Although I spent months talking to lyricists from all four corners of the musical theatre world, seeing their shows, and listening to their CD's, I knew I could never gain a full appreciation for the work a lyricist does without going ahead and trying to write a verse or two on my own. So, I went over all the rules they laid down, took in all the pieces of advice they gave, and decided to apply what I'd learned.
What I came up with is not actable and could never be a part of any musical I'd pay to see. But it does rhyme, and I probably spent more time on this one verse than on any other part of the article. I include it here only to illustrate a point.
All the classic Broadway songs
Just make me want to sing.
A composer crafts the melody
Creates the "hook," that thing
That sticks with me long after
I applaud the bowing cast.
But a lyricist takes that tune
And weaves meanings that last.
(If there exists a composer who is good enough to make these lyrics sound passable, I'd love to hear a tape of your work. In fact, if you've got that kind of talent, I'd like to speak to you for a future feature article on composers.)
The point I'm trying to get across is that you can follow all the rules, and still come up with something that won't fly on stage. The lyricist's greatest necessity is innate: Talent, brilliance, and turn-of-phrase cannot be learned. So I'll leave the lyric writing to those of you who were born to do it. Even if you've got that natural ability, the observations and pointers included in this article are sure to help out when you're stuck, and even when you're not.
A Magnificent Obsession
Professional lyricists must have a passion for their craft that blinds them to the seemingly insurmountable odds against achieving success in the fickle field of writing for musical theatre.
Maury Yeston, who won a Tony for his work on both "Nine" and "Titanic," says, "Building a career as a lyricist is one of the most difficult things imaginable. There is no gig to work at using your skills."
Show business is tough for any artist to succeed in, but lyricists, by the very nature of their profession, cannot do it alone. Says Yeston, who teaches at the BMI Musical Theater Workshop, "A composer hustling and trying to get a job related to his career can play piano, can coach or give lessons, can work in a studio, can perform‹all of these things are ways of making a living and improving yourself and plying your trade until you get discovered. But what can a lyricist do? A lyricist can work in an advertising agency, but jobs like that are few and far between."
Yeston continues, "The next most difficult thing about being a lyricist is, it's impossible to present work alone. A composer can play something that he wrote, can audition his talent. What does a lyricist do? A lyricist needs a composer."
Knowing all of this did not deter Yeston from pursuing and attaining his dream of success in musical theatre. Nor does it stop him from encouraging his students to stick with the trade. "All of this makes me tremendously respect the sorts of people who devote themselves to this craft."
It may be harder now than ever for a lyric writer to get his work on the stage, due to the current state of theatre in this country. Says Hal Hackady, who has been writing lyrics for the stage since 1969, "It's so difficult even for bright, talented people to get a show on. Producers' tendencies are to import shows from London or from somewhere else."
Hackady says hope for the genre lies in the artists who take the initiative to put on their own work. "You have to do it yourself, find a collaborator who you're happy with, pick a project, and try to get an agent interested. Get it on wherever you can. Learn from it."
Michael Colby, who received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Lyrics in 1982 for "Charlotte Sweet," contends that "To be a lyric writer, you must "Never face the facts,' in the words of Ruth Gordon. The facts are, you are up against enormous odds. There is so little commercial activity and means of revenue for dedicated lyric writers. There was a time when it was show business‹now it's got to be an obsession for someone to continue."
That is the very reason why the great talents do continue: For them, writing lyrics is an obsession. Hackady tells us, "I'd rather fail writing lyrics than succeed doing anything else."
All of the lyricists who spoke to Back Stage for this article share his view, in one way or another. They are the successful ones. They all know what it feels like to see their words brought to the stage, given life by an actor, and taken in by an audience. They know that nothing else feels quite like that, and that is enough to keep them writing the songs that make us want to get up on stage and sing. Perhaps Susan Birkenhead, lyricist for "Jelly's Last Jam" and "Triumph of Love" put it best when she said, "This is the most exciting, wonderful thing anyone can do."
Recipes for Collaboration
Lyric writing is inherently collaborative. Mae Richard, whose recent "Tallulah's Party" starred Tovah Feldshuh, said, "As a lyricist, I'm only a third of the team. By myself I'm just a poet."
Many lyric writers are able to compose, but still feel their work benefits from collaboration. Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the lyrics for both "Ragtime" and "Once on This Island," says, "I do write music, but not for the theatre; I have too much respect for the form to try to write for the stage. I've been working with Steven Flaherty since 1983. Collaboration is the hardest thing to work at, it's like a marriage, we have our quarrels, our periods of adjustment. What makes it work is that we have a similar sensibility, the same sense of humor, and the same things move us. Although we have very different lives and different backgrounds, we have a common sensibility about the theatre, and when we're together, we have a good time. We laugh a lot, it's just like a marriage that's evolved over many years."
Skip Kennon, who watched the Ahrens-Flaherty collaboration begin at the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, says, "What works best is two people creating in an environment where they can fail. Or be brilliant, stupid, silly, and not nip each other's process in the bud. They must agree to set no work in stone, to be able to listen, and not take criticism of each other's work personally."
Jack Murphy, who has been working on "The Civil War" with composer Frank Wildhorn for over two years, recalled, "I read once that Ira Gershwin said it takes two years for a collaboration to click, and that's probably true. I knew that it would work [with Frank] when, inside of two weeks, I realized I could be bad in front of him. Sometimes you have to say the stupidest lyric there is, just to know that you can be unembarrassed. We try to be honest with each other, and we seem to work well together."
Hal Hackady's work was last seen on stage in "Little by Little," on which he collaborated with Brad Ross for four songs. Ellen Greenfield wrote the lyrics for the other songs that made up in the show. Hackady has had enough experience with different composers to know early on whether a relationship will work out. "Whenever I get a call to work with a new composer, I'll listen to his songs. I am a believer that you should listen to everything anyone gives you, because there could be a genius on that tape. If I like it, I tell the composer we should write two songs together, to see if we're oil and water or oil and vinegar. Larry Grossman and I are and always were salad dressing, we're on the same wavelength. He was so quick. I would give him a lyric, leave the room, and hear him tinkering on the piano. I'd wash the dishes or something, come back, and he'd have the first 16 bars of the song written."
Susan Birkenhead has an interesting history when it comes to collaborations. "I have worked with eight different composers, and I am going to work with another very soon. I've also worked with two dead ones: Jelly Roll Morton and Cole Porter." Birkenhead's work on "Jelly's Last Jam" and "High Society" involved updating the lyrics of these famous musicians.
"It's always a different experience," Birkenhead continues. "All of them have been wonderful for me. The chemistry of each collaboration is always different. It is thrilling to discover people's work that way. It's necessary to have trust, and mutual respect, and to have everybody writing the same show. I believe that that comes from having a director with a very strong vision, and everybody trying to follow and observe that vision, deciding where it's all going to end up and why."
Marci Heisler, who collaborates with composer Zena Goldrich to write musical theater, as well as Back Stage Bistro Award-winning cabaret songs, described the ideal collaborative experience. "A collaboration can only work with a lot of listening and understanding. The best collaborations occur when two people combine like it's one voice."
Finding the Hook
There are so many factors involved in writing lyrics for musical theatre. An artist can only learn to deal with so many of them, and even the most talented and brilliant of songwriters gets stuck in a bind. For those moments, it's helpful to hear how other writers go about creating verses that can be sung again and again.
A common question asked of lyricists is, "Which comes first, the music or the words?" Cole Porter answered that one smartly: "The Check."
Each writer has a different preference, and even that can change depending on who the collaborators are. For the most part, however, it's not as simple as one before the other. Ahrens said she and Flaherty work in the same room, side by side, and that the words and music develop simultaneously. "It usually happens at the same time. We work together every day. We talk about the characters and what the scene means for them, sometimes either one of us writes it first, if we're inspired, but the two happen together."
Joe DiPietro, who developed "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" out of individual non-musical sketches , said, "I'm a believer in writing the book first, and sometimes it's a matter of really four months writing the book‹just the story. There are points that I knew where songs worked, but I didn't want to write them before I had the whole story set. So many musicals have great scores, but with a bad book."
When it finally comes time to work on the music, DiPietro and frequent collaborator Jimmy Roberts have developed a way in which both of them feel comfortable working. "We first talk about the number in depth. Then I write a first draft. Jimmy puts music to it, and then we go back and forth. Jimmy is wonderful at knowing how to set a comic lyric. Sometimes he does write music first. Especially ballads, you get lost in the mood of the music, and it is very important to write the music first in that case."
Murphy, who wrote 39 songs for "The Civil War" concept album, said, "It's always been music first, then I write the lyrics. That way you get a true melody, you don't have to compromise the melody to fit in lyrics, There's no danger of wholesale cutting of the melody."
Long before the music or the lyrics, however, Murphy found something just as important: the inspiration. While there are volumes upon volumes to draw from when researching the Civil War, Murphy's greatest moment of inspiration came from a single letter sent home by a soldier. "There is a letter from an ordinary guy, believed to be an educated man, but not a writer. It was written before the Battle of Bull Run. He had a premonition that he wouldn't return. He wrote a letter to his wife Sara, and it is so moving, it's one of the most moving things I've read: "When you feel the cool breeze, know that I am there."
That letter inspired "Sara," which is one of the most heartbreaking songs in the score.
Paul Scott Goodman had a somewhat narrower, yet much more immediate and personal subject matter to focus on when adapting "Bright Lights Big City" from the 1984 novel. Said Goodman, "The biggest challenge was to stay true to [author] Jay McInerney's intent, to keep the soul of it intact. I used his poetry with music. Occasionally a phrase from the book would become a really good song title. A melody came into my head, and the song would just come out from there."
Goodman's inspiration came not only from the novel, but also from within. "I could identify with the novel on a lot of levels. I think it works because it's well written, well directed, the cast is working hard, The character of the "Writer," which I play is telling the story from the here and now, but I don't think it looks at that era and says "we're better off now,' or anything like that. I think the material will make its own comment. It's a universal story‹boy comes to the big city, it just happens to be in 1984. A lot of people came of age at that time who are now in their thirties. That piece is like their Woodstock, only 15 years later."
Regardless of where the inspiration for the song comes from, or whether the lyrics are written before the score, the words must not only have meaning, but they must be specific. Said Marci Heisler, "There is an inherent rule about universal specifics. That's a very hard thing to do, to take something that's specific to a character, but make it so it applies to a greater whole. That is a huge challenge. Just the economy of the form is a huge challenge. Playwrights have a whole play to get somebody's emotional journey down. Lyricists work within the confines of one song. You really have to say what you mean, and say it efficiently."
Dottie Burman, whose cabaret song, "One Step Ahead" has won several awards, echoes Heisler's point. "Being specific is an important thing to learn: Be very clear about who's speaking, to whom the person is speaking, and where they are. The lyric is a very precise form. It's very difficult, and the listener is just as important as the speaker."
Perhaps even more important than the lyrics are what the lyrics are about. Says Yeston, "One of the things about lyricists that is not well understood is that the idea of the song is such a vital part of lyric writing. Lyricists don't simply write words on a page. Their most important ideas have to do with when to sing, and what to sing about. The story goes, Alan Lerner stayed in his room all night with a pot of coffee and emerged with one line ‹"I could have danced all night.'‹But that was the one line that made all the difference."
When Hackady teaches a workshop, one of the first things he does is teach his class that one word can make the difference between a brilliant lyric and a serviceable one. To do this, he writes a line on the board: "Why do they make up stories that link my name to yours?"
He tells students, if you change one word, it becomes exponentially better. "Why do they think up stories that link my name to yours?" is an actual Hammerstein lyric, from "People Will Say We're in Love." The internal rhyme, coupled with the specificity and action of the verb, makes the line jump out at you. This is something all lyricists need to be able to do."