The Crack of Dawn #797

10/13/2025

10/12/2025

Newsletter #797

The Crack of Dawn

About six months ago I became obsessed with writing lyrics. I’ve previously mentioned that I’ve been farting around with writing lyrics since I was seventeen. In the next fifty years I wrote a couple of hundred songs, and I always knew that they all sucked. I was doing something wrong, and I knew it. Some of my lyrics were clever, many had amusing rhymes, none of them were musical. None of them were songs.

So I just thought, “When did I start writing lyrics again?” Then I remembered, “Oh, that’s right, I have a daily journal. I could check.” Well, I did check, and I found that the lyric writing is first mentioned on Monday, May 26, 2025, just about six months ago.

Back in May I took a stab at adapting Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons into a musical. I think it’s a great idea, but it’s not mine. It was the idea of my dear late friend Rick Sandford. Rick never wanted to do it himself, he wanted Stephen Sondheim to do it. Rick even wrote Sondheim a letter suggesting it. He never heard back. Alas, it never happened.

Fifty years later . . . meaning about six months ago, I thought, “Huh. Both Rick Sandford and Stephen Sondheim are dead. That idea is mine now.”

The first thing that a stage musical needs is a “book.” Oddly, the book is actually the play. For this musical’s book I used Orson Welles’s screenplay for his 1942 movie. That was easily found online. My idea was this—I would write the lyrics, and the composer was TBD.

Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons.

Okay, what was going to be the first song, and who was singing it? The movie begins with a brilliant, lengthy montage establishing what life was like in 1890 in a midwestern American town, narrated by Orson Welles, in his sonorous, slightly amused, tone. It immediately seemed to me that the first song should be sung by the Orson Welles-like narrator. This made perfect sense to me.

Unlike any other time when I’d written what I thought was a lyric, this time I specifically knew what I was writing about, and whose voice it was in. All right, what should it sound like? Then I thought, what was a hit song in 1890? Whatever that song was, it could be the musical style of the show. A song came to me quickly—A Bicycle Built for Two. I spent the next several hours breaking that song down into its elements and studying them.

{Verse}
Daisy Daisy
Give me your answer do
I'm half crazy
Over the likes of you

{Bridge}
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford a carriage

{Chorus}
But you'd look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two

The verse is written in the second-most common rhyme scheme presently in use--the first line rhymes with the third line; the second line rhymes with the fourth line. This is known as A-B-A-B. It's a hard form to follow, with two rhymes in verse.  

On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise man tells a joke
I run to chase diving signs
To satisfy the hoax

That's the first example that jumped to mind.  It's In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson, lyrics by Peter Sinfield. A-B-A-B, though cry and signs is reaching a bit, but that's allowed, too.

The most common rhyme scheme for verses by far is A-B-C-B, meaning there's only one rhyme instead of two, and is therefore much easier to write.  

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

It's a great lyric, and the rhyme is me and be.

But most interestingly to me, in A Bicycle Built for Two, the last line of the verse rhymes with the last line of the chorus—Over the likes of you/Of a bicycle built for two.

And it dawned on me. Oh my God. The flow of the words, and the choice of where the rhymes occur, gives it its rhythm. I’m not just looking for rhymes; I’m looking for rhymes with rhythm.

All right. I automatically chose the easiest form, A-B-C-B, and wrote the opening song. It was to be sung by the narrator (who could be a character on the side of the stage, like in Our Town). I worked on the lyric for a couple of weeks, and for the first time in my life, I really felt like I was writing a song, not a poem. In any case, I was pleased with my effort and thought it turned out pretty well.

That’s how I started writing lyrics again. Here is the opening song dated 6/21/2025. That’s barely five weeks ago. To set the scene, we’re in a mid-sized American town in the 1890s.

When the Ambersons were Magnificent

When times were far less complicated
Not all that long ago
Before the advent of motorcars
When the traffic moved real slow

Streetcars pulled by horses
Would stop and patiently wait
For a woman to pin on her bonnet
Then casually stroll out the gate

There was time for everything then
Cotillions, ball and parades
Lovesick boys 'neath girl's windows
Sang them serenades

It was a time of top hats and tails
Corsets were made with whale bones
Floor-length gowns of silk and satin
Before the arrival of telephones

High above the hoi polloi
Residing in a stately mansion
Was the richest family in town
Who went by the name of Amberson 

The Ambersons were so wealthy
So elegant and munificent
They were darn near royalty
Indeed, they were magnificent

I felt like I’d had my own little breakthrough in lyric writing, and I think I had. That certainly didn’t mean I could write a whole musical, with ten songs. That’s a huge ordeal. Where do the songs come in? And why? Who’s singing? Pretty quickly, I was overwhelmed. Too many questions. I tried to write the second song, got nowhere, then promptly gave up on the project. I’d get back to it later. Writing a musical wasn’t important; writing songs was.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.