Songwriting Blog Part 1 - Love For Sale

I'm often asked how I go about writing songs. What comes first, the words or the music? Well thanks to this lovely blog site, I've now got the opportunity to shed a bit more light on the behind the the scenes of The Fore!

I've been writing since I was 14 years old and most of my songs are worked on an acoustic guitar. That's not always the case, but it is most of the time. Nearly always the music & tune will come first. A melody will often come to me when I wake up/about to go to sleep, when I'm walking home or when I'm jamming on the guitar. I can happen anywhere! I've got a little mono tape recorder at home and I use this to put down my ideas - however bad they are!!! When I come up with an idea I'll pick up the guitar and play through the makings of the verse or chorus I have and always continue adlibbing afterwards. This is often how I pick up new sections of songs. I also have a list of song names which I will turn to if I'm looking for a catchy title. Run & Hide, Rumours & Lies, Forgive & Forget and Love For Sale are all examples of this!

So what about the songs that we're recorded? In this blog I'll be occasionally running through a number of the songs that you all know from our recordings/gigs and give you a history to the song :) First up...

Love For Sale

Love For Sale starts up Black & White and is probably best known for its 12 string guitar. When it was first written though I didn't even own a 12 string guitar!

It actually started pre-Fore days when I used to be in a cover band. We used to do this old song by The Searchers called When You Walk In The Room, which tended to be a set favourite. I wanted to write my on 'Room' song and I already had a partly writtne song hanging around which was like Girl Don't Tell Me by The Beach Boys. It was called Love For Sale, but was just a couple of verses with a different middle section. I used this song and worked out an opening riff - although it was origanally going to be on 6 string. Of course that all changed when Matt came on board in the band and I started to look to songs that could use the 12 string - so Love For Sale was born!!

Obviously there's other influences in the song - The Byrds spring to mind particularly - but the real origins of the song go back to those covers days and me trying to come up with my own When You Walk In the Room!

Of course its a song that Matt sings, and no one else could realyl do it justice. I've sung it once before, at a gig that Matt couldn't make, and I was rubbish at it! I guess it's quite handy that we've got more than one singer in the band...

More on our songs in a later post. Until then I'll see you around!!

Spencer