Interview With Sheila Davis - Pt. 1

This interview was recorded for the I Write the Songs Radio Program in 1999. The interview took place between Mary Dawson, host of IWS, and Sheila Davis.

MARY DAWSON (MD): Metaphor, it is one of the most powerful resources we have as lyricists who hope to express our great song ideas in ways that will really communicate to our listeners. Sheila Davis' examination of metaphor and figurative language is one of the most enlightening parts of her course. But before we actually speak to her, let me list a few of her credits:

Sheila Davis has long been respected as a songwriter in her own right with her compositions recorded by such artists as Kate Smith, Ed Ames, Al Martino, Hank Snow, Peter Nero and many choral arrangements for schools and choirs. Her song, Who Will Answer, was an international hit that earned her a gold record. But even beyond her own songwriting accomplishments, Sheila is known for her desire and ability to help other songwriters learn a craft that previously had to be learned only by osmosis. As the Executive Vice President of the Songwriters Guild of America she initiated national educational programs for aspiring songwriters such as Ask-A-Pro, which is still held regularly at the Songwriters Guild offices in Nashville and LA. Sheila's book, The Craft of Lyric Writing, from Writer's Digest Books , was one of the first songwriting tools I personally became aware of when I began to pursue my own songwriting career back in the 1980's and I continue to refer to it regularly for refreshers and stimulation as a lyricist. So get ready to take notes as we meet and learn from Sheila Davis.

MD: Sheila, we are so delighted that you took some time to join us on I Write the Songs today.

Sheila Davis (SD): It's my pleasure, Mary.

MD: Before we actually talk about our subject for the day, I would love to hear a little bit about your early background, because really all I know about you is what's in the flyleaves if your book and I would love to know just a little bit about how you first became interested in songs and songwriting.

SD: Well, I guess music has always been a part of my life, because my mother was a professional singer and she sang on the radio and in concerts and even in Broadway shows and so, especially show music was very much a part of my life. Sitting at the piano and hearing my mother sing, I learned a great deal about lyric writing without knowing it. It was many years later I realized that the way she discussed singing and phrasing and interpreting a song for me told me intuitively that words, lyrics, are sung not read. They are really written for a singer's mouth and that they need to, as my mother used to say, "feel grateful in the mouth". That taught me that you don't end lines with consonants and that the words should be able to flow. This was something that many years later, I intuitively added to my lyric writing guidelines.

MD: Are you a singer yourself?

SD: No, that was not one of my gifts. I don't play well and I don't sing well, I have got perfect pitch but I don't have the gift my mother had -- although I did actually sing on television a couple of times many, many years ago when I was working for ABC, which is where I think it all started, meeting many people who encouraged my to write lyrics. That's where I also met my first collaborators.

MD: When you first got started there probably weren't as many books and tools available, right?

SD: None. The funny part was that when I first started doing background research for The Craft of Lyric Writing, I decided to interview some famous lyricists who lived in New York, one of whom was Irving Caesar, who wrote Tea For Two, and I Want To Be Happy. So, I called him up and told him I was writing a book and asked him if he would be willing to do an interview. Before the interview he said, "You're going to write a book about teaching people to write lyrics? You can't do that." He said, "You either know how to write a lyric or you don't know how to write a lyric. You can't teach anyone how to write a lyric." I said, " I agree with you but I think I can teach people how to write better." I certainly can't teach anyone [how to write a lyric], no one can. As Irving Berlin said, "It's a knack."

MD: That's right.

SD: You're born with a knack. I was born with a knack and what I had, luckily, growing up were the very best writers -- Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, these were the hit parade of the day, the Top 40. I heard nothing but the best.

What a songwriter does is "osmose." When I found that this was fun to do, as a young child, I wrote lyrics, additional lyrics to popular songs, in other words, songs that were known as list songs like, You're The Top, or Thanks For The Memory. I think I wrote one of my first songs as a camper for my camp's farewell song to Thanks For The Memory with original lyrics. So what I had was the matrix, the tune to write to, the rhyme pattern given me, and what I learned from writing lyrics to famous songs was the song form because they were so clear then. The song was AABA or ABAB, which is not popular anymore, the AAA, which is still popular in country, and that is before the Verse/Chorus [song form] came along. So I think all aspiring lyricists "osmose" from what they hear on the radio, what the hits are, and they start doing what they are hearing.

MD: Yeah, I think that is an excellent exercise. In fact, in some of my workshops I do that. We just take a famous song and eliminate the lyrics and try to write new lyrics to that template. It is an excellent exercise.

SD: It certainly is.

MD: Well, it is hard for me to even fathom how somebody learns songwriting without the Sheila Davis books.

SD: Well, as Berlin says, "It's a knack". You are born with an ability to do that. No one taught me anything about rhyme; I just rhymed perfectly because that was the pattern, the template.

MD: Exactly.

SD: I think we are born with different talents, that was my gift, but I discovered later that it was much more fun to theorize and to teach. I had much more fun teaching than I did writing.

MD: Well, we are all very grateful that you chose to teach, even if people told you it was impossible. We have all benefited from it. Moving in to our topic for the day, we have been doing some lyric writing lessons on the program and we have touched on the subject of metaphor, this is something you are an expert on, I feel, and cover in your book so beautifully. I just want to open the subject by asking you how important do you think it is for a lyricist to develop his/her use of figurative language?

SD: Well, I find that a very interesting question. I'll take it in two parts, Mary. I think it is not important for a successful lyricist to write in a figurative way. When I first started teaching, what I found was some people were very metaphoric, quite naturally, some were not metaphoric but rather, ironic and punned. Some were very realistic and full of sensate details (names of towns, colors, people, and dates) and were not metaphoric. I thought, what is going on here? As a teacher of lyric writing I found I was in a unique position where students came to me, some staying with me for over 10 years, and I was able to amass an incredible number of lyrics by the same student. I saw the most fascinating pattern of either figurative language or not figurative language, well-used language or not-well-used language. I personally don't think metaphorically. So the long-winded answer to your question is if one uses metaphors -- that the metaphors be clear, be true, be unified and not be mixed or murky. That is the main thing; not that one becomes metaphorical or works on metaphor, but that if you are going to write [a metaphorical song] that you are coherent and unified and clear, and that you don't start a metaphor and later mix the metaphor.

MD: Well, differentiate for us a little bit, I know metaphor is a broad term and under that there are several categories of metaphoric language. Give us some clarity on those different types.

SD: Okay, metaphor is what is known as a major trope, it is a way we conceptualize life and it is the most basic figurative language. Metaphor is a large umbrella under which its subforms include simile, personification, apostrophe; those are the major subtypes and they are all very common in popular songs.

Simile is a kind of metaphor that is stated, using 'like', 'as', or 'than' (e.g."I am as corny as Kansas in August," or he's "meaner than a junkyard dog"). Oscar Hammerstein was an extremely metaphoric writer.

Ol' Man River, that's personification, when we attribute human qualities to inanimate objects. For example, Love Walked In, love didn't walk in; The Summer Knows is a song that treats the season as if she is a woman who sheds her clothes; I Write the Songs is a great personification that was done very well and was unified.

Apostrophe is a kind of personification where we address an absent or a dead person or an abstraction as if it were going to answer us. Paul Simon said, "Hello Darkness, my old friend", that's apostrophe; or "California, here I come". A lot of songs are based on talking to states. Moon River, is apostrophe, "I'm crossing you in style", talking to the river.

MD: And we have an example of that, Luck Be A Lady, which we are going to play.

SD: Oh great.

MD: Do you want to make a comment about that song?

SD: Well, the wonderful thing is that it is so coherent. Luck be a lady is metaphoric to begin with and then specifically it is addressing luck as if it were a woman, so it personifies luck and it addresses luck, so it uses apostrophe. In the song, the singer is addressing luck as if she were his date for the night. Because of its metaphoric clarity and consistency, it's a role-model lyric.

MD: Here are some interesting facts about the writer and the performer. Luck Be A Lady was, of course, part of the famous hit musical, Guys and Dolls, with the words and music for all the songs written by the famous Frank Lesser. The musical was based on the book written by Damon Runyon called, The Idle of Sarah Brown, about a community of gamblers and their girls. Frank's clever and witty songs were so spectacular that many of then became "stand alone" songs, successful entirely apart from the musical. Songs like, If I Were a Bell and A Bushel And A Peck, became instant hits that are still recognized today. That is the acid test of a great musical song, to be able to stand apart from the context of the play. The version of the song we are going to hear today features Robert Alda, the star of the original Broadway cast. Incidentally, Robert Alda is the father of Allan Alda whom we all know and remember as Dr. "Hawk Eye" Pierce of M.A.S.H. fame.

Luck Be A Lady is in the AABA song form with an additional B section added. Let's listen to the wonderful words and music of Frank Lesser as he uses skilled figurative language to communicate the life of a gambler.

MD: Please join us again next time for the conclusion of our interview with Sheila Davis. She will be continuing to give us some guidelines for learning to use metaphoric language and some pitfalls to avoid as we learn. And remember, the next best thing to writing a great song is talking about it!

Part 2 of the Sheila Davis Interview will be featured in next quarters newsletter so be sure to stay tuned!