I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.
But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.
I like to interpret 'Call me a River', as if I'm saying, 'Now you're telling me you love me after all that, and I'm telling you to shove off.' That's my interpretation. But I would never 'say' that because somebody else might interpret the song in another way.
The album is a definite departure. I haven't written original material before, except for one song on my first album, but Elvis and I did six songs together on this one.
You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.
Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing.
While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune.
You kind of have to become a song so to speak and we wanted to make sure that Tom did them with the best abilities he had and captured all that what the song is all about.
When we play "Angel of Death", it's actually a 2 and half minutes sing 'til our party starts. That song is pretty much been played traditionally in the end.
I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.
Of course, the kids who had never heard of a person called Ben E. King were then aware of the name associated with the song. That gave a tremendous lift to me as an artist.
