IF LOVE COUNTS FOR SOMETHING WE WIN
A CONVERSATION WITH EDDIE SCHWARTZ
Eddie Schwartz has returned. Over the years, not only did Eddie Schwartz carve out a successful solo career (he had been in a couple of bands prior to going solo), he is also one of the rock world’s most celebrated and successful songwriters. He has written (or co-written) hits for Pat Benatar (“Hit Me With Your Best Shot”), Paul Carrack (“Don’t Shed A Tear”), and The Doobie Brothers (“The Doctor”). Not forgetting his own hits: “Special Girl,” “All Our Tomorrows,” “Every Road I Take,” to name just a few. But after his 1995 album, Tour De Schwartz, he focused on his writing and some production, and he put aside his own career.
But, with Film School, he is back. This is trademark Schwartz. A six-song EP with each song its own story and style. It is like a great collection of short stories that all come together in the end. It is brilliant work, and he has never sounded better.
I recently had a chance to catch up with Schwartz to talk about his new EP. It has been 30 years since his Tour De Force, so we started by talking about his return. “The long version…I moved from Toronto to Nashville, Tennessee in 1997 and got into the Nashville way of writing songs, which is two songs a day, every day. Ten to one, then you have lunch. At two you write until five, sometimes with the same co-writers, it is always with co-writers, or it could be different co-writers at different sessions. I did that for a number of years, and I wrote with some wonderful people, got a great Rascal Flatts cut, and worked with Gary LeVox. It was a productive and great period of my life, and I learned a lot, but I kind of burnt out. Writing 10 songs a week, every week, is very different from how I worked before that.”
Schwartz’s writing schedule prior to Nashville was very different from the pace he was maintaining during this time. “I would take my time. If it took me a year to write a song, or month or a week, that’s what it took until I felt it was right. It was a very different way of writing. And, as I said, I burnt out on it, and I didn’t write songs for years, maybe five or six years. I wanted to keep putting back into the music business and to do stuff that I thought benefitted my fellow music creators around the world. So, I got involved with advocacy, in particular with an organization in Paris, France, called International Council of Music Creators [CIAM], and I did that for many years, and I am still on the board.
Schwartz was motivated by his friends and family to return to writing and possibly recording.
“I have friends here in Nashville, and my family…my wife Joanne and my kids. Other folks, like Marc Jordan in Toronto and Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Sleater-Kinney, Lou Reed), and Jack Silverman, guys that I work with and have known here for many years. They all encouraged me to get back writing again, and so once I stepped down as president of CIAM, which was late last year, I just developed more time to write.”
LISTEN TO FILM SCHOOL
It did not take Schwartz long to return to his love of writing and music. “I had a few things in the works, “We Win” was one of them. “Outbound Train” and most of the songs on Film School are things that were already in the works, but I couldn’t quite finish them. With their encouragement, I found my way back to writing, the way I write. And I was able to finish the songs and that is how Film School came to be.”
The EP came about organically. As Schwartz finished the songs, they were collected and the format that best suited them was an EP. And it all started with one very important song for Schwartz, the beautiful and moving “We Win.” “It was really following my nose. Once I had a number of songs, I thought, mmm, maybe I should put them together, which led to Film School. The first song that I really finished in years, and was a real breakthrough for me, was “We Win.” Once I finished that, I was encouraged to go back and work on songs like “Outbound Train” and other songs “Waters Rise.” “We Win” was a breakthrough for me, and it really had to do with the lyrics. Music comes to me more quickly than words. More often it is the lyrics that I spend a lot of time on. And when I stumbled on the idea of “We Win,” it was a big moment for me. It was one of those moments where an idea comes to you from somewhere. It landed in my lap and it helped me deal with a lot of stuff that I was trying to process at the time, which has to do with the craziness of planet earth at the moment.”
Some of the songs on the EP are very different for Schwartz, such as the wonderful “Outbound Train,” which Schwartz was inspired by Rod Serling, of whom Schwartz is a big fan. However, he also updated one of his biggest hits, “Special Girl”. Here it is titled “Special Girl 2025.”
“Special Girl” has always been one of my own personal favourites that I have written. I love all my children, those that are human and those that are musical,” laughed Schwartz. “I have a lot more musical children than human children, just to clarify the point. But I listened to “Special Girl”, and it sounds so of its time, so 1980s and I thought I think it is a good enough song, and it still means a great deal to me that I would like to revisit it and do a more neutral version, so it is not of a time. So, I approached an old friend, Lou Pomanti, a very accomplished musical guy in Toronto. And I just said, ‘can we do a version of “Special Girl” and give it a shot?’ So, Lou played piano and arranged the strings and helped me conceptualize it, so a lot of credit goes to Lou. It gave me a chance to sing it a little differently too. The song means a lot to me, and I happen to be lucky enough to be married to the same special girl after all these years. A bit of a celebration of that fact as well.”
“I hope they are happier than they were when they started listening to it. I will come back to where we started with “We Win.” One of the reasons for the EP was “We Win.” I got excited by that and it opened the door to me writing again. It was because it gave me some comfort in a world that I think is increasingly crazy and challenging. It is a very hard time for a lot of people and “We Win” helped me cope with it. I don’t know if I can process what is going on in the world today, but I may find some sanity and some hope, something positive that I can focus on. I hope Film School can help some people. It was part of the reason I wanted to share it. I thought, maybe it will help other people as well.
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