HITMAKERS SONGWRITING
The world’s greatest songs. By the people who made them. THIS WEEK:
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it became a UK Top 10 hit. Here, the Warner/Chappell songwriter recalls how it happened... INTERVIEW: GEORGE GARNER
was just a student at Sixth Form college in Basingstoke when I wrote Good Tradition. At the time, I wasn’t really telling anyone I was even writing songs. I had made them from a young age, but I didn’t know you could actually have a job as a songwriter. There was an album I was listening to a lot at that age called Nina Simone Sings The Blues by Nina Simone, and one song called Real Real in particular. I loved the simplicity of it and that was how Good Tradition came about – I was trying to write something simple and lively. The song questions the idea of family and having an ambivalence about it… And I like my family! But I will always question everything, I will always say there’s good in family and bad – I can see both sides. I don’t know anybody who has had an easy ride. It’s funny, [the opening line] ‘There’s a good tradition of love and hate staying by the fireside’ – there’s the idea of everyone in the family being dysfunctional, it’s something very present on your mind at that age. You’re hyper-sensitive about those things when you’re young, you look for contrasts in everything.
Good Tradition didn’t take a long time to write. At that age I was writing so naturally, I would literally just have a tune and the words would come. I don’t really write like that anymore. Melodically it’s not very difficult for me, but writing lyrics is harder now. I wasn’t self-conscious about lyrics at that age, I would just write what came into my head and not edit myself. I look at that with real nostalgia because I don’t think it’s easy to capture that again.
I’d only done one demo when I was in Basingstoke, because I knew you had to send songs to venues to get gigs. There was very little time between conceiving
38 | Music Week 12.11.18
Good Tradition and recording it. A lot of those songs from [1988 debut album Ancient Heart] were written in a short space of time as I was doing my A-Levels. Sometimes, the less you focus on things the better it is. I was working with Rod Argent from The Zombies and [Mike + The Mechanics drummer] Peter Van Hooke, and they were so nice and never patronised me – it was like a summer holiday recording it.
There’s a great violin line in it, which is Helen O’Hara from Dexys Midnight Runners. She played it in the session and it really lifted the song – it had a Celtic feel after that because she had that in her playing. Paul Brady’s on it too, he’s on the pipes and the mandolin, and I also love the drums on this song.
I might be wrong but I think I was playing the Cambridge Folk Festival when I heard that it had gone into the charts. Eventually it got into the Top 10, but it had just gone into the Top 30 then and everyone was so excited and it was infectious. When you have your first success and you’re very young, everybody’s excited: your record company, friends, family and strangers. Maybe today it’s slightly different, but at that time it wasn’t so expected for some kid from Basingstoke to go and be a success. Now, I think people expect success in a way.
Did it give me confidence to have my debut single become a hit? No, not really. I was very immature, really! I had this image of being quite mysterious and deep but really I was a teenager. I don’t think I could write a song like Good Tradition now, one that’s a ‘sing-song’. It’s so simple, it’s almost throwaway, isn’t it, really? Even when I perform it now it just makes me smile – even if there’s something behind it that is less ‘smiley’. There’s just a joyfulness to it.
“I was just a
student at Sixth Form when I wrote it”
TANITA TIKARAM ON GOOD TRADITION
Thirty years ago,Tanita Tikaram released her debut single Good Tradition, offering an intimate snapshot of family life. To her surprise,
Good times: Tanita Tikaram
musicweek.com
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