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BILLY TAKES THE BISCUIT It had been a good lesson - Billy had been attentive, had clearly done some practise and was enjoying our bash through some old Elvis songs. To cap it all off, his mom Wendy brought us a nice cup of tea and some exceptionally fine jammy dodgers. It was getting towards the end of the hour and I was winding it up when Billy looked up at me from his chestnut fringe and furrowed his eyebrow. “Whassup, kid” I asked in that way that always irritates me when I try and connect wiv da yoof. “How DO you write a song, then?” he asked me. “Very badly”, I joked. A quip that either went right over his head or he chose to ignore. “Could I write one?” Bingo! I thought. I have always tried to impress upon my students that guitar lessons need not just be learning how to play an instrument, I’ve tried to show them that music can be about creating songs as well as playing them. Furthermore there’s a shitload more money in it. Though obviously I change my language – you don’t want to expose kids to the word ‘money’ at that age. “Of course you can”, I said. “We can write one next week. What you’ll need to do for me is think about something you want to write about”. He asked me what I meant by that. It seemed obvious to me, but I guess I had forgotten that, at 8 years old, your world is confined to the school playground, the kitchen table and the television. I explained that a song can be about anything, and anyone – there are actually no rules, and often the fun of writing a song is in the fact that you can do what you want and no one can tell you it’s wrong. He liked that bit. “Just make sure it’s simple, it rhymes, and has a rhythm like a poem”, I said, completely contradicting what I had told him about no rules. “Okay, I’ll have a think”, he said, and with that put his guitar down, picked up the last jammy dodger and disappeared. Irritated that he had taken the biscuit that I had my eye on, I went home in a huff and thought nothing more of our chat. I turned up again the following week, still in a slightly bad mood about the biscuit. “Alright Billy?, I scowled like a disinterested teenager. “I’ve got a subject for my song!” he blurted out. It came back to me and I remembered his song writing allusions. Great, I told him. Let’s have a look and work on it. Sure enough. Billy had taken an idea and developed it into semi-rhyming couplets that even had a rhythm. I looked at the top of the page and the song’s title. In a defiant, triple underlined bold scratch were the words I HATE HOMEWORK. Good title, I told him, as I scanned the words he had written. “I hate homework, it’s rubbish” was one line. “I hate school, don’t wanna be no one’s fool”, was another. Billy picked up his guitar, and began strumming the chords – E, A and D. Then, and totally unselfconsciously, he started singing. The anti-establishment resentment was dripping from every word. Billy had clearly thought long and hard about his feelings for school and had syphoned every bitter sinew into the lyrical assault on Blair’s educational policies. “I hate homework, it’s rubbish” he repeated again as a fading mantra at the song’s powerful climax. It was brilliant. Simple, effective, tuneful, laden with hooks and it carried a strong message. I told him so and we started playing and singing it together. For the next half hour we played around with it and planed the rough edges, until it was a shiny new marble of a song. I paused for a second and thought back to my first song. Written at 8 or 9, it was a sad paen to an unrequited love. I can still remember the chorus: “Let us elope at midnight tonight and always be together.. As the lesson ended I smiled weakly as my own lyrics from my first song reverberated around my head. For the second time that week I left Billy’s place in a bad mood. Not only had Wendy not brought us any biscuits, but the little upstart was, one day, going to be a better songwriter than me. If he isn’t already. See you next month. Bring some jammy dodgers. Adam << Return to Blogs
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