Garth Dutton

Adelaide Songwriter (Career One)

One of my favourite songs is “Summer Of 69″ by Canadian songwriter Bryan Adams. Read on and you’ll find out why.

Adelaide Songwriter (Career One)
© Garth Dutton, 2008.

I began playing guitar in January 1969, and soon learned enough chords and songs to play and sing at parties, barbeques and beach picnics. About mid-year I discovered the Catacombs Coffee Lounge at Hackney, which had folk evenings, and soon became a regular performer there. I used songs by Donovan, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan.

Early in 1970, I went to Africa as a backpacker. I took my guitar with me and used to play in pubs to earn some money as I went along. Often, after I had sung some of the songs I knew, Afrikaner people there would ask me if I could accompany them for some of their songs. I was usually able to sort out the chords needed quite quickly, and a good sing along would follow. They usually ‘put round the hat’ to give me some money to help me on my travels, and I often got an offer of somewhere to sleep for the night. I enjoyed the lifestyle.

In June that year, I was in Lourenço Marques in Mozambique, and managed to get a short term job in the Department of Tourism and Propaganda. One of the Portuguese girls in the office taught me how to write poetry in the local dialect of English to help me to speak Portuguese correctly. I soon learned to write my own songs, as well as publishable quality poetry. My first song was about the city I was in. I wrote it first as a poem, when I was across the harbour on the beach. I was used to singing Joni Mitchell songs unaccompanied, due to the obscure guitar tunings she used on her records, so I worked out a tune for the new song unaccompanied.

I didn’t get back to the backpackers’ hostel till a few hours later, and when I did, I picked up my guitar and worked out which chords would be needed for an accompaniment. To my surprise, I found that the chord sequences that fitted were quite unlike any other song in my repertoire. So my first song set up a methodology that I have used for every other song I have written since. Lyrics first, then melody unaccompanied, and at a later stage put a chorded accompaniment to it on guitar or keyboard. So far every song has been a unique creation. I decided to write up my entire trip as songs and poetry. I had another rule. I tried to make every song readable as a poem, singable as a song and also just be used as a piece of music. Most times I succeeded. I wrote about 20 songs in Africa, and another 20 in England, when I went there later in the year.

I met a South African girl on the boat to England who was a singer. Her name was Shirley Lucas. We sang some songs together at parties on board and we were offered a number of spots singing with the ship’s band. We continued to see each other when we were in London, and soon became a popular duo on the folk circuit. She had a vocal range that was far wider than mine, and some of the songs I wrote for her to sing are now ;long forgotten as I didn’t have the vocal range to sing them myself. Paul Simon had the same problem with a famous song he wrote called “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” He is unable to sing it himself, as it is far beyond his vocal range in parts. He wrote it specifically for Art Garfunkel’s exceptionally wide vocal range, and it was a big hit.

Her voice was so good, that I lost confidence in my own singing. One night at a folk club, a patron asked me to sing a song. I said I had nothing prepared. He said, “Well, write a new one to sing yourself, and sing it here next Friday night.” So I wrote a song called  ‘Accompanist’. It is a very honest song about the breakdown of the relationship between Shirley and myself that was happening at the time. It goes like this…

“London town snowflakes are falling/ and in my heart the highway’s calling/ to Johannesburg for there’s someone there who’d want me/ from the letters she writes, I know she has a place in her heart for me./ But tonight you’ll sing, I’ll play guitar/ and it’ll still feel good for still friends we are./ At some pub down town, smoky atmosphere/ and your lovely voice soft and sweet and clear./ Everyone just stops and listens./ Then I’ll take you home/ but there’ll be no after/ beyond the coffee cups and the talk and laughter./ You’re afraid to walk late at night from the station/ and your company is a gift and consolation/ for loneliness is London’s desolation./ But we’ll be alright when we see the morning/ picture post card white in clear bright dawning./ Cold dark night, clear bright morning./ Cold dark night, clear bright morning.”

I sang the song the following week, and the audience was shocked. They thought we were just a happily married South African couple. A male fan who had a car offered Shirley a lift home, and a female fan took me back to her place for the night, and that was the end of our duo.

I came back to Adelaide at the end of February 1971 to continue with the University course I had dropped out of at the end of 1969, as my lack of qualifications were a major impediment to getting well-paid employment overseas. Some friends from a traveller’s club were also musicians, so we formed a group called ‘Folkwyze’. It was a multicultural group. Bob, on banjo and guitar was Australian, Marianne on vocals was Dutch, Ken on harmonica, guitar and vocals was Welsh, and I was English-born but had adopted Mozambican Portuguese culture as an adult. I was the only songwriter in the group, so we did a fairly standard folk repertoire of the time, plus a few of my songs for good measure. We sang regularly at the Catacombs till it closed a few years later.

I married in November 1974, and the commitments of marriage and children meant I became less active as a performer. I did, however, still try to pursue a career as a songwriter by making two LP records, a self-titled album in 1976 and an album called “Sea and Highway” in 1980. Both failed for different reasons. The first just wasn’t done well enough. The cover wasn’t up to scratch, and the folk musicians who backed me were unwilling to do more than one of two ‘takes’ of a song for fear it would lose spontaneity.
It turned out to be unsellable, and I lost all the money I had put into it. There was only one record press in Australia at the time and their minimum production run was 1,000 copies, so the financial loss was considerable. My wife Lynette thought the money would have been much better spent helping to pay off the mortgage. The failure of this record and the second one were a major cause of our eventual divorce in 1994.

I had enough of my own songs to record three LP’s. One for an ‘African set’, one for an ‘English set’, and one for an ‘Australian set’. Regrettably, I chose to record in chronological order for in 1980 the Anti-Apartheid Movement was at the height of their power. Everyone who worked on the project wanted to get ongoing work out of it. My wife Lynette designed an absolutely beautiful cover that was a work of art in itself. (She hoped to get work in LP cover design.) Dave Barry hoped to get a lot more work for his mobile recording studio. All the musicians who played on it wanted to get well paid session work. The mixer to whom we took the final master tapes did his best to give us a great soundscape. We all needed it to be a success…

But it was not to be. Whoever mixed from master tapes to vinyl in Sydney made a complete hash of the job. The main rhythm instrument was 12 string guitar, and on the master tape it was a solid driving force. On the vinyl it was ‘thin and wiry’. A bitter disappointment. It was obvious that the engineer in Sydney was quite unfamiliar with 12 string guitar music and also with the genre of the songs. Record pressing was a monopoly in Australia at the time so there was nothing we could do about it. I lost all faith in vinyl after that. I was overjoyed when it was finally replaced by CD’s, because that brought local control over final product.

Paul Simon caused a huge furore when he released his landmark album “Graceland” in 1986, because he had recorded it in South Africa. He had the stature to withstand the storm. I didn’t…and had to withdraw all copies from sale. Anti-Apartheid activists seemed to have a particular ire for my wife for designing such a beautiful cover for an album about a white person’s travel in Southern Africa. I got the message and gave up performing altogether for the rest of our marriage. We separated in 1991, so I became an active member of SCALA (Songwriters, Composers and Lyricists Association) and began a new career as a songwriter.

Tags: adelaide, bob dylan, bryan adams, garth dutton, joni mitchell, scala, songwriter, the beatles

The First Post (Of Many)

My name is Garth Dutton and I’m a writer, musician and avid environmentalist. This site is my attempt to share my thoughts, feelings and experiences and to network with other like minded individuals from around the world.

I write songs, poetry, haiku, short stories and novels. However, I also love writing about the environment. Sometimes what I write is pretty straight-forward while other things are controversial and confronting for some.

Welcome to my website and feel free to contact me about anything you find. I love a good conversation.

Tags: Environment, Garth, garth dutton, haiku, Music, Poetry, Prose, songwriter, songwriting, writer, Writing