Getting a little warm in here, Catters...

Tonight, I went to hear Rick Fielding and had a wonderful time. He asked me to come up and do a couple of songs, with a particular request for Handful of Songs. He jokingly pointed out that he changed the melody, the words and the chords when he "arranged" it. But, I told him, "It's still the same song." And he does a beautiful job on it..

Seems like there's too much concern about covering our posterity. What's gonna be is gonna be. I'd prefer that people learn the words to songs that I've written, and use the same melody and chord progression, but I really can't ge that concerned if they feel the song another way. Who knows what's going to survive, and in what form it's going to survive? Maybe Smells Like Teen Spirit (by Nirvana) will last longer than all of our songs. I try not to sweat things that I don't have any control over. I had a friend who spent most of his life in a snit because he got mail addressed to William Pitt, and his actual name was Bill. Maybe he should havfe had his name changed legally to William, just to avoid being irritated so much.

I don't change recently written songs, myself, because I know the loving care that went into writing them... and I like the song to reflect that writer. But, songs that are already in the tradition in umptee billion versions are fair game, as far as I'm concerned. Even there, though, I don't want to lose the flavor of the time and circumstances in which strong originally came out of.

"Let it be, let it be.."

Or should that be "allow it to be, allow it to be..."

Jerry