Burt Bacharach's book,' Anyone who had a heart' really got me, when he said of the pop music of the sixties; 'A lot of those songs consisted of just three chords, C to F to G. If they had thrown in a C major seventh that would have been a lot more interesting, but the plain C major chord just seemed so vanilla to me'.
Perhaps I've been a fan of Burt's all these years without being able to admit it! His music is a 1000 miles from Mick Fleetwood's cowbell thumping 'Gold dust woman', the rip and raw of Neil Young's 'Rust never Sleeps'.... part of my teen age 'sound track'.... but in all my attempts at writing a good 'Beetles tune'... I never had a C major in it...ever! C maj 7th/D perhaps.... Burt has a great quote from Darius Mihaud, his Carpinteria composition teacher; "Never be ashamed to write a melody you can whistle".
The Book started to get me before page 43! .. 'once I saw a piece performed that Lou Harrison had written for Martha Graham. It was sixteen minutes long and thirteen minutes were complete silence'! Additionally, Chapter 3 'I Married an Angel'; 'The attraction between us was physical, because she was really good-looking and had great breasts, which back then could not be prefabricated'!
I've only just started the book, but am sure I'm up for plenty more Bacharach 'raindrop' stories! The writing is a little; and then I went, and then I did, and then I met... however I'm going to stick with it; wishing I was on a Auckland to San Fran flight, getting stuck into it .... there's nothing like laughing out loud on a plane... people looking at you with a, shocked-quizzical-missing-out sort of look!