Love Death and Whiskey
40 Songs
Patrick O’Sullivan
PPP
Bradford 2010
Copyright Patrick O’Sullivan 2010
All rights reserved. Patrick O’Sullivan asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.
For permission to make further use of the song lyrics collected in this book contact pad@osull.com
Cover Photograph Copyright Zuleika Henry 2010
The 1987 production of the stage play Irish Night: the cast sing the title song.
This book is available in print from most online retailers.
Love Death and Whiskey
40 Songs
Patrick O’Sullivan
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Songs
Assignations
Clover the kitten
Love, only hold me
Safe harbour
The gauntlet
Deserve my love
The Plains of Mayo
The last train
Irish night
Just irrigation
In my heart
Back to him
Midnight telephoner
The finest town in Lancashire is Bolton
Angel in the gallery
If you left him
Irontown
Kissed on the meridian
The longest night
To be Irish
Weary angel
I dreamt you came to me
The flowers of the forest
The green hills of Australia
That old song again
The Prince of Clouds
Who lost the most
Young men in winter, old men in spring
Autobiography of a navvy
You taught me to cry
The crumble song
They have closed the border
I met my love in Baltimore
Shabby dress
Sunflowers
Tooting Bec
In Madrid
The mermaid and the drunks
Barbara, remember
Pierre
And Finally…
Introduction
A song is like a three legged stool. I am the lyricist, I write the words, and this is my book. So, I will speak first. The song lyric is the first leg of the stool. I am told that there are some people out there who believe that there can be a song without words. Tut.
The second leg of the stool is the music. Writing is mostly a lonely business. So I enjoy the partnership that develops between lyricist and musician. Of course in the beginning of any partnership there is a testing, a sounding out process.
The third leg of the stool is the performance. Lyricist and musician, words and music, work towards performance, preferably live performance. We put our work into the hands of the performers. And we bless them.
I love to write songs for a specific performer – more than that, for a special stage presence, for a stage persona. A look, a tone of voice, eyes. I especially like writing for women performers. A song is like a soliloquy in a longer play – there might be, in the background, a longer drama that can be hinted at in the text. For the most part, I honour the dramatic convention that in the soliloquy we hear the truth. The text need not spell everything out, if we know that the performer can inhabit the gaps. In these texts the I is not necessarily me. But I did write all the words.
There are songs in this selection that would not exist if there had not been, waiting for the text, perfect performers for the lyric I had in mind. Obvious examples in this book are You taught me to cry and Irish night. I suppose that this also means that there are, in my notes or in my head, songs as yet unwritten, waiting for their performers.
It follows from all this that, if this book is to be something more than a collection of one legged stools, you, musicians and singers, must take these lyrics, set them and sing.
This book offers a selection of my song lyrics, written in varying circumstances over many years. Sometimes I was working with musical partners, sometimes I was alone. These are not poems. But it has happened that musicians have taken poems from my table, and have then come back to me to say: Can you please re-write this so that I can set it? And I do re-write. I have allowed some of these more intagliate texts into this selection.
When a number of song lyrics are collected together in one place like this – and not left scattered in guitar cases or on the tops of pianos – patterns and predilections become apparent.
I think that these songs inhabit their own ground. But the traditions, the reference groups, with which the songs connect themselves become obvious. The linked folk traditions of Ireland, Britain and North America. French chanson. Music Hall song. The lyric tradition in English language and literature, with, perhaps, a special bow to Robert Herrick, the master of the very short line.
There is an interest in craft and technique and form. Some musicians, the pop and rock folk, are most comfortable within the verse-verse-middle-eight-verse structure. And it is a good structure – like the sonnet it gives a place where the thought must turn, the volta. Some musicians prefer the crafted form of the literary lyric. Other musicians like a less strict form – their music likes something that the music must rescue, or their music likes to impose its own will on the text. Some musicians like a clean and fragrant line, others like jagged edges. I am easygoing about all this. I like to hear my songs sung.
A song lyric is made up of words, words have meanings, and songs have subject matter. There is, in these songs, an interest in what might be called the traditional, or even the familiar, subject matter of song. There is also an interest in taking song into unfamiliar territory. There is no fear of difficulty and experience, emotion and, indeed, sentiment. I give the musicians and the performers something to work with.
There is, you will see, a certain tenderness towards songs built around the names of places – though I have, wisely I think, rationed these in this selection. I have included some songs written for stage plays, where the analogy with the soliloquy becomes more than an analogy.
This book, a selection of my song lyrics, is dedicated to the musicians and performers I have worked with. It is offered to them with my thanks.
Patrick O’Sullivan
Narrowboat June
October 2010
Back to Table of Contents
Assignations
Assignations in crowded places,
searching for you in a sea of faces,
covert kisses, quick embraces…
I’d rather be lonely.
Conversation comes in snatches,
steers around the sticky patches.
My souvenir, a book of matches…
I’d rather be lonely.
Real lovers talk in future tenses,
hope, and promise recompenses.
We drink white wine, on the rocks.
Hand in hand, we watch the clocks.
All day I wait for you to phone me.
You say, Who knows what might have been if only…
I never thought I’d rather be lonely…
But…
I’d rather be lonely.
Back to Table of Contents
Clover the kitten
Clover helped me write this song.
She sits perched upon my shoulder,
bites my ear when I go wrong:
such a sense of time has Clover.
If I’m stuck this cat descends
to the jungle on my table.
There she stalks and hunts my pens
round the phone and
down the cable.
Meanwhile I do much the same,
hunting words and shades of meaning
through the jungle of my brain
to some bright and happy clearing.
So, each does what each is best at
in the world to make it brighter.
Clover is the cleverest cat.
I’m the poor, hard-working writer.
Back to Table of Contents
Love, only hold me
Love, only hold me,
don’t fear my tears.
Remember you told me
Give me your shoulder
to bury my face,
wiser and older
and used to disgrace.
Yes, you can chide me,
poor little waif,
as long as you hide me
and let me feel safe.
Just let me shiver
and clutch your lapel,
now and forever,
all will be well.
Back to Table of Contents
Safe harbour
This time last night
what were we?
Two ships adrift
on a troubled sea,
little knowing
we would be
in safe harbour,
safe harbour, today.
This time last night
each showed each
the wrecking surf
along the beach,
not believing
we could reach
safe harbour,
safe harbour, today
Glass falling, storm warning,
small boats seek the bay,
safe harbour in the morning,
safe harbour today.
This time last night
we were lost,
storm