Bill Morrissey – hurts so good
The one original on the disc, Brown’s “Fishing With Bill”, documents their shared passion for flyfishing — an activity that, unlikely as it may seem, sometimes plays a significant role in the songwriting process for Morrissey.
“A lot of times what will happen is, in the spring, I’ll get halfway through a song, and then I’ll just hit the wall, I can’t take it lyrically any further. And I’ll go out and flyfish,” he says. “And then I’ll come back the next morning, and there are the four or eight lines that I was looking for. It’s like somehow the well refilled when I wasn’t consciously thinking of it. And it’ll seem so obvious, like, why couldn’t I have gotten that yesterday? So in a weird way, that’s kind of work, too.”
The heart of the work, though, is a commitment of discipline that is central to Morrissey’s routine as a writer. “I’m gonna spend a few hours a day [writing] when I’m really fresh in the morning. It eases the Catholic guilt,” he says with only a slight chuckle. “I just wanna feel like I’m working, like I didn’t just like blow the day off….But even if I’m not writing, I’m trying to learn like a Skip James tune, or I’m trying to just work on some guitar chops.”
Ah yes, lest we forget that there’s much more to songwriting than just the words. “I like to think of myself as a musician who writes songs ,” he says. “I come from the Woody and Bob Dylan kind of perspective of telling a story, but I’m also, especially as I get older, much more aware of melody and musical structure.
“I’m still a music student. You listen to other songwriters and you learn, as far as modulation and what notes against what chords, this and that. And the structure; some people start their songs with the middle eight, or have a completely separate introduction.
“The Beatles were so perfect with that; they’re a textbook on arranging and melody and stuff. So I constantly listen to the Beatles. And I hope to be able to incorporate some of that stuff a bit more in some of my newer writing….I think it’s coming up more in chord structure in my songs, where I would normally, say, go to a 4 chord, major, I’ll hit the same note vocally, but I’ll hit a minor chord against it. I’m just trying to teach myself.”
“Will You Be My Rose?” is a fine example of Morrissey’s growth as a melodic songwriter, noticeably breaking from his typical verse-chorus form with a graceful bridge that complements the song’s primary melody perfectly. Given its combination of musical sophistication and lyrical simplicity, it seems ripe for interpretation by the likes of a major-league balladeer — maybe even someone like Barbra Streisand, I suggest.
“Yeah, I think Van Morrison could do it,” he offers, choosing certainly a more likely candidate to convey the song’s soulful core. In any case, he agrees that the tune is a rarity in his oeuvre for its potential to become a blockbuster pop song.
“Yeah, I think so,” he admits with a laugh. “But I certainly wouldn’t mind. Even if I end up going to my grave as, you know, ‘Oh, that’s the guy who wrote the Britney Spears tune.'”
ND co-editor Peter Blackstock traveled from Texas to New England in August 1985 because he was hoping Bob Dylan would make a surprise appearance at the newly revived Newport Folk Festival. Dylan didn’t show, but the first act to take the stage that weekend was Bill Morrissey.