Tom Dunne: Naturally, it was a joy to talk songwriting with Gilbert O'Sullivan
Gilbert O'Sullivan emigrated from Waterford to England as a child.
How people write songs has always fascinated me. Some write every crotchet individually; others just start to sing whatever is in their heads while others around them scramble to work out chords. But how Gilbert O’Sullivan writes songs: Well, I never.
Paul Heaton from the Beautiful South used to compose the songs in his head. Then he and pianist Paul Heatherington would book a two-week holiday in Torremolinos. Locked in a room Paul would sing future hits to Heatherington and task him with working out the music.
Sinead O’Connor would often just stand at the mic and start singing. I’m not sure how advanced musically Dolores O’Riordan was when she wrote but I’ll bet it wasn’t virtuoso level. Jim Kerr would skulk in a corner listening to Simple Minds rehearse for hours before declaring “This bit + That bit = .”
Gilbert was writing songs from an early age. “Our Raymond [his real name] writes his own songs,” his proud mum would declare at family gatherings, before hectoring him to perform.
Songwriting was his mission. It is an incredible story but one you feel he is reluctant to tell. His focus on “the next song” is unrelenting. He appears to never look back.
Which is a great pity for us, because the story of the O’Sullivan family leaving Waterford in the 1950s is a story for our age. An Irish family in the Swindon Irish community, a dad who dies young, a mum who raises six children, one of whom, by 22, tops the US charts on his way to winning three Ivor Novello Awards. Hollywood, are you reading this?
I only got 20 minutes with Gilbert ahead of his upcoming 3Arena show in Dublin in October. Incredibly, it will be his first ever Arena show. A story there — one of so many — for another day too. With only 20 minutes I had come to talk songs.
Because it’s not as if these are B-sides by The Fall that we are talking about. In the early 1970s, as the era of the “singer songwriter” really took hold, with talents like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Cat Stevens starting to dominate, Gilbert was working on a different level.
The year 1972 in the USA was really a tale of two songs. Gilbert’s and Roberta Flack's version of Ewan MacColl's . In 1973, the three great songwriters were regarded as Randy Newman, Paul McCartney and Gilbert. But it was Gilbert that the Ivors Institute selected as Songwriter of the Year 1973.
So anyway, the way he writes these songs: He tells me. “I play rhythmic piano, drums with my left hand, chords with my right. I can’t do fancy stuff.”
If you watch him playing you will see what he means. He works on quite a small part of the piano, but it seems to give him all he needs. But it’s the vocal melody and lyric composition that is jaw dropping. He writes a “gibberish” lyric to begin with.
“Gibberish?” I ask, dumbfounded. “Yes gibberish” he tells me, “but emotional gibberish, with the exact melody and feeling and nuance of the final song.”
“And then?’ I ask, thinking pitifully of the times my own “gibberish lyrics” have ended up actually being recorded as I couldn’t improve them.
“The easy bit,” he says, “I just go off and write the lyrics.” Sensing my shock he jumps in, “Oh come on, it’s not rocket science. That’s my favourite part. It’s easy.”
And that is why Gilbert O’Sullivan is one of the songwriting geniuses of the 20th century and you and I are not. Because he thinks writing the lyrics to songs like and is “the easy bit”.
BTW he has drawers full of still unfinished songs with “gibberish” just waiting to be set to words.
His mum looms large in the interview, You can tell she knew he was a special boy, sending him to piano lessons, buying him instruments. He mentions her often both in the interview and in song. But can you read more about this? No, because, incredibly, there is no autobiography.
“Me and Jeff Lynn,” he jokes. “Just not interested. It’s just about the next song.” This is our loss, and a galling one.
Please Gilbert we beg you: tell all. You have no idea how remarkable your story, like your talent, really is. I am available.
