Lindsey's self-quotations throughout the years.

[face of glass]

We all know LB likes to reuse his previous musical ideas. Before someone comes here and starts to use this list I've made as a way of denigrating Lindsey, I will say this. Lindsey’s “self-quotations” aren’t always that obvious and they are often used in different contexts and usually have a different meaning and feel to them. That’s how I see it.

So, I’ve made a list of his recyclables. I’m sure it’s not complete and other people can obviously add their own suggestions to it. May this list be sent to someone who is going to interview Lindsey and then be used as a basis for an interesting discussion.

I’m not really listing the lyrics here (hell, my screen name has appeared in three different songs), but they can be discussed too.

Here goes:

“Stephanie” (verse riff) > “Eyes Of The World” (the main riff) > “Bang The Drum” (vocal interaction and the keyboard riff in the chorus)
“Lola (My Love)” (the main riff) > “World Turning” (the main riff is basically a variation)
“Lola (My Love)” (the main riff) > “The Chain” (the little arpeggio at the end of the bar) > “Destiny Rules” (the dobro tone hints at those two)
“I’m So Afraid” > “Tango In The Night” (chords during solo) > Murrow (chords during solo)
“Not That Funny” > “I Know I’m Not Wrong” (the chords and the middle eight)
“Take A Little Time” > “That’s How We Do It In LA” (the guitar riff changed into a keyboard riff. Thanks to ChiliD for this one.)
“Johnny Stew” > “Gift Of Screws” (the guitar doubled with vocals, some similar parts)
“Big Love” > “Doing What I Can” (the chords, the riffage and a bit of the guitar solo)
“Big Love” (acoustic) > “Go Insane” (acoustic) (the four “bookend chords”)
“Big Love” > “Miranda” (chords, riffage)
“Big Love” (the chorus riff) > “Destiny Rules” (the opening riff)
“You And I Part 2” > “Surrender The Rain” (the keyboard riff in the chorus)
“You Do Or You Don’t” > “Bleed To Love Her” (the middle eight)

Hope you can understand what I mean. Also, a while ago I heard that the guitar in “You And I Part Two” is phrased similarly to the chorus guitar riff in “Big Love”. Does this mean that he wants us to believe Tango In The Night is a concept album?

The question is: WILL THIS EVER END?

[wondergirl9847]

He DOES repeat lots of riffs and stuff. Just like Stevie with her repeated lyrics in Destiny Rules/Illume and Blue Lamp/Welcome to the Room, Sara...etc. They say it's just like a continuation of their music, it all brings the songs all together in a way.

I likened this argument to ice cream once. Hehe.

I like chocolate ice cream, I also love mint chocolate chip and chocolate almond, etc. They are similar, but have a different flavor to them. I love them ALL, they are all GOOD, but some have the same properties (chocolate).

Those riffs he re-uses are STRONG riffs, they aren't anything to sneeze at. It kinda gives all those songs a thread (THAT'S that word I was looking for a few minutes ago. LOL) to link them, like with Stevie's lyrics. Looks like Big Love is a serious contender for seguewaying (is that the right word? LOL) into other songs, huh?

Faces...I'm so glad you joined the Ledge because I can tell you REALLY love discussion and debate!!

[Cammie]

That's why... We LIKE Lindsey's
MUSIC..its... Familiar...Meaningful!!!

The Man's a Musical GENIUS!!! Skylark

[BlueGrass]

Hey if something is good why not use it again...but then again it sort of contradicts to what Lindsey is all about. He did Tusk to keep moving forward and not wanting to keep making the same music.

??

[shackin'up]

....I think he just HAS to reinforce his believe in cycles...

[shackin'up]

Well, I'd say that Lindsey is quiet an ecclectic composer. He uses from himself AND others. (Murrow>Ram Jam-Black Betty, Big Love>Kate Bush-Running Up That Hill, Second Hand News>BeeGees-Jive Talking, Peacekeeper>Paul Simon-Kodachrome More?.....add your suggestions). Like he said in the classic album documentary on SHN: "So i borrowed some structures from that"...and then that proud, selfindulgent but also cute and naieve grin -love that!-.

So, face of glass, I don't think this will stop. Even his solo's are composed and edited. He likes to talk about his working-process in terms of painting(solo) or filmmaking(with FM), but his own songs, to me, always sound as free-form constructions. Like playing with Lego without the instructions: Just try something out, if it doesn't work, deconstruct partially and add something else on intuition. You always see that there are some automatics in the way you build, and sometimes you'll find things that resemble things that you saw before from others. Once you discovered that, it's nice to try to put those things in consciously.

STOP! Do I make any sense here?

[face of glass]

Originally posted by wondergirl9847
Those riffs he re-uses are STRONG riffs, they aren't anything to sneeze at. It kinda gives all those songs a thread (THAT'S that word I was looking for a few minutes ago. LOL) to link them, like with Stevie's lyrics. Looks like Big Love is a serious contender for seguewaying (is that the right word? LOL) into other songs, huh?

I like to think that Lindsey has a bit of that pretentious artistic sense that progressive rock artists have. He has a theme he likes to repeat somewhere else and thus refers to the earlier piece. He’s trying to tie them together. Of course you can go pretty far here, if you start analysing these. Burnish babes were discussing “Eyes Of The World” and came up with the idea that since he borrows the riff from “Stephanie”, it’s Stevie’s “lies” he’s talking about. Or “Surrender The Rain” refers to the break-up with FM, because he uses that simple keyboard thing from “You And I Part Two”. Of course this is still nothing when compared to the “conceptual continuity” Frank Zappa used to have, where every one of his albums referred to an earlier work of his. Lindsey likes to have it on a smaller scale, he still speaks of himself as a pop musician. He doesn’t want to do twenty-minute sidelongs.

Faces...I'm so glad you joined the Ledge because I can tell you REALLY love discussion and debate!!

Thanks Christy. I do think I went too far when I dared to analyse Stevie’s songwriting, but Johnny Stew put me in my place. Damn he’s good.

Originally posted by BlueGrass
Hey if something is good why not use it again...but then again it sort of contradicts to what Lindsey is all about. He did Tusk to keep moving forward and not wanting to keep making the same music.

??

Yeah, everything after Tusk and Law And Order has been pretty much a mix of Rumours and Tusk; he likes to have something experimental on every album but he arranges even those very carefully. I don’t think he’s really taken any gigantic steps after that double album. And I’m sure he recognizes that, because rock music today isn’t really doing anything significantly new, it’s just expanding on earlier ideas. That’s what Lindsey’s doing too and he’s doing it a lot better than most in the business.
And I did say that often he uses the same ideas in different contexts, so that they feel different. “Lola (My Love)” has a playful quality to it while “The Chain” can be harrowing. “Big Love” is a subtle (okay, not during those vocal effects) pop composition, “Doing What I Can” is a speedy rocker. I didn’t really notice the similarity between “Take A Little Time” and “That’s How We Do It In LA”, or “Big Love” and “Destiny Rules” until someone else pointed it out to me.
So the point is, that Lindsey obviously knows he can’t do anything radically new, especially not anymore. But it doesn’t really matter, because I still can’t feel myself that he would be totally ripping himself off or just trying to cash in on the former glories. I don’t mind recycling here and there if the song still has an identity of its own.

Originally posted by shackin'up
....I think he just HAS to reinforce his believe in cycles...

Hah, I was just thinking about adding something like this today and you beat me to it. His speeches always have a whiff of pretentiousness too.

Well, I'd say that Lindsey is quiet an ecclectic composer. He uses from himself AND others. (Murrow>Ram Jam-Black Betty, Big Love>Kate Bush-Running Up That Hill, Second Hand News>BeeGees-Jive Talking, Peacekeeper>Paul Simon-Kodachrome More?.....add your suggestions). Like he said in the classic album documentary on SHN: "So i borrowed some structures from that"...and then that proud, selfindulgent but also cute and naieve grin -love that!-.

That's the thing I love about him the most, he's not really limiting his music to a certain style. He sometimes reminds me of the British pop music eccentrics like Roy Wood, who also had this weird array of influences. Something like “Caroline”, with its tribal beats and picking combined with singing in an eastern scale and his picking is up there with Wood’s maddest creations.
Lindsey confessed in the very first guitar magazine article that came out before Say You Will was released, that he always seems to include the “dobro” riff into the recordings somehow. He said he picked it up from Stephen Stills.

So, face of glass, I don't think this will stop. Even his solo's are composed and edited. He likes to talk about his working-process in terms of painting(solo) or filmmaking(with FM), but his own songs, to me, always sound as free-form constructions. Like playing with Lego without the instructions: Just try something out, if it doesn't work, deconstruct partially and add something else on intuition. You always see that there are some automatics in the way you build, and sometimes you'll find things that resemble things that you saw before from others. Once you discovered that, it's nice to try to put those things in consciously.

STOP! Do I make any sense here?

Stop making sense! I guess Lindsey should quote that Talking Heads phrase too.
I guess there is a childishness to even Out Of The Cradle songs. I wouldn’t say it’s freeform, more like free-form with discipline, but he still has that playfulness in his music. And that’s the most important thing. That he doesn’t think he should write utterly serious compositions and then pretend that they are the deepest things on earth. He still has that sense of humour in his music and that’s the main reason why I love him.

[chiliD]

Similarly, if you listen to the two albums the Who did prior to Tommy, there are TONS of similar themes and lyrics that Pete Townshend used for the rock opera...so basically, Tommy was a whole rock opera of recycled ideas that Pete had lying around.

The big one in particular, on The Who Sell Out, there's a song called "It's A Girl" (the main lyric of which is "It's a girl, Mrs Walker, it's a girl")...then Pete just used the whole song & lyric, just changed the gender of the main character.

VOILA!!!

"It's a boy, Mrs. Walker; it's a boy"

*********************************

Actually, with Tango In The Night & Out Of The Cradle, I've come to a theory that Lindsey had a definite theme already etched in stone for his solo album...when he used a few songs for the Fleetwood Mac album, he rewrote tunes with similar or nearly identical grooves to replace them...such as:

Big Love---Doing What I Can
Caroline---This Is The Time
Family Man---Surrender The Rain
You & I, Part 2---Soul Drifter

[face of glass]

Originally posted by chiliD
The big one in particular, on The Who Sell Out, there's a song called "It's A Girl" (the main lyric of which is "It's a girl, Mrs Walker, it's a girl")...then Pete just used the whole song & lyric, just changed the gender of the main character.

VOILA!!!

"It's a boy, Mrs. Walker; it's a boy"

Yeah, it's that song "Glow Girl" which was the bonus track on the 1995 reissue. And one theme from "Rael" was later made into "Sparks"/"Underture".

I can see a similarity between "Caroline" and "This Is The Time" in that usage of the rhythm machine, but "You And I, Part Two" and "Soul Drifter" feel very different to me; the other sounds like a childrens' song and the other is supposed to be a sophisticated Tin Pan Alley composition. "Family Man" and "Surrender The Rain" feel very different too. But perhaps there's something I'm missing.

[chiliD]

Yeah..."Glow Girl"...I knew I'd had the title incorrect, thanks.

Parts of the Who tune "Naked Eye" also were used on Tommy

[wondergirl9847]

Well, at least Lindsey doesn't steal from himself a'la Creedence frontman, John Fogerty.



BWAH!! That is just the strangest thing.

[strandinthewind]

In opera, there is a term (the name escpares me) that is used to mean a series of notes that are played every time a character appears. It is used to evoke a feeling. A good example of this is in Puccini's "Tosca" (where it is rumored to have first been used) when the the bad guy "Scarpia" enters a scene and dark music is played. A lighter example of a similar technique in a different medium is in "Young Frankenstein" when Frau Blucher's name is mentioned and the horses bay

I think LB is very schooled in all types of music as he has played just about all of them in his music. So, maybe that is sort of what he is doing when he repeats - he wants to evoke the same emotion over and over.

Food for Thought

[Johnny Stew]

Originally posted by strandinthewind
In opera, there is a term (the name escpares me) that is used to mean a series of notes that are played every time a character appears. It is used to evoke a feeling.

You're absolutely right... it's called "leitmotif."

I love when a songwriter refers back to something earlier in their work... whether it be thru a musical passage, or a lyric.
It definitely gives a sense of wholeness to their body of work, and you get the impression that you're not just listening to individual songs with no connection... but that they're telling another aspect of the story, or relating an ongoing journey.

Of course, that's when it's done well.
Sometimes it just comes off as if the songwriter has run out of ideas.
Thankfully though, the latter does not seem to be true of either Lindsey or Stevie.

[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by Johnny Stew
You're absolutely right... it's called "leitmotif."

Thank you sir

[face of glass]

Originally posted by chiliD
Yeah..."Glow Girl"...I knew I'd had the title incorrect, thanks.

Parts of the Who tune "Naked Eye" also were used on Tommy

It can be confusing, especially when the same reissue has a song on it called "Glittering Girl".

I haven't really heard "Naked Eye" in Tommy, but the only way I listen to the whole "opera" these days is live anyway, and they left certain parts out when they did it on stage. "Naked Eye" was put into the setlist in 1970, so maybe they just used bits of Tommy for the song, not vice versa.

Originally posted by Johnny Stew
...you get the impression that you're not just listening to individual songs with no connection... but that they're telling another aspect of the story, or relating an ongoing journey.

Or they’re just trying to be too artsy for their own good.

But I, too, have no problems with it, if it is indeed done well.