Warren Zevon Quotes

Everyone's [ me, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty] equally involved in all the writing. Normally we'll start with a sample or a drumbeat, or a synth sound or something like that, and that will spark the initial idea. And then we'll write an instrumental sketch of a song, and then we put on a nonsense vocal melody, which is always my favourite bit because it obviously sounds amazing.

I approach song writing three different ways. One way is where I write the initial melody and lyrics first and then take it in to the producer to collaborate. Another way is where the producer sends me his initial musical track ideas and then I write the lyrics and melody over his track. The third way is where we just jam out in the studio and see what we come up with.

It was really hard to find people to come over and play guitar and sing and write songs together. So that turned me into a songwriter that way, just so I could be able to play with other people.

The recording process was basically me meeting with different writers, going into their studio, starting a song and just hanging out and chatting and getting to know how they work. Everybody has a different writing process so there was a lot of getting to know people, which can be fun and stressful at the same time.

If I'm not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw 'em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we'll have a unique song by the end of it.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

We always feel there are 3 parts to the song. The most important part is the reason it should exist. Our process usually consists of me sitting at the piano & Bob hovering over it. We throw ideas out...I start to play something...he'll hum something to make it better. He'll throw a line to me, I'll twist it to make it better and we scramble around like that for sometimes hours and days, 'til we both agree we've got something to show! That's how it works!

Sometimes I'll write a song first and then I'm like, "Oh this person will be great on this song." But there are some artists I know what want, like off the top I knew I wanted Brandy and Faith Evans. Their music is like the soundtrack to my life, so it was a personal thing for me. So once they said yes, I wrote songs specifically for them.

Each one of us had a little story to tell and each recording was based on that. Lou played all of the music but we both sort of kicked around some cords during the writing phase.

Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us.

When After Forever stopped, I didn't want to first find a band, then see if I could write with them, figure that whole thing out, then record an album. Instead, I worked with people I knew would be good songwriters out of an idea how I thought it would sound like.

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track.

I don't really have any "must work withs," but I would never refuse if a celebrity or fellow musician came along who is willing to write or sing or play on a Lita song.

There are two things John and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

Alice and I, we'd met before, but we were able to kind of sit and chat on the set of Dark Shadows, and talk about maybe writing some songs together. We started doing that, and then one thing led to another and it became this Vampire project - because he was telling stories about all those days, which were fascinating.

I don't know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it... In the old days, when we needed an album, Paul and I got together and produced enough songs for it. Nowadays, there's three of us writing prolifically and trying to fit it all into one album.

When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.

I had been, like, 'I don't wanna be a singer anymore', so dramatic, but when I was recording with Brian Higgins I was like, oh my god I love this, I love these songs, I love what this is. And then we just kept on working and working until we got more songs.

You take all the time to write a song: you have to let it ooze on out by its natural self and that is pretty time consuming. Then you teach it to the band so everybody gets all the parts. Then you rehearse it and road test it, and all that. Then you get to the studio and there is a new guy in the band who calls himself the producer, right? Huh. He either makes it or breaks it usually before nightfall.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.

Sometimes when I'm writing a song I'll get carried away with production when I'm only on the first verse, and that sacrifices the songwriting.

Being a producer is a very different experience than writing my own songs.