write the book, it was the burning question, the book, the book, when's the book coming? So when I finish the book, they say, what are you going to call it, the book? It's a manual for the 21st century. For those of us who are, because all songwriters are pretty monumentally dysfunctional. And if they never, they are. And if they never make a living doing what they love doing, they somehow feel cheated, they feel thwarted by life. And the book really deals with the areas that you could actually make a living. And the major area for making a living is drive time. That's what we've been confined to. And that's what you say in the book, that if you're writing a song, think about that audience that's out there on the other side of the book. Every song that we fell in love with when we were growing up was about us.

The writer, the creator of that work gave us us as they saw you, saw us. So therefore, when you choose to be a writer, your job is to give the listener themselves as you see them. Not to give them you. Get over that. The three things every writer feels they have a mandate to do when they discover this wonderful gift of creation is wine, preach, and vent. The last three things I want to hear coming out of my speaker is some of whining, preaching, venting, unless they do with humor, irony, and detail. Detail detail. Let me take you from the front of the book to the back of the book. Somewhere very closely in, you say to the songwriter, take steps to fight to protect the art of songwriting. And it is an art that's under attack, under theft now. Before we go into some of the details of the art itself, talk a little bit about, you

know, a whole generation of young people have grown up thinking they're entitled free. And you know, that means the person who's writing this song and putting it is all his creativity, sweat, and blood. That's nothing if it's so long. Exactly. There are several things you've got to remember. First of all, when you hear a song publicly performed, someone is making money by performing it. Okay? No matter where you go, and people will say, oh, the dentist's office and the grocery store and the elevator and whatever, wrong. In the late 20s, when they ran out of land in Chicago and they had to go up with buildings above six stories, they had to have elevators. Well, elevators would traditionally crash and kill everyone once a year, just like a wonderful story in the book about it. Yeah.

Well, so Mr. Otis came along and invented a thing called a self-locking elevator. Soon as the cables broke, little hooks would go in, everybody could write up now safe. The problem was because historically, it would crash and kill everyone, no one would got on it. So, he went away, thought about it, and he went away, got a little speaker and put it there, played this very calming music, so as the door is closed, everyone relaxed and the elevator went up and down. Mr. Otis got rich. I was at the dentist the other day, and I was listening to the beats per second, or beats per minute, on the radio, it was like 60 to 70 beats per minute, very calming music, and then they drilled my face off. Walmart had its own radio station, and what it did, it chose material that would resonate with the people that it stuck the shelves for. And also contained them at 70 to 90 beats per minute, so they would amble through it, control the way they moved. If you're dancing, 120 beats per minute is the absolute perfect beat. If you're looking at, say, Lady Gaga or Beyonce, they're working 120 beats per minute.

There were four singles last year that were dance singles, the 29 number ones last year. Four of them were dance singles, and guess what they were, 120 beats per minute. The biggest consumed music is 60 beats per minute, but see, that's where the no money is. What, where are you going to make money as a creator, unless you're writing scripts for you to be you, to your constituents at 10 o'clock at night, you're going to have to get on radio, especially if you're dealing with a country, it takes about 14 to 18 weeks to grow to number one, sometimes 28 to 32 if you're really lucky and it moves slowly. Well, the listener becomes aware of it over five to seven listens. And if it doesn't speak to them, about them, or a situation they heavily identify with, they don't like it, and 90% of the time that listener is going to be a woman. Now, I don't know whether you'd notice that you probably have, because you're a wise man,

but women hear differently than men's feet. Well, and you say that in the book too, I must say. So, let's just, you know, this book makes it clear, you know, it's not easy, it's tough work, you have to analyze it, but if there's no payday at the end of the road, I mean, the song is published, it's recorded, it's played, and people who used to buy albums and used to buy singles, and now, a new generation of those people simply takes it down and takes it away, and the songwriters, your students get zipped. Well, they do, unless they follow the dollar, quote-unquote, if they go to film, television, I've got a young man who's working on a Nickelodeon theme stuff, and doing some stuff with Disney.

I've got some others doing video games, writing for film and television. There are loads of areas that you can still make money when you're pursuing your craft, but again, as I say, craft, because you have to treat it like a craft, you say, what are the needs? Where can I make money, and where can I be validated as a human being with my craft? You know, the theft is as real as if you stole my purse. Exactly. Are held a gun and run my cash drawer. The theft is just that real, but nobody gets prosecuted, and very few get sued. No. It's a sense of entitlement, and I don't know whether you've been watching the, of course, I imagine you have, what's going on in London, and that's really, those riots are really about sneakers and cell phones and TV sets. There's no moral outrage. There really isn't. There's a lot of things going on there. Well, there's a sense of entitlement. I remember when FM Radio came along, and I remember listening to it and saying, OK, tonight

we've got the new Led Zeppelin album, Get Your Cassettes Ready, and they would play it uninterrupted on radio. So theft has always been there, it's always been kind of cool to get your music. And as I say in the book, actually, the only time you ever would run next door to play a song for someone is the only reason you would do that is because by you doing it, it makes you look cool to your peer group, OK? That's what music is used for. It makes you look good to your peer group. That's the only reason you play it. And the only reason your peer group will play it to their peer group is if it makes them look good by playing it to their peer group. So what I am designing as a songwriter are songs that will make that person look good when they play it to their friends. Make them look like they've got cachet, make them look like, wow. And in order to do that, you only have 60 seconds to engage that listener. The first minute.

One minute. That's the book. One minute, if you sit here and sit here in silence for a minute, it's a huge amount of time. Well, when you're driving like, my face is worse on internet. It's 7 to 12 seconds on the internet. That's all you get to invite you in. So that's writing, writing pop is a whole different animal because you have 7 to 12 seconds. You're looking at beats for a minute. You're looking at repetition. It's much harder to write pop than it is because it's a different mindset. If you look at, say, country, radio grows the music. The listener listens into the song. Most pop stuff is pre-sold. It is sold on the internet, sold by video, by social networking. They normally, two to four weeks, they'll come out and go to number one and then stay there for 17 to 27 weeks. Country builds, slowly number one, stays at number one for about two weeks and then drops off. It's an inverted scale. So you have to know that the listener is actually really listening to country music. You also have to have, look at the audience for country music and then the audience for

pop. And as you say, that audience is going to be there in the afternoon during drive time and your best shot at writing a hit is to focus on the ear of that listener at that time of day, which really sort of changes the dynamic, you know. You think about writers as, you know, they sit down and they say, I want to put my heart and soul in mind into this and I really want to tug at some heart strings and I want to, and they never think about who's going to listen or when they're going to hear it and it never occurs to them that drive time is when it's going to happen. You also have some thoughts about collaboration. And you've discussed it some length in the book. Talk about that dynamic, how you come to, you know what, it strikes me that it might be an ego crusher to have to say, I need somebody to help me write this song.

But you say that it well might be the best way to go. It's very liberating, it really is. I found it was an instant, it was in the 60s, I was going home to see my mother. And my whole raison d'etre for wanting to make a living doing what I love doing is my mom was a cleaning lady and I wanted to buy her a house. And anyway, I took these three songs that had been hit, one Billie Fury and Casuals and James Royal. It was my first big head in the 66, 1866, actually. I was there. Who knew? I was middle aged by that time. Anyway, so I listened to them all back to back and I suddenly realized it was almost the same melody. I had written 100% of it, but it was the same melody. I thought, the one person you should never bore is yourself. So I went out and sought melody people that I felt comfortable with. And probably in my life I've written with a thousand people. I'd say maybe 50 or 60 times it really worked. I mean, I even had hits with people that, you know, we'd write one song and be a hit.

And I never did it again because just the chemistry involved in it. When you're looking for chorus and still it's important, everyone's so hard to write one by yourself, just to sit there and really come to terms with, to wrestle it to the ground. Because if you don't do that, you'll, again, you'll feel kind of a little bit empty. But go out and find someone who compliments what you do, find someone who's fun to write with. We're in the entertainment business, be entertaining, you know, there is a joy. And when you finish a song and you have a number one record with it, there's someone who's as happy as you to have lunch with. Sure. They're both cheering. You know, you're both in it for the right reasons. Well, you know, it also opens doors. You take the perspective right through the process. And part of that process that you force the reader of your book to address has to do with, in what person you write.

Big time. The old days, gone are the days when you could be a loser or over 30. That doesn't really happen anymore. If you look at songs that live like you were dying, which I use as an example, Craig Wiseman and Tim about that, and it's third person. He said, I went skydiving. The singer doesn't have cancer, okay? So wherever you're a loser or over 30, you make it third person. Remember to a woman when a relationship is over is 100% of the time the man's fault. So if you start your song with, since you left me to every woman out there, you're a loser. So, but if you say, since she left him and then you draw a conclusion from it that makes you look good to women at worst time of day possible, 7 a.m., you're a winner. And it's very easy. It's just make it third person. Invite the listener. And I remember at the beginning of the, every war, the Gulf War, the bad about the Afghanistan. I get these songs in.

I'm over here fighting for your baby and the kids. I go, well, have you ever been to Afghanistan? They go, well, no. So why don't you make it? He is over there fighting for his kids. And that way you look good and you make him look good. The era of personalizing songs, I'm a coal miner or I'm a farmer, have you ever been a farmer? Well, no. Have you been a coal miner? Well, no. Then why don't you say he is a coal miner? On the other hand, if you've been a coal miner's daughter, you very well might one great hit. Oh, yeah. And that's wonderful. If you've actually done it, it's legitimate, but as Harlan Howard all of a said, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Harlan Howard is one of the great songwriters of all time. For those of you just joined us, I'm talking with Ralph Murphy about Murphy's Law of Songwriting, the ultimate guide to writing a hit song. I know a lot more about songwriting than I did before I picked your book up. I'm sorry. You know, no, no, no, no, you may, you know, I may just, I may just, how about the technology you know, you're looking at people who are writing younger generations coming on.

You read these stories about entertainers who were songwriters, who, between driving at a time when they were driving between dates, song came to them in the middle of the night. Maybe they, it was between a drink and a smoke and a rock and a hard place. And that's right. And that's the rock and the hard place. And it just flows. But my guess is that's a rarity when it ever flows. There's a technology change. I mean, putting down the pen and pencil. I mean, as a writer, as a journalist, technology has made life so much more simple. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's complex in the minds of people who don't, who don't use it. But, you know, the transport, the pose of sentence or the transport of paragraph are

to have a spell check. It's all there for you, you know. But what about the technology as it relates to songwriting? Well, the technology's definitely made it easier. But there's still the, the, the, the, the demon is still you. You have to create this character never existed in a place that never was doing something that never happened and make me believe it in 60 seconds. I mean, that's just your job. That's what you chose. So it's very, very important. I mean, you're having, I remember when the cassette player came in, you could just press it and record and it was wonderful. Now, I've got my little digital thing I can put down ideas. But the key to writing is not the writing. It's the rewriting. If you open any book and you, do you think this wonderful book and you go to the back, there's probably about 20 pages on Thank You to my Editor. Thank You to the one that taught me the class, blah, blah, blah. Well, it's, it's very strange to me that songwriters are just, just a pure magically. That doesn't happen. It's a fiction.

Writers grow over five to seven years. They grow into the craft. Once they learn the craft, then suddenly they're free to be different. Say Mac, Michelangelo and Picasso. If you look at Picasso's early works, there were just pots of flowers. He spent seven years learning everything the same as every other painter. When he learned everything the same, he was free to be different. The worst thing that can happen to a writer is they just have a hit and they don't know how to, how to write it, really. They just accidentally tripped over one. They will spend the rest of their lives rewriting that structure, rewriting that idea, thinking that that is, is, is their, their card, their key to the, to the golden door. That's not a free set. You say, you know, there are Harlan Howard to have the gift and what your suggestion is to find a Harlan Howard and co-write with him if you can get him still long enough. Also with Harlan, Harlan would tell me when he was a kid, they used to have the big, old wireless radios and he listened to Grand Old Opera.

He listened over and over and over and over. It's like the Beatles. Everyone says they were natural talents. So they did like five to seven years of 440-minute shows a night seeing hit songs. So they knew the structure, they knew the craft, they knew where to change the rhyme scheme, they knew where the title was supposed to be. They could tell by the pronouns when they used the pronoun you would invite the listener in. They also knew when it was kind of a loser, but all the McKenzie, he, he, he, you, you, you paint it with different brushes and different strokes. I don't know one time I was in Gatlinburg and, uh, Boodle on Fleas Brian asked me to come to lunch. And, uh, she was funny and, uh, and he was funny too, but he laughed mostly at her. But I remember one thing that came, I was asking, how do you do it, you know, how, where is it come from? And, uh, both of them said, and you deal with it, uh, in, in the book, um, the, uh, element of repetition.

And, uh, if you listen, if you listen to the songs that they wrote, um, repetition phrasing is there. And, uh, how important is it? Well, repetition used to be very important. When you only heard the song like a couple of times on a Saturday night and Mom and Pop Radio during the week, you'd hear it once or twice more. Now because of, uh, commercial radio, you hear it like sometimes six to eight times a day, seven days a week. Uh, and it can take up to, you know, 28 weeks, which is seven months of eight plays a day, seven days, seven, seven days a week. There's a huge burn factor in there. So, um, I remember after deregulation of radio in 1999, a lot of writers almost used no repetition of title in there. Um, there's, there's a lot of things you do. First of all, you create an expectation and you fulfill it. The title is a fulfillment of the expectation. Uh, I was going to Norway in February to teach it at a couple of universities in, uh, a master class.

And I took all the 17 number one pop records from last year, all the 29 country records, and I wrote down the first three or four lines and then wrote the title under it. And I found there were one sentence. You did that. You did that. Therefore, I'm doing that. I want you. I want this. Therefore, I want my life. Everything led and flowed, uh, and that's creating the expectation, fulfilling it. Um, that's really what you're looking at. Look at your title. How do you lead me there? Almost take your title and pin it to the wall and always keep looking at it. That's your destination. Uh, and now I would imagine back in the day, Feliz and Budelo would have started with a title. Um, and, and my fact there was a, as a structure, which I deal with in the book called Randall, which is starts with the chorus, goes to a verse back to the chorus, a little musical interlude, and then it's the bridge and chorus and out. Uh, good morning, beautiful was the last number one, although, um, there was a, uh, band Perry had had a song last year, which was a modified Randall, which was a number one record. Anyway, I could babble on about that for a minute.

No, I mean, it's fascinating because, because it's an art form that touches so many lives and so many people don't understand they're being touched by somebody they never see and many times never heard of. I mean, unless the, the performer himself, her self is a songwriter, uh, you got no idea where this, where this music came from that reaches out and grabs you and pulls you in and holds you. Yes. And then does it again, again, again? It's, it's whenever we do stuff at the Bluebird or Douglas Corner, wherever around town. And there's a lot of, especially Bluebird because there's a lot of tourists come in, first timers. And you'll be playing. You'll play some things, you know, I've written for everybody, basically Crystal Gale and Ronnie Mills, Epsch and I, Twain, whatever. And you'll sit and play songs at the end, people will come up and say, I didn't know you wrote that. I thought so and so wrote that. Uh, it's very, it's very, um, I don't know, it enriches people's lives in special ways to know that there is another human being behind that, that piece of work.

Uh, it's very important that they know that too because otherwise you, you don't get compensated. They don't respect the fact that there's another person trying to make a living. They see the artist on stage and they're selling their t-shirts and they're making a hundred grand tonight. They don't realize there's another human being behind that piece of work that gets almost nothing for it. Let me go back to where we began, this half hour flown by, um, when you're, when you're having fun that happens, you know, um, we began with the whole issue of, uh, of, uh, theft. Let me just come back to it for a moment. What's your advice on what can be done about it? Well, the, I mean, the law isn't working and if the copyright, uh, is supposed to, uh, be the standard, it's being violated, uh, so what, what can those who write and those who enjoy listening to music?

What can be done? Well, the major thing is make sure you're, your congressman and your senator know. Um, we, at the NSAI, we started the legislative committees back in the 80s and make it a point to go up and play a song, the, the invisible people, the people they never see. Play those songs, make sure that they're your representatives. Play those songs and to actually tell them that you're being impacted and that you can't feed your family, that you're responsible for bringing, we're the only industry that has a favorable balance of trade internationally. And yet we're unprotected, uh, unless they monetize the ISPs, the internet service providers, uh, that's really, really important. Um, nobody wants to pay for music ever. You walk into a bar restaurant, they're, they're gonna say, we're doing you a favor, uh, but if you hear jazz in a restaurant, you can pay a, you will be expected to pay a third more for food. If you hear classical, you pay a third more for food, but you'll have four or fewer drinks to leave earlier. All music is played to make money for the people who play it.

All we want as creative human beings is a small compensation. Nobody's getting rich, but we want to be part of the process. And I think it's got to be legislated. It's got to, through the Congress, the Senate is, it has to be that way. They're making great strides internationally, uh, where they're actually shutting down certain, uh, sites, which is good. And there is a bill that we're getting, uh, at the moment, which will be able to deal with rogue sites. They're, are dealing with piracy. We have, uh, just a half minute left. You've done it once. They said to you again, again, again, when you're gonna write the book, now you've written the book, you're gonna do it again, you're gonna write another book. No. It's been a long time since I had an author who said, no, no. That took me, first of all, it took me three and a half years to get it small. It started huge as a tone. And my, my, the people I'm working with are so ADD and dysfunctional that if it took more than two hours to read, they probably wouldn't.

So what this is is just really getting right to the heart of the matter, giving them the meat, the, the bones of it so they can actually get in and achieve and make a living doing what they love doing. We've run out of time, my friend. Thank you for coming. Thank you. It's great to have you. I thank all of you for, I thank all of you for watching. I'm John Seagunthala for a word on words. Keep reading. It's great.