Back to the knitting

I am a writer of songs, well at least that's how I describe myself whenever I'm asked. Sometimes a say musician but given the fact that I can't actually play the piano anymore due to stresses in my hands that's no longer true. I'm a writer of songs.

But am I? Over the last few years my 'business' has moved into production and I now employ 37 highly paid musicians and a number of managers and seem to spend all my time flying a desk or rushing to meetings with 'executives' from this or that record company. I've even ended up baby sitting artists who fall off the lorry. Somewhere it went wrong.

In the good old days I used to sit at my piano all day tinkering till a ditty came into my head, then words and hey presto another hit was in the pipeline. Now I use software, drum machines, beat boxes and all sorts of other paraphernalia to 'generate' music. In short the who things sucks.

I do a lot of behind the scenes TV work too. I worked as a voice coach and mentor on X-Factor, then The Voice and now back with X-F again for this year. That's quite good fun ..... but it's not what I 'do'.

Years ago I wandered around the world as a band manager for two big artists. I was their Musical Director, I ran the band, I played on their records and concerts, it truly was rock and roll. But you get too old for that. I don't miss that at all. But how did I get into this soup of executive think and the touchy feely people who populate it?

I wonder if the same is true in other professions. Jobs that people loved being ruined by corporate  structures and the globalisation of this or that.

Well I've decided it's all going to change. Over the next three moths (ok it might take six)  I'm going to ditch all of it. I'm going back to sitting in a smoke filled room with my writing partner knocking out songs. No tech apart from a keyboard, no staff and bloody record execs. Just writing.

It might not work, who can say, but I'm going back to what I'm good at. I've written a lot of hit records and even one I'm quite proud of, I've won gongs, mixed with the great and the good and even class some famous folk amongst my friends list. Yet somehow I got sucked into doing more and more.

So I'm going back to the knitting as my old dad would have said. Stick your corporate life up your arse and leave me be. Two weeks ago a man with vast wealth from the music business told me I could become one of the biggest producers in the world. He thought I'd be pleased - instead it horrified me and was a wake up call.

I've always stayed below the radar. People outside the music business have no idea who I am. I like that. So I'm going back to being a big fat nobody. But a nobody without tension, stress and bloody meetings.

Let's see how it goes..........