Suck and Blow by John Popper

Author:John Popper
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306824050
Publisher: Da Capo Press

19

INTIMACY WITH STRANGERS IN THE DARK

I think it’s important for songs to be autobiographical—you need to write about what you know. Charlie Parker said if you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn, and I’ve taken that to heart. And if you don’t mean what you’re saying, then there’s no way for your song to connect with other people.

When a comedian tells a joke, there has to be truth in it so someone else says, “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” There’s no shortcut to that, and the only way I can see to solve that is by writing autobiographical songs. I stopped telling people what songs are about a long time ago because if they loved the song, it would be about something in their mind, so that would ruin it.

The best example is the song “Just Wait,” which I wrote about my friend Felicia going off to Yale. She wasn’t making friends there yet, and I wanted to cheer her up. Over the years I’ve had a number of people tell me that the song helped prevent them from killing themselves. One guy, this big guy, came on our bus in Philly, sat down, and started crying. He told us he had been planning to kill himself; he’d gotten a big brick of heroin and was going to do heroin until he died. Then “Just Wait” came on, and he saw a picture of his family and decided to give his life over to Jesus. He became a born-again Christian and never touched heroin again.

He told us this, and as soon as he said, “give my life over to Jesus,” all of us on the bus were like, “Uh-oh, this isn’t going to go down well.” But it really did. You don’t know what to do about something that big, and you don’t want to tell him, “It’s about my friend going to college and worrying about making friends.” You learn to shut the hell up because what you originally wrote the song about is not the important thing. Just like tone, truth harmonizes. If you write something that’s true to you, it doesn’t matter what the song’s about; the important aspects of it resonate in somebody else’s experience, and then the song is more about what they want it to be about. “Just Wait,” if you look at the lyrics, is much heavier when you apply it to that guy’s story than mine.

Whenever someone says, “You saved my life,” I respond, “I’m really appreciative that you’re alive, and I’m really honored that you used our song as a totem. But you saved your life. I don’t want to take the credit for all the work you did, and I want to remind you that you did that.” We were a part of it, but they did the work.

Plus, that really is something I need to deflect, because where do I go from there? “You’re welcome. I did save your life, and now your

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.