Chemistry

The Beatles had it, and then they developed it further by external experimentation.

The Stones fabricated it, then passed it off as the real thing until it became the real thing, as if by process of alchemy.

Van Halen had it, then spent the next thirty years arguing about which of them was responsible for it without ever working out that they all were.

The Police had it, and Gordon never realised that the toughness of Stewart Copeland and the know-how of Andy Summers was the secret sauce to his songs.

Bob had it and realised if he said what it was, he wouldn’t have it anymore.

Elvis had it - and then some.

I’m talking about chemistry.

Chemistry, and the search for it, is why consultants, coaches, gurus and snake-oil salesmen can make a living everywhere from business to politics and from the music industry to the sports field.

Follow our method. Adopt our culture. Drink our Kool-Aid and you to can be a millionaire / million-selling artist.

What absolute crap.

Did no-one spot when the New Zealand All Blacks came out with their book and their documentary expounding their culture and their values that their actual history indicated that they themselves hadn’t adhered to the former or lived the latter? Culture is not something you get from a book. It can’t be grafted on and there you go, you’ve got a ‘positive, empowering culture.’ Values are not something that are expounded from the top down. That’s why Government drives to increase the mobility and activity of the nation don’t work. You either get off the couch or you don’t.

Here’s the truth:

1) Self-help books only work if you open them and act on what they say.

2) The ‘culture’ you live in is the sum of your lived actions every day. It lasts as long as you continue to take those actions. It changes when those actions change.

3) Your values aren’t the best-self ones you write down on a sheet of paper and try to live up to. Your values are the sum of how you live every day. They are the decisions you take in choosing what you do every day: how you walk, how you talk, how you treat others, how you treat yourself; how you leave the world. Do you turn up on time or are you late? Do you make excuses for turning up on time or being late? Do you do the job you’ve taken on to the best of your ability or do you make sure you look like you’re doing it to the best of your ability? Do you leave people feeling better about themselves or do you go out of your way to make it look like you are? Do you go the extra mile, or do you sack it off?

The last one can be a positive choice either way. The others are the difference between being a decent person and being a superficial one. We can all be superficial at times, but if the choices to appear good and venerable and positive start to outweight actually being those things …

… you’ve all the depth of a puddle.

Welcome to the twenty-first century.

You’ll fit right in.

Especially in the music biz.

Chemistry is a similar proposition.

You can develop chemistry, but sometimes its there straight away.

Sometimes chemistry comes through the development or application of competence and skill.

Sometimes chemistry comes because no-one knows what they’re doing.

It’s simple.

And complex.

I’m turning over the idea of chemistry because I’m about to start recording the songs that will make up Songs For Separation.

Back in 2020 when they first arrived, I thought about recording them one take. One guitar, one mic, one take. But that became the approach for Test Pieces; and I don’t ever want to make the same album twice. Each one should be different. Yes, of course, there’ll be a certain emotional core and a certain commonality connecting each if I’m playing … but unless the ethos and the approach and the intent are different … well, you’re just in indie landfill territory. I want each release to be different. Northumbria is emotionally intense, layered, immersive and cinematic. Test Pieces is a journey through an expansive intimate and personal internal landscape. The common denominator then, now and in the future will always be the song … but I’ve always seen / felt a trajectory from seeing how far I can take just me and an acoustic guitar to other musicians being involved and other sonic landscapes.

And that’s where we get into the idea of chemistry: musical chemistry / band chemistry.

I sidetracked into ideas about value and culture because I firmly believe that there are direct equivalences between music and sport. The art, discipline and practices are the same. The route to sublimity in each is achieved through a focus on logistics and mechanics. Being able to play music on a guitar takes the same degree of mechanical learning and work as being able to move a single through water - and in each hard work can be rewarded by occasional moments of transcendental grace.

And the chemistry of a great team / crew is like the chemistry of a great band: real, palpable, fragile and subject to ending at any given moment.

You can develop it through practice, rehearsal, training (call them what you want, they’re all the same thing), but the weird thing is that while you’re working on the mechanics that inform the chemistry, the chemistry itself might have nothing whatsoever to do with the mechanical ability of the practitioners involved. It might be in the group dynamic, and that group dynamic might be one quip away from the quiet one that everyone ribs finally snapping and going flip this. It might be in the push-me / pull-you relationship of two alphas - the whole lead singer / lead guitarist trope. It might just be in one group of completely different and otherwise unconnected people simply being together in the right place at the right time at the right moment in history in the right field.

That’s why it’s called chemistry.

Because you can count hydrogen atoms all you like, chemistry remains a tricky science. You’re one extra second in a bunsen burner from getting the Nobel Prize or your test tube exploding and setting fire to the lab.

Chemistry.

Everything is chemistry because life is chemistry.

Chemistry is always there. It’s always happening.

Whether it’s good or bad depends.

On context.

Circumstance.

Needs. Wants. Desires.

But it’s there.

It’s always there.

So, let’s say I have these songs - because I have. Seven of them. Cowboy chords. Words. Melodies. Verses. Choruses. Bridges. Song stuff. Now, I can do it by myself: one guitar, one mic, one take, done. But see above. Now, the singer-songwriter thing can be great. It’s got a long history - all the way back to madrigals and bardic recitations while on mushrooms if we’re being precise. But because of that long history, like a lot of music, it’s a well-mined seam, which I discuss here. The curse of the nice. Here’s the four-line verse / here’s the four-line chorus / here’s the secondary guitar part on the second four-line verse / here’s the melodic solo on the verse chords / here’s the drop to the middle eight … Parts, sounds, dynamics. They’re can be by rote. Patterns that fit rather than music.

A great band, like a great crew, will take you out of your comfort zone. They’ll push when you would have pulled. They’ll go for the win when you would have held for the result. They don’t care about how you hear it. They’re going to put their thumbprints all over the wet clay of your idea. They’re going to push and pull it into new shapes you didn’t think about. They’re going to put the groove here when you heard it being there. They’re going to wind to rate 44 off the start and they’re going to stay there until your oppo breaks even though that wasn’t the plan.

Because.

I want Songs for Separation to be recorded by a band. In other words, I want Andy H to grin just when I don’t want him to and press the pedal I don’t want him to press and make a mess of my bridge. I want Simeon Moss to ignore my instructions about the two and the four and break out something from his fine selection of press rolls. I want the thumbprints of others.

Except Andy is busy with his own project at the moment, and Sim too, and I don’t have a band.

So, maybe I can be my own band?

Worked for Stevie Wonder.

And Paul McCartney.

The downside to playing everything yourself is that it all sounds like your playing.

But here’s the thing.

If art is made in a confluence of form, content, context, choice and limitations (which it is), then here’s what I’m thinking:

I don’t have to play everything from my perspective.

I can be someone else’s guitarist / bass player / percussionist / etc.

Let’s say I put one track down - me, singing and playing the tune.

Then, I listen to it like I’m listening to someone else’s tune: it’s something the bloody singer has brought in, always whining on in rhyming couplets. How’s it go? What are the chords here? Why is my guitar buzzing? Is my pedal on? What’s he singing about? Am I hearing something? What am I hearing? What’s the emotion here? What am I feeling … ?

… and play that?

Would that work as an approach?

Let’s find out.

©℗ A. I. Jackson

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Origin(al) Stories was first launched to show some of the thoughts, decisions and processes that went into the writing, recording and release of the Northumbria album.

Following the launch of The Landing Stage, which brings together some of the things I do, I’ve continued adding to Origin(al) Stories.

Origin(al) Stories has none of the features beloved of self-help and influencers: how-to guides, lists, essential hacks.

Drawn from my personal diaries and journals, the posts might often seem unconnected, elliptical and fragmentary. Showing, as they do, my explorations of ideas and approaches and processes as I do things, they are best viewed as glimpses of my workings.

They show my mistakes, the false trails I’ve followed, and the blind alleys I’ve gone down - all of which are intrinsic parts of finding a path through to doing something.

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Thanks for reading. Have a great day. Tell the people you love that you love them. Be a positive force.