Anecdote: Working on Original Izitso Songbook (1977)
Nov 21, 2016 16:54:07 GMT -5
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Post by Leonard on Nov 21, 2016 16:54:07 GMT -5
The 1977 album Izitso received a separate songbook arranged for piano and vocals like so many of Steve's albums. I stumbled upon an anecdote by user Musicat over on the Straight Dope Message Boards (see link) who describes working on the Izitso songbook together with Steve.
"I was hired to do the piano-vocal book for a Cat Stevens album, Izitso. (This was before he converted to Islam and he was living in L.A.) I was given a commercial copy of the album. I honestly don't remember if I did the lead sheets or not -- only the arranging gig stands out in my mind.
"Unlike lead sheets, a P-V album of the era was typically designed for diehard fans. We expected them to play along with the record and therefore took few shortcuts -- no bars were omitted although repeat symbols were used were possible.
"I knew that Cat Stevens (I forget what name we called him familiarly then, but it wasn't Yusef Islam) wanted to look over the final sketches before publication, and I had to submit a readable pencil sketch to the company in Florida that would do the engraving, so I wrote out P-V charts for all the songs and met with The Cat for some proofing. First of all, he asked me to play what was written, as he didn't read music, but he did play keyboards. Not far into the first arrangement, he screamed, "Stop! That's not what I played! It goes like this..." and he recreated the keyboard part exactly as I heard it on the recording.
"It was not the first time I had been confronted with a volatile artist who said I was 100% wrong, but I explained to him that my task, as I saw it, was not to reproduce exactly what the keyboard part was, ignoring the rest of the orchestra, but to provide a playable, pianistic composition that reflected in the best way possible, given the difficulty level of the average amateur piano player, the overall sound/flavor of the song.
"For example, if the melody was in a flute line, I had to make it into a piano part. The string and horn lines should be incorporated if possible and if it didn't make the chart "too busy". Even though Cat, like many keyboard players, rarely played a bass line with his left hand, I was obligated to transfer the bass guitar part into a left hand piano part or the arrangement would be sadly deficient in significant harmonic elements.
"I told him I would be glad to write down the keyboard part he played exactly, and I even played it back to him, but I said that's not what you want in the stores.
"To my surprise, I was able to convince him that I was doing the right thing, and we went thru all the songs, tightened them up a bit and fixed some minor errors.
"Even more to my surprise, I was able to convince him that an original counterpoint line I wrote, which I had thought filled some empty space in the harmony of one song (I Never Wanted to Be a Star), was a good addition to the song even though it wasn't on the record, so we kept it. That was pretty ballsy on my part, but it worked.
"After our session, the pencil charts were sent to the engraver. Most arrangers would be done with the task at that time, just want to be paid, and never see the final product until it hits the stores, but I wanted to do a better than average job, so I asked to be able to proofread the engraver's output before going to press. (It wasn't really engraving, even in those days before graphic computers, but a combination of manual music typewriter, straightedges, curves and ink pen, but we called it engraving anyway.)
"I got the proofs from the preparation house and found them riddled with errors. It was obvious that the workers had never tried to play what they wrote, or they would have noticed missing sharps & flats, misspelled lyrics, and other glaring (to me) errors. As I was meticulously documenting the corrections needed, and it ran into many pages, I got a call from the publisher. "Everything OK? Can we go to press?" I assured them that they had a few things to fix on almost every page -- they were pissed, because they weren't used to anyone proofreading their work -- but they fixed them all before printing. And without a computer, all corrections had to be done by hand -- erasing, white-out, paste-overs, or pen and ink.
"This story is another example of how mistakes get into print. Without feedback, who's to know if anything matches the original?
[...]
"If you ever run across a copy of Izitso in sheet music form, or see one of the songs from that album in a collection, play it and compare with the recording. I'd be interested in hearing what you think. At least I'm pretty sure it would be in the right key!"
"Unlike lead sheets, a P-V album of the era was typically designed for diehard fans. We expected them to play along with the record and therefore took few shortcuts -- no bars were omitted although repeat symbols were used were possible.
"I knew that Cat Stevens (I forget what name we called him familiarly then, but it wasn't Yusef Islam) wanted to look over the final sketches before publication, and I had to submit a readable pencil sketch to the company in Florida that would do the engraving, so I wrote out P-V charts for all the songs and met with The Cat for some proofing. First of all, he asked me to play what was written, as he didn't read music, but he did play keyboards. Not far into the first arrangement, he screamed, "Stop! That's not what I played! It goes like this..." and he recreated the keyboard part exactly as I heard it on the recording.
"It was not the first time I had been confronted with a volatile artist who said I was 100% wrong, but I explained to him that my task, as I saw it, was not to reproduce exactly what the keyboard part was, ignoring the rest of the orchestra, but to provide a playable, pianistic composition that reflected in the best way possible, given the difficulty level of the average amateur piano player, the overall sound/flavor of the song.
"For example, if the melody was in a flute line, I had to make it into a piano part. The string and horn lines should be incorporated if possible and if it didn't make the chart "too busy". Even though Cat, like many keyboard players, rarely played a bass line with his left hand, I was obligated to transfer the bass guitar part into a left hand piano part or the arrangement would be sadly deficient in significant harmonic elements.
"I told him I would be glad to write down the keyboard part he played exactly, and I even played it back to him, but I said that's not what you want in the stores.
"To my surprise, I was able to convince him that I was doing the right thing, and we went thru all the songs, tightened them up a bit and fixed some minor errors.
"Even more to my surprise, I was able to convince him that an original counterpoint line I wrote, which I had thought filled some empty space in the harmony of one song (I Never Wanted to Be a Star), was a good addition to the song even though it wasn't on the record, so we kept it. That was pretty ballsy on my part, but it worked.
"After our session, the pencil charts were sent to the engraver. Most arrangers would be done with the task at that time, just want to be paid, and never see the final product until it hits the stores, but I wanted to do a better than average job, so I asked to be able to proofread the engraver's output before going to press. (It wasn't really engraving, even in those days before graphic computers, but a combination of manual music typewriter, straightedges, curves and ink pen, but we called it engraving anyway.)
"I got the proofs from the preparation house and found them riddled with errors. It was obvious that the workers had never tried to play what they wrote, or they would have noticed missing sharps & flats, misspelled lyrics, and other glaring (to me) errors. As I was meticulously documenting the corrections needed, and it ran into many pages, I got a call from the publisher. "Everything OK? Can we go to press?" I assured them that they had a few things to fix on almost every page -- they were pissed, because they weren't used to anyone proofreading their work -- but they fixed them all before printing. And without a computer, all corrections had to be done by hand -- erasing, white-out, paste-overs, or pen and ink.
"This story is another example of how mistakes get into print. Without feedback, who's to know if anything matches the original?
[...]
"If you ever run across a copy of Izitso in sheet music form, or see one of the songs from that album in a collection, play it and compare with the recording. I'd be interested in hearing what you think. At least I'm pretty sure it would be in the right key!"