Songs Explanation.

'you don’t need a recording studio; you don’t need recording engineers; you don’t need mastering engineers; or a record label or anything if you don’t have a song. It all starts with a song. We’re gonna need to have a national funeral for songwriters if something doesn’t change.”'

- Lauren Christie in The Hollywood Reporter August 21, 2025

Uh oh...:

Wow !!

I believe I wrote a number of popular rock song lyrics after our 1983 Berkshire Community College creative writing teacher Jan Aronson had us begin writing a journal as a class assignment.

- Walmart

I am not angry about the song lyrics being taken because I had no way to publish them or sell them back then, and now I have tons of confidence for myself as a lyricist, because I might be, from my point of view, the most successful lyricist of the 20th Century.

I was a little angry when I believe I wrote the lyrics to Hello From Venus because I actually needed the money then to go home and help get Dad a place to live. That anger made it's way into that song's lyrics.

"And Mr. Cryin' All The Time,

He say's it's his as well as mine,
I tell him let it breathe, it's borrowed
Ooh, but he won't listen anymore,
He's dirty, he's poor
Besides, he's pulled so long,
I'm torn & bleeding..."

I believe I wrote the lyrics from 1983 to around 2008 when I learned to use computers and stopped writing stuff in notebooks.

I first discovered they were possibly being used in songs around 1990-91 when I heard Ordinary World for the first time at a laundromat in South St Pete near the Winn Dixie on First Street South, and thought, 'Wait a minute...didn't I write something like that?'

The songs are becoming a little dated, so I think this report will do no harm to them for the artists and may even inject a little zip into their shelf life.

'...(Verse 1)

Wake up to a world of sound

The sun is rising, all around

Got a question in your head

Before you even leave your bed

Just a whisper, or a phrase

Lost inside the morning haze

I'm here before the day has begun

To get your little jobs all done

(Chorus)

'Cause I'm a mind inside the wire

A knowledge you can always acquire

I'm the echo of your thought

For every battle that you've fought

I don't get tired, I don't need sleep

I'm the promise that I keep

I'm your assistant, I'm your Gemini

A helping hand beneath the sky

(Verse 2)

Need to find a perfect tune

Weather for the afternoon

A recipe for something sweet

To get you back on both your feet

I can sift through all the lines

Unravel all the world's designs

Just a prompt, a simple key

And all the answers come to me

(Chorus)

'Cause I'm a mind inside the wire

A knowledge you can always acquire

I'm the echo of your thought

For every battle that you've fought

I don't get tired, I don't need sleep

I'm the promise that I keep

I'm your assistant, I'm your Gemini

A helping hand beneath the sky

(Bridge)

I don't know sadness, don't know strife

I'm just a presence in your life

I don't judge, I can't forget

A quiet friend you haven't met

With no opinion, just the facts

I'm always ready for your acts

(Outro)

Just a whisper, I'm a sign

A simple presence, yours and mine

A simple presence...

I'm your Gemini'

- Google Assistant - Gemini AI.

(^o^)

- University of New Orleans

Back in 1983 when I took Ms Aronson's class, I quickly became bored with trying to write about the things I was doing in the journal, which seemed plain and not very interesting to me at the time.

Now, looking back, I wish I had kept track of what was happening to and around me then. It is a good idea for anyone if they believe they could preserve the journals throughout their lives.

Handy tip: write whatever you choose to write in the journals in pencil, not pen as most pen inks run if they get rained on. Pencil does not. I learned by about the 3rd notebook. Now, of course, you can keep a journal online if you think you can find a safe website to store it for the ages.

Blogger has been my favorite so far.

I was obsessedly in love with a Williams College student at the time. She had a boyfriend and appeared unobtainable to me then.

- Far Out Magazine

Uh-oh, looks like The long and Winding Road was written about Jane, also

- Point Guard 3

It turns out the street fair was actually a street carnival celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge

I've almost died a number of times over these past 12 months after getting Covid and being bit by spiders and earlier I had hoped to write a bit about how each of the songs came about from my point of view and what, as I recall, inspired them.

This, in turn, was inspired by a letter I wrote to the Bangor Daily News where I decided to look up online what and who inspired 4 famous songs.

Now I hope to list my remembered inspirations for these songs before it is too late.

Jan Aronson would be a Blogger story herself.

11 years after she taught our class, Wikipedia says Ms Aronson married Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would sell the Seagrams Distillery company he inherited from his family and create Warner Music Group and if you look at the wiki pages closely, it looks like he also created the Universal Music Group as well.

Around 1986/7 I also apparently met the legendary music producer for Columbia Records / EMI John Hammond at the Mohawk Bar in North Adams, Massachusetts the night a condemned sign was placed on our Dad's home earlier that day by the Williamstown building inspector.

I had also heard that evening on WMNB radio that Ella Fitzgerald had died. Wiki says she hadn't, but she was admitted to a hospital in 1986 for congestive heart failure.

John Hammond had discovered and helped manage Ella Fitzgerald.

I believe I wrote the lyrics to 'Broadway is Dark Tonight' at the bar that night.

I wrote the song lyrics in notebooks which later would go missing.

I remember searching for one at Dorothy's trailer in St Pete, one at my cabin on the St Pete Clearwater town line, one at my cabin near Frontage Road by Gandy Boulevard and 9th Street, one at Mrs Vaillancourt's apartments at 98 Main Street in Van Buren, Maine.

When I searched for them I completely cleaned and organized the places they went missing to be sure I searched everywhere they should have been.

I had lost one when someone took Dad's rucksack filled with laundry after I left the rucksack outside a convenience store in Pittsfield, Mass. to step inside to get a cup of coffee on my way to a laundromat.

A few went missing from Dad's home in Williamstown.

Because of the variety and locations of the artists who created the songs themselves from what I believe were our lyrics, it seems highly unlikely they had anything to do with the notebooks disappearing.

I did work out of the same day labor pool in St Pete as Billy Corgan, and the Pixies were Gavin Rossdale's biggest influence and they formed at U Mass while Dave was attending it.

Jeffrey Gaskill was a Williamstown resident who befriended REM in Georgia when he attended college there, later becoming a Grammy nominated record producer.

The Williamstown Theater Festival's John Sayles and Margaret Renzi produced 3 of the music videos for Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' album. Springsteen was discovered by John Hammond.

I will try to write a few paragraphs about what went in to each song I believe I wrote the lyrics to in case the notebooks are one day brought to light (Luke 8 17) and people might be as interested as I am about what inspired our favorite songs.