Bellamy’s Songs: Mini Novels Set To Music

The characters who come to life in the songs sung by David and Howard Bellamy would certainly be colorful enough for a novel: the girl with the beautiful body and the old hippie could discuss their favorite star, children of the baby boom could discourse on why lovers live longer, a sugar daddy could come along for the redneck girl, a couple of dancin’ cowboys and their reggae cowboy friends could seek advice from the world’s greatest lover, and the rebels without a clue could listen to some country rap, all the while living happily ever after in Santa Fe.The characters who come to life in the songs sung by David and Howard Bellamy would certainly be colorful enough for a novel: the girl with the beautiful body and the old hippie could discuss their favorite star, children of the baby boom could discourse on why lovers live longer, a sugar daddy could come along for the redneck girl, a couple of dancin’ cowboys and their reggae cowboy friends could seek advice from the world’s greatest lover, and the rebels without a clue could listen to some country rap, all the while living happily ever after in Santa Fe.

One of the qualities of the writing of Howard and David is that they talk about the people on the street from observations they make as they go about their every day routine.

“I think the best ideas I get are from observing and eavesdropping,” David said. “I like to sit in a restaurant and hear people get into a fight or something, ‘cause there’s usually something that’ll come our of it that I can use in a song.

“Looking for an idea is sometimes the worst thing you can do. The best things really are the one you bump into.”

Howard has a little different approach to writing.

“My favorite thing to do is to try and use a word that has never been used before,” he commented. “I used priorities and naïve (on the latest album), which I don’t think have ever been used in a song that I can recall, and meltdown on the last album. It’s not always easy to do.”

Though the brothers became interested in music by singing with their father in church, it wasn’t long before David says he was making up words to the rock and roll records that his sister was bringing home.

“I’d make up either dirty lyrics or stupid lyrics, parodies of what I was hearing, which I think a lot of people do that,” David said. “I remember early on trying to write and listening to Roger Miller when he first came out – “Dang Me” and “Chug-A-Lug, Chug-A-Lug” – I remember that stuff just killed me because he had a sense of humor plus it was great music. Then I got into the Beatles and their songwriting so that is some of the earlier stuff I remember about writing songs.”

Before those early forays into songwriting began to pay off in royalties, David and Howard found themselves playing in local bands in their hometown of Darby, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia, where they became friends with other struggling musicians such as the Allman Brothers.

In 1974, David sent a tune he had written, “Spiders And Snakes,” to producer Phil Gernhard in Los Angeles. Gernhard gave the song to Jim Stafford, who called David to see if they could re-write a few of the lines before he recorded it. The song went onto sell more than three million copies internationally.

Ironically, The Bellamy’s first release and their first number one for Warner Brothers, “Let Your Love Flow,” was not a self-penned effort; it was written by Larry Williams, but it wasn’t long before they settled into a musical direction and their self-penned hits were topping the charts. “If I Said You Have A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me,” “Sugar Daddy,” “Lovers Live Longer” and “Redneck Girl” were all written by David.

While Howard makes his contribution to each album, he and David aren’t the frequent writing partners one might suspect they would be.

“It really depends on the song,” Howard explained. “I think people end up co-writing because they need help, you have an idea you just can’t finish. So you could end up co-writing with anybody, not just your brother. Or David might show me a song or I show him a song and one of us thinks it might need a bridge, so we’ll write a bridge to it.

“A song is a very personal thing and it’s like any kind of work – you don’t want someone walking up going ‘that’s wrong, let’s do it like this.’ So you don’t interfere without being asked. That’s how we’ve stayed together so long.”

On the latest album, they wrote one song together and one song with Don Schlitz. On previous albums, the two have sought out other Nashville writers including Bobby Braddock with whom to work.

“I called them about writing,” David explained. “You know there are a lot of ways to write and I don’t think you should limit yourself to any one method of writing. You might hit on one that works better for you than another one. Co-writing was something I hadn’t done that much…mainly because we have been touring for years and haven’t been sitting in Nashville so we’ve always written more on our own than any other way. I looked up some people that I liked and we started talking and then go together to write.

“Howard and I wrong a song called “Get Your Priorities In Line,” which was Howard’s idea that Don helped us finish, and then I had one called “Staying In Love,” a kind of Spanish sounding song that I just could not get finished, and Don helped me finish that one.”

Howard said that the song was one of his favorites and really special because they lost their father in 1987 and the songs takes a retrospective look at where you’ve been and the mistakes that have been made.

“It’s a simple song but you look back and see the mistakes you’ve made and realize where you are now and wish you could correct those things, but no one can ever do that and no one can ever make your decisions for you,” Howard said of the song. “I took it in to Don and David because I thought it was a great idea and I didn’t want to screw it up. It was the first song the three of us wrote together and it was really fun. We wrote it and another song whose title I threw out to them in one afternoon. Things were really flowing that day and it was an interesting experience.

An interesting experience for David happened when he wrote “You Ain’t Just Whistling Dixie” while traveling from Los Angeles to Florida by plane.

“It’s probably one of my favorite songs but it was actually kind of spooky how I wrote it,” David recalled. “I had not had much experience with what we call channel writing. I later read an article where Merle Haggard talked about having a song happen to him like that, the song “Leonard.” He said he had no idea where the idea came from, it just spilled out. He was on his bus and he just started singing it and playing it and he had Leona (Williams) write the words down, it came out so fast.

“That’s kind of what happened with “Dixie” – it just sorta fell out and that was a real strange experience for me. I didn’t really talk about it for a long time because I wasn’t into metaphysics and I didn’t know what was going on. I read a book on Van Morrison and he talked about the same thing happening, and he called it The Muse. Now I wish they’d all happen like that!”

Before the more recent co-writing sessions, David had written with the keyboard player in their band, Ron Taylor. Their recent hit, “Santa Fe,” was written with him.

“We don’t really sit down and write together, it’s a real interesting process,” David explained. “Like with “Santa Fe,” I had lyrically everything I wanted, because “Santa Fe” was written almost like a poem and I’ve never really done that much in the other stuff I’ve written. Musically I had it kinda the way I wanted the chorus to sound, and I gave it to Ron and banged out the basic shell of it. He changed the melody of the verses and little bit and arranged it.”

The most notable difference in the two writers is that most of David’s songs have a current of humor in them while managing to make a statement about something, while Howard tends to write more straight-ahead, serious songs.

“I’ve written things that weren’t serious but probably, in general, I’m more of a free spirit and when I feel good I’m out doing something else,” Howard explained. “When I get serious I’ll sit down and write a song. So in general that assessment is probably right.”

David goes back to his early influences as to why he writes the way he does.

“I grew up listening to such a wide range of writers – Roger Miller, Ray Stevens who I think is a genius songwriter, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Merle Haggard, Don McLean – I think all these people are unbelievable writers and I liked all their styles. I don’t see why you can’t mix them together. It’s like a good movie, a comedy drama with a lot of different elements in it.”

While David has learned to adjust to writing on the road, Howard says he can always find a reason not to write. Consequently, he needs a quieter place to write than David does.

“If you’re going to endure as a writer you have to teach yourself that writing is the most important thing in your life and you have to discipline yourself to that. Thank God for Sony Walkmans and that sort of thing, because you can just keep one by your side and go off and hum your melody and sing right into it so you don’t forget it. If you put it off and don’t get it down, you’ll forget it. That’s why it’s important to have the Walkman ready and put it (the song) down. You can always go back to it later and finish it.”

“I’ve gotten to the point where I’m kinda into combat songwriting,” David volunteered. “That’s where I just pull out a piece of paper and try to write any place, with no instrument – just hum along in my head. I find it’d easier to do it that way under the conditions where we are traveling and touring. It’s something you have to adapt to. Songwriting is one of the most important things to us, creatively and financially, so it’s become a real center of what we do and you just have to adapt it to the way we travel.”

While the majority of the material the Bellamy Brothers record is their own, they are not opposed to listening to outside material. “Do You Love As Good As You Look” was written by Charlie Black, Rory Bourke and Jerry Gillespie; “Where The Light Comes From” was written by Thom Schuyler and Don Schlitz; “When I’m Away From You” by Frankie Miller.

“A lot of people are way off base when they pitch to us,” David explained. “We find that when you go around to publishing companies here in town (Nashville) – they just seem to play the same thing for everybody. But occasionally you’ll get somebody that really gets in your direction. The worst problem we have is that they’ll pitch us songs we’ve already done – one about a hippy or a tongue-in-cheek song. We haven’t been around in awhile, but now I’d guess they would pitch us all southwestern songs (because of “Santa Fe”)

In the case of “Do You Love As Good As You Look,” David said the song caught their attention because they were doing that kind of thing at the time.

“Not only were we doing some of those off the wall, play on word type songs, but it had a very lifting chorus that we could harmonize on. That’s another thing, we like good choruses because we can spread our harmony. Plus it had a country rock feel which is something we can do real well, so it had a lot of good elements.

“We just really loved the message of “Where The Light Comes From” – it’s a real positive, spiritual song. We tried to get them to ship that song as a gospel record, but we were told that gospel radio wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole because we had recorded things like “If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body.” Isn’t that crazy?”

Most of the songs that David writes are pulled from his general knowledge of the subject, like “Ole Hippies,” “Kids Of The Baby Boom” and “Rebels Without A Clue.” One of the songs on their latest album, “The Andy Griffith Show,” required a little more research.

“I read two books that were released on the show, one that was done by the fan club and the other one was all the old scripts to series,” David recalled. “I read them because I wanted the facts to be straight. In the song we say something about Aunt Bea cooking lamb shops and turnip green, and that was Andy’s favorite meal according to the book. It really wasn’t research – it was fun reading them.”

It’s generally assumed that to become a professional songwriter, it is important to move to a major recording center. David offered his thoughts on not living in Nashville (though they do maintain a condominium there).

“I think it’s helped us creatively not to live here, but politically it may have hurt us,” he said in assessing both sides of their situation.

One thing he did discover can serve as a lesson to any writer regarding copyrights. At the end of the song, David decided it would be nice to close it with the whistle that is the theme song for the show. After researching that possibility, he found some interesting information.

“We contacted the publisher to get permission to use it, and just to use that teeny piece of whistle – what is it, just a few bars so you’d recognize it – they wanted publishing on the entire song. So we decided it didn’t sound that good on it anyway!”

“I’m not a big fan of the cubical writer, though I’ve done it and it’s an interesting process. I think the sound is too contrived; I like a looser structure with more feeling to the song. So creatively I’m glad we’re on the outside of Nashville, though you do have to keep in touch as much as we do.”

Keeping in touch is what David and Howard Bellamy do, not just with publishers and writers in Nashville but with the public for whom they write. It is because of their ability to do the latter that their songs are such a source of real-life characters – characters who could easily be the listener’s neighbor.