The Recording Session
I’m in my sunset years, and trust me, that’s all right. But you, starlet, are sitting at the crossroads, seeing only neon lights, so why would you believe me when I tell you, girl, it’s hardly ever right.
I’d heard that her chances could not be better as she left the recording session, still peering out from the windows of a limousine. At least, that is what her agent imagined. Still, I wished her well, whatever happened. Who knows, maybe in a year or so, I will see her face lit up on a neon sign in Vegas.
I liked the sound of her voice rising from painted lips, musical expression from fingers ringed with gold, the dress designed and cut tight to hips, not to cover the length of her legs. Her agent insisted she could not fail, telling me she will be the UK’s new flame, another Amy Winehouse.
He meant well, but I pointed out that no one, especially her agent, should hope her career will not follow in the same steps of Amy’s; that wealth and fame became the flaming arrows that first lit upon Amy’s alcohol abuse.
The girl is seventeen, designed, and ready to be sold. Such is the music industry.
Tell me, I said, what is your plan if you fail?
She shrugged her bare shoulders and told me she didn’t know.
I’ve been singing since I was ten, won two shows, it’s all I want to do.
At my age, I remember too much. I have no need to be the bringer of failure. The girl is a child, starry-eyed, with outstanding talent. There are women on the streets, feeling weary and tired, once ambitious and naked with desire, their dancing flame extinguished by men like me.
Go home, learn to cook, and don’t wear your perfume so heavy. How poorly I treated so many. Oh Dusty, is there none left like you? Why do we induce girls with television shows? No one seems to care for their emotional state while music moguls say, goodbye, I’m not going to miss you.
It comes down to this, that inevitable moment, their final call at a chance of stardom before someone in the business turns their head and walks away. The music industry is full of the bones of angels who sang all night and slept all day.
I don’t know, Steve. But, yes, she looks great, she has a certain presence and beauty, but the picture grows darker after that.
Do you think she doesn’t have the voice?
Steve, what do I know? I turned away Mary Black, for Christ’s sake. Yet, two years later, I was begging to write songs for her.
Forgiveness is a frigid thing from a songster spurned.
Today, well, today I want to send them home, to church, to work with their mothers in the kitchen, anything but a starlet singing to old men for a chance at finding a record producer.
Finding another Kate Bush in this world is like trying to predict jackpot lottery numbers.
When I was a child, running in the night
Afraid of what might be
Hiding in the dark, hiding in the street
And of what was following me
(Hounds of Love)
What is seventeen today? A girl that wakes in the middle of the night and in the darkened window sees herself as she wants to be. Yes, and how many times have I been the man outside the window, the voyeur, wrecker of dreams, staring at burning breasts. The next Lady Gaga.
I listen, see their desire, feel their passion, and then leave on their sorrow. I ask myself, who put her on this freeway? Her world of ideas is different to her mother’s, pursuing down a boundless road of skeletons, unaware of unspeakable torment, trying to make pure their visions for themselves.
While I, deader than a fossil, shall no longer steal away their passion, be the thief of their fire, or that man who once said a hundred times a day, ‘oh no, not again.’
Give her a chance, Steve, I have a song might work for her.
There are dreams on every ocean
There are storms on every sea
I will no longer be that writer
A record producing pansy
Don’t promise her the Sea of Sorrento
Say to her, you can’t decide
That you know everything
Of what she feels inside
How when she sings, she feels
Flying by the light of the moon
Electric butterflies
Landing on her tunes
Instead, wake her to be witness
Of all the dreams that fly away
Those electric butterflies
Are never the ones that stay
Find only a heart full of steel
For one thing is for certain
A life lived in the public’s view
Is never behind a dark enough curtain
