My Foray Into the Rock Musical and What it Did to Me
(This blog was originally published by The Public Theater.)
I am a playwright for a reason. My talent is words, story, character. I took ten years of piano, two years of guitar, four years of private voice, and I never achieved above average competence in any of them. From this I had long concluded that I should limit my writing to straight plays. But then I found out that my favorite singer/songwriter, Don Chaffer, was looking for a book writer to collaborate with him on a rock musical, and before I could talk myself out of it I had vigorously thrown my musically incompetent hat into the rock musical ring. Five minutes into our first creative session I was struck with the painful awareness–Don and I were speaking completely different languages. Don would offer, “you know it’s like early eighties funk meets Eastern European electronica.” I would reply, “that sounds great,” not knowing what the hell he was talking about. We continued like this for over a year.
It was fun, though. We discovered that for all our differences, philosophically we had a lot in common, which allowed us to move forward quickly on story and character. But when we talked craft there remained a chasm of artistic form, lingo, and process between us. We both found that in order to bridge that chasm we would have to trust each other’s artistic instincts. I surmise that this was easier for me, Don’s fan of over a decade, than for him, the fanee.
For example, I sent Don the first draft of our climactic scene in which Cowboy Jesus, (an odd sort of God figure handed down to Danderhauler, our protagonist, by his eccentric alcoholic father), challenges Danderhauler to let him dig out the bullet in Dan’s stomach with a “rusty ole pair of pliers.” “Do you want me to leave it in, or dig it out?” Cowboy Jesus asks him somewhat unsympathetically. On instinct, Don wrote a song to replace this dialogue. He sent me the lyrics and a demo. I thought they were brilliant–except for the second verse which detailed the three steps to putting down a dog. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why Cowboy Jesus was talking about putting a dog down in what could be the last few seconds of our protagonist’s life and so I suggested Don might consider re-writing the second verse. Don affirmed my confusion but offered that the digression was intentional and potentially great if I could properly set it up with dialogue. So, I had a chat with Cowboy Jesus and here is what he and I came up with.
COWBOY JESUS
You want me to dig it out or leave it in?
DANDERHAULER
Huh?
COWBOY JESUS
The bullet.
DANDERHAULER
You mean with that rusty old pair of pliers
there?
COWBOY JESUS
Only thing I could find. Sorry.
DANDERHAULER
Will I live? If you do it?
COWBOY JESUS
WELL THAT’S A FUNNY QUESTION WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, ISN’T
IT?
CAUSE LIFE SEEMS LONG WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG BUT YOU GET OLDER
AND IT STARTS MOVIN’ LICKETY SPLIT
YOU START OFF FEELIN’ LIKE YOU GOT ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
JUST TO SIT AROUND AND THINK
BUT THEN IT SUDDENLY SEEMS IT PASSED YOU BY
BEFORE YOU EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO BLINK
THIS IS JUST ASHES TO ASHES
THIS IS JUST ALL FALL DOWN
SO DO YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE IT IN
OR DO YOU WANT ME TO DIG IT OUT?
DANDERHAULER
What I mean is, I’m wonderin’ if you’ve ever
done anything like this before?
COWBOY JESUS
You mean like a doctor?
DANDERHAULER
Exactly.
COWBOY JESUS
Well, no. But I did have to put down a dog
once.
COWBOY JESUS (cont’d)
THERE’S ONLY THREE THINGS THAT YOU NEED BEFORE YOU PUT AN OLD
DOG SIX FEET DEEP
ONE YOU GOTTA GET SOMETHING THAT’LL TAKE A POOCH FROM WIDE
AWAKE TO SOUND ASLEEP
TWO, YOU GOTTA GET SOMETHING THAT’LL STOP THE HEART FROM BOOM
BOOM-BOOMIN’ LIKE A BIG BASS DRUM
AND THREE YOU GOTTA GET SOMETHING THAT’LL MAKE THE BODY RELAX
SO THE MUSCLES DON’T SEIZE AGAINST THE REAPER WHEN HE COMES
THIS IS JUST ASHES TO ASHES
THIS IS JUST ALL FALL DOWN
SO DO YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE IT IN
OR DO YOU WANT ME TO DIG IT OUT?
As I wrote that scene, Cowboy Jesus evolved into a character that is both utterly simple and utterly complex. This became his defining characteristic.
Don and I’s musical, SON OF A GUN, (with additional music by Don’s insanely talented wife Lori Chaffer), has now been in development for about three years. It was given an initial stage reading through a grant from The Drama League, a subsequent abridged concert reading at Joe’s Pub, and further developed at the Eugene O’Neill National Music Theater Conference this past summer.
The process of collaborating with Don and Lori on SON OF A GUN fulfilled artistic cravings I never knew I had. Granted, I was lucky. My collaborators were smarter, more gifted, and more experienced in their field (rock music) than I was in my own. But it wasn’t just about my pride in the quality of work we produced together. Working with a songwriter, a really good songwriter, changed, or maybe I should say enhanced, my own writing process.
Good songwriters are microscopically precise, yet mysteriously indirect. They understand the power of subtext because their music breathes in it. The space between the words rises and falls as much or more than the spoken language. And there is a yearning in music–at least in Don’s and Lori’s music–a reach, and occasionally a leap or even a fall, that extends beyond words, beyond image. I’m not saying this doesn’t exist in plays without music, it’s there in the brilliant ones. I’m just saying that collaborating with musicians challenged me to dig deeper into the human heart and mind, and reminded me that there is an entire universe of the soul that exists without words. That universe can be captured, at least fleetingly. And it can transcend the limits of my own creativity.