Larger Font   Reset Font Size   Smaller Font  

Love Death and Whiskey - 40 Songs

Patrick O'Sullivan


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 [email protected]

  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

  of your crying years.

  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