From Good to Verse

In my last post, I talked all about the wonderful new verse we wrote for the lovely song The Other Side of the World. The truth is The Other Side of the World was one of the first songs written for The Road to Qatar! I once had a verse that began with the words "Ever since 9/11..." It was original written as the song for one of the guys to convince the other to go to the Middle East. It switched characters and finally found it's home as a duet late in the show. And it worked. In Dallas. It worked fine. But shows change and the chemistry of the book, music, lyrics, set, cast, lighting etc. changes the feeling of it all. And add a verse to the song that is really right to transition and right for the characters and suddenly the old song itself didn't seem as right. Sure it would work. But why couldn't the characters sing more in their real quirky, natural, funny vernacular? Why retain the poetic nature of the song? Well, it was worth an experiment. So I wrote several versions of a lyric that would say the same thing ultimately, but say it in a style that was keeping more with the show that surrounded it. Of course, it would have wonderful to have written the new song BEFORE rehearsals started, or even early in the short but wonderful rehearsal process...but there was no way of truly knowing what was needed until we saw the show in run thoughs...so here is where the craft comes in. Here's where you can't be scared. Here's where you write the lyric and your brilliant collaborator David Krane writes the music and you refine it and send it off to the wonderful actors who now have the task of learning it and getting it into the first preview of the show in a day. It's like the old days out of town. Jerry Herman playing Before the Parade Passes By for Carol Channing. Rodgers and Hammerstein giving Gertrude Lawrence Getting to Know You. Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim writing Smile Girls for Ethel Merman in Gypsy (okay so they cut it after one performance...never mind!) Writing musicals is not like writing a prescription. It's some other kind of alchemy that makes it all work and you gotta be...flexible...and on your toes, as Larry Hart wrote. So all those years of writing special material and fast, is like a warm up for when you really have to do it. When all eyes and ears are on you. You deliver. Tomorrow I will hear a whole new song called Who Knows...too bad the playbill will call it The Other Side of the World. Well, that's what inserts are for.