Here's the original draft of "The Age and the Ache," which took a bit of rearranging before it settled into its final form.
Typically I jot down the first idea for a lyric on the recto page. Then, later, I can leaf through the notebook and see if anything grabs me. The first idea for this song was the pair of lyrics that turned into the verse motif, "You pretend you're free / I'll pretend I'm beautiful." That's pretty much the essence of the song, and most of the lyrics followed pretty quickly (which you can tell from the fact that they're mostly in the same color of ink).
I use curly brackets to mark words and phrases when I think they need revision, or I can't choose between several similar phrasings, or I'm not sure about keeping the line. It's a handy way to keep writing without stopping to fuss over minutiae. I was gunning hard for "really and truly alone" here, but it's bracketed twice, and it never made it in.
On the verso page you can see the tab of the riff—which I think Charlie plays a little differently with the slide, and which we replaced with accordion in the final recording—and my frustrated attempt at working out the correct music-theory name of a chord in the chorus. Still not sure I ever arrived at the correct name, to be honest.
Typically I jot down the first idea for a lyric on the recto page. Then, later, I can leaf through the notebook and see if anything grabs me. The first idea for this song was the pair of lyrics that turned into the verse motif, "You pretend you're free / I'll pretend I'm beautiful." That's pretty much the essence of the song, and most of the lyrics followed pretty quickly (which you can tell from the fact that they're mostly in the same color of ink).
I use curly brackets to mark words and phrases when I think they need revision, or I can't choose between several similar phrasings, or I'm not sure about keeping the line. It's a handy way to keep writing without stopping to fuss over minutiae. I was gunning hard for "really and truly alone" here, but it's bracketed twice, and it never made it in.
On the verso page you can see the tab of the riff—which I think Charlie plays a little differently with the slide, and which we replaced with accordion in the final recording—and my frustrated attempt at working out the correct music-theory name of a chord in the chorus. Still not sure I ever arrived at the correct name, to be honest.
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