Interview with Wayne Carson from Classicbands.com:
http://www.classicbands.com/WayneCarsonInterview.html
From the site:
Q - How long did it take you to write "Always On My Mind"?
A - About 10 minutes. I wrote those verses in Springfield, Missouri at my kitchen table and I carried that around for about a year. I sang it one time for Chips Moman, my producer at that time and my old friend. I had just cut a version of "No Love At All" that B.J. Thomas later had the number one record on. I was sitting there and said "What else do you want to cut?" He said "Let's do that mind song." And we did a version of "Always On My Mind" and it didn't have a bridge. Chips said "I think it needs a bridge. Why don't you go write a bridge for it and we'll cut it again." In the meantime that's how I accrued the two co-writers, Johnny Christopher and Mark James. Both came in while I was sitting there at that old piano upstairs in Chip's office. I asked them "Why don't you help me with this song? I gotta do a bridge for this song so I can cut it tonight." Musicians are all downstairs you know. So Johnny sat down and said "We didn't come up with anything." And Mark sat down and said "I think you got it finished." I said "Well I do too, but Chips wants a bridge," and so we wrote those two little lines. It would never have been the same song I'm sure without those two lines, but that's how that all came about. But it didn't take me long. It never takes me long to write a song. Like I said, it's just out there. All you gotta do is reach out and gather it up and put it together. (laughs)
The following interview extends the above story a little bit -- the article makes reference to "Tips Smallman" when they obviously mean "Chips Moman!" Perhaps transcribing from a tape recording?
The site credits Jake Brown (author of Nashville Songwriter) for the interview:
Anyway, I took it back downstairs and we cut it and all the guys in the band seemed to like it—that was kind of my gauge. When I did something new, I asked my pickers, my buddies I played all those records with, like the Box Tops and all that stuff—I did a lot of recording with that band as just a guitar player, you know. Myself and Bobby Womack and, of course, Reggie Young were the band. Anyway, we cut it. And a little session on it right there, and took it to Nashville. I was recording for Mongoose Records—that’s who I was with, Fred Foster. We couldn’t wait to get here and play that thing for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment