A New Era as a Songwriter (almost)
Yes, 1998 ended up being quite an eventful year and carried with it some gems, hidden as catastrophes. About 3 months after the empty hole appeared, left by the ceasing of the band that I so enjoyed playing with, something came along to fill it’s place.
Those three months seemed to drag on endlessly at the time. There was no band rehearsal taking up my weekends and I now found myself in the position of seeing three friends much less often. I was bored and my job wasn’t enough to distract me from my boredom. Actually, these days I try and find whatever I can to alleviate boredom because it is one of the most destructive emotions (if it is an emotion) that you can have. Even an emotion like anger has some kind of dynamic energy to it, but boredom is simply stagnant and breeds apathy… Let’s just not go there! This website is definitely aimed at being a distraction for that!
So the hole was filled by what I found in a chance reading of the NME music paper which I hadn’t bothered to read for about 2 years and I bought this issue for the weirdest reason. My friend from the previous band had started a small record label and put a classified ad in the back of the paper, so I wanted to see it! Now something I don’t often do is read the classifieds looking for people to work with, so I now see this as being guided by my intuition. the ad below my friend’s ad read something like "lyricist/vocalist looking for instrumentalist…" and I can’t remember it all. I wish I still had it as a reminder of how things can change in a moment. I felt compelled to call the number straight away and the next day we met. We lived about 2 miles apart and hit it off immediately. We decided there and then to work together before we had even really spoken that much. It became an excellent songwriting partnership.
Any thoughts of hanging up my guitar forever were dissolved and I felt ready to take on the world. Within a week we had written at least 5 really great songs. I felt alive again and this time I was a founding member of this project. I was writing the music and my new friend was writing the lyrics and together we were creating songs that had energy, power and a great singer at the helm. I had the freedom to express myself as the guitarist I wanted to be, seeing as I had nobody to fit in with. Other musicians we played with in various carnations of the our band fitted in with what I was doing and it felt great. I fell into the role of musical director too because I was also the one doing the recording, applying my valuable training and my passion for audio engineering and production.
It was to last about 8 years, but first some changes in my present life situation had to be changed, so I found out and just a couple of months after finding my new lease of life as a musician my girlfriend left me. She wanted to stay in the nice apartment and my new songwriting friend’s flatmate had moved out almost the same time, so I rented the room in his flat instead. The result was that my monthly outgoings, which were huge due to the massive rent on the luxury apartment were suddenly slashed by about 75% and so after getting over the heartache of my girlfriend leaving me (by the way I must thank her. It was the best thing she ever did for me).
Napoleon Hill wrote something along the lines of "Every disaster carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit". Once I stepped out of feeling sorry for myself, the benefits were obvious.
Bill O'Leary
Derek Sivers
Gary Simpson
Maria Palma
