Claudia

single
(not yet released on any album)

click to enlarge

This song alternates between two moods: impulsive (signalled by a fast tempo) and reflective (slower and in 3/4 "waltz time"), reflecting the two sides of the main character. Most of the song is in the fast tempo. But the song slows down when it reaches the bridge in the middle of the song ("Had I known you. . . "). This is a waltz in 3/4 time; it is the dramatic and emotional peak of the song. But it is only a temporary break, followed by a return to the fast tempo. Then at the very end of the song, the waltz returns in an instrumental form, to haunt the main character with endless reflections on what might have been. He sings how he "must forget Claudia", but the reappearance of the waltz suggests that this is not going to be easy.

Think: a "Beethoven piano sonata", combined with a "Viennese waltz", then transformed into an exuberant rocker.

* * *

Earlier versions of Claudia.

This version is okay. But, by comparison, my voice sounds held back, while the current version sounds full-throated.

VERSION, 1976: Before starting to write songs in my late teens, I had been schooled in classical piano, and that training is reflected in the kinds of songs I wrote. This was especially the case with my earliest songs, in my piano accompaniment, as you can hear in this recording of Claudia that I made with a friend (on bass guitar) when I was twenty (a year after I wrote the song):

The song was played way too fast, and the tempo is very uneven (not having the benefit of a modern-day click track). But you can still make out the elaborate piano accompaniment, much of which I've left in place in my current arrangement, because I still like it and still feel the piano (rather than one or more of the other instruments) should play it.

* * *

If Claudia sounds to you like a march at certain points, you'd be right! The main character is possessed by, and driven by, his impulsive attraction to Claudia, without thought as to where it might all be headed — much like lemmings on the march to the cliff's edge. The march-like, musical elements in the song are intended to portray that driven character.

* * *

When I initially arranged this new version of Claudia, I was unsure as to whether to make the waltz more "carnival-like" or more "sweet" (like a Viennese waltz). The original version of Claudia was dominated by the piano. So the waltz in the middle also had a percussive quality because the piano is a percussion instrument, and building on that led me down the path of a "carnival-like" waltz. I even added rock drumming in that first new version:

But when I listened to Viennese waltzes again, I realized that their "sweetness" comes from making the strings (violins, etc.) the heart of the arrangement. So in my final version of Claudia, I eliminated the rock drumming, I "mixed down" the piano (so it no longer dominated), and I wrote string parts that were the core of the new arrangement. Only, instead of a swelling orchestral string section (which is what you hear when you listen to something like The Blue Danube — or Bernard Hermann's waltz in Obsession (see below) — I made the strings much more intimate. . . more like a string quartet, where you can hear individual string instruments playing off each other.

I went the "sweet" route (over the "carnival-like" route) because I realized that the waltz was the expression of the main character's heart. Despite the regretful words that begin the waltz section ("Had I known you half as well as I should have known you, I'd be wiser."), in fact, he has fallen in love with her. His heart is breaking, and what he wishes more than anything else is that somehow he and Claudia could be together. The sweetness of the waltz is his feeling for her, despite everything.

The melody associated with the verses is full of short stacatto bursts: "Good times. Rare times." has each word associated with just such a burst. It gave the song a real musical punch. But is also created a unique challenge in lyric writing, because a lot has to be communicated in just a few words, in each of the six verses:
Good times. Rare times.
Crazed girl. Night girl.
One skirt. Long hair.
Last week, dropped a mile.
Last night. Parked car.
Next day, she's gone away.

* * *

Another interesting thing about the lyrics is that the last line of each verse ends with the word, "Claudia":
I fell for Claudia.
I'll tell of Claudia.
We'll get by, Claudia.
I'm high on Claudia.
Where are you now, Claudi—
I must forget Claudia.
In a sense, the entire story is told in those last lines.

* * *

Curiously, though you hear her name many times, the subject of the song, Claudia, remains a rather mysterious character. The singer promises to "tell of Claudia" — and here I was deliberately imitating the grand style of the Greek epics, like the Illiad and the Odyssey, which open with similar pronouncements, for example, "Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilles" (opening of the Illiad), or "Tell, Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy." (opening of the Odyssey).

As it turns out, though, his grand "telling of Claudia" largely ends up being his singing just her name over and over again! Which hints at his main failing: he doesn't really know her well at all, and is projecting a lot of his hopes and desires onto someone who, as it will turn out, won't be able to fulfill them. The song hints this to the listeners from the very beginning, presuming that, when they hear him sing, "without a doubt, the right girl for me", they know almost certainly that she is not the right girl for him, and that (therefore) the song is likely to play out as a disaster. (And it does.) We also are not told anything about her feeling for him. So we get the sense that the feelings may have been largely in one direction.

The guy does eventually grasp his huge error, but only after it is too late, and Claudia has vanished from his life. (His singing, "Claudi-" with the end of her name cut off is meant to reflect just how suddenly she vanished.)

* * *

The time sequence of the song is interestingly nonlinear. When the song turns reflective, and he sings, "Had I known you half as well as I should have known you", this is not a reflection that he had at that moment in the time sequence (i.e. while she was still with him). Rather, it's a flash forward to the regret he will be feeling after she has vanished. Just so, the line, "girl of a single night love" is a reference to what is about to occur in the time sequence. At the end of the song (which is the moment in the time sequence when he actually would be having all these reflections and regrets), we hear an instrumental version of the waltz again — no need to repeat the words again: they've already been said.

* * *

In several of my songs, I work in fragments of (or allusions to) nursery rhymes. The "songwriting theory" I was working from (solely my own, so far as I know) was that such nursery rhymes enter our consciousness at a very young age, and referencing them subconsciously in a song stirs powerful associations in the listener's psyche, increasing the reception and impact of the song. In this song, the relevant words are:

Next day,
she's gone away.
Won't come back some other day.

And the nursery rhyme I'm alluding to is:

Rain, rain, go away.
Come again some other day.

* * *

My love of word play shows up in many of my songs, including this one. Of course I'm playing with words when I write:
Last night.
Parked car.
No girl took me half as far.

* * *

"Hookup culture" is so prevalent, and "one night stands" so commonplace these days that some might say the guy is suffering "much ado about nothing". But of course, even in the midst of that hookup culture, many people are still looking for long-term relationships. So the issue remains: someone actually looking for a relationship can still inadvertently or mistakenly "hook up" with someone who isn't, and suffer the consequences.

Gettings things to sound good musically sometimes takes a bit of finesse, as I'll now illustrate.

Right after I sing "I'll tell of Claudia", the electric guitar plays a series of triplets (four altogether) for the fun of it, to mess around with the tempo:

Back when we originally recorded the song (when I was 20), we had no click track — there was nothing regulating the tempo — so it was an easy thing to just play the triplets on the piano, and then jump into the next section of the song. But because the triplets mess with the tempo, doing that actually leaves out part of a measure — and that wreaks havoc with the software I currently use to help arrange my songs, which definitely does not like anything less than full measures. While I could have found a way to do this in the software anyway, an another idea occurred to me: I could follow the triplets with the bass guitar playing like a click track, restoring the listener's ear to the former tempo, and filling out the remainder of the measure. So that's what happens: the triplets play; then (at just the right moment) the bass guitar counts off four beats; then the bass guitar and the electric guitar together count four more beats (and now the listener has been completely restored to the pre-triplet tempo), and then the piano (and the full song) kicks in, the first four beats continuing the "count" by pounding the piano four times.

The idea for cover art that would appropriately reflect the song came to me very quickly. The "Claudia" of the song is absolutely attractive to the main character, and everything is colored with the red of his sexual desire. The parked car that is the pinnacle of their brief romance is in sight. It is night, when the "night girl" is goddess. But when you look past her smile, the scene is stark — an empty, lifeless street. And that is what he is left with the next day, after she has vanished out of his life.

I was delighted to hear Sting say (in a recent interview) that he was "a sucker for a waltz", any time he hears one. Me too! So it's not terribly surprising to find one popping up in one of my songs. But there's more to it than that. As I dug deeper into the origins of Claudia, I found another strong influence as well: Brian DePalma's movie, Obsession. The movie was released in 1976, shortly before I wrote Claudia. It had a major impact on me. I loved the way dePalma "bookended" his movie with a waltz. The movie opens with the leading man (played by Cliff Robertson) dancing (in a ballroom) to a waltz with his wife (played by Genevieve Bujold). The movie closes with him holding his daughter (also played by Genevieve Bujold), as the same waltz plays, and the camera turns it into a dance (like the opening) by circling around the two.

This inspired me to end Claudia with the same waltz that appeared in the middle of the song. Only, whereas Obsession has a happy ending, and the final waltz is exhilarating, Claudia has a sad ending, and I wanted that final waltz to be a "haunted" version. The main character "must forget Claudia" (as he says). . . but that's not going to be easy, because she's unforgettable. Bernard Hermann (famous for composing the music in Hitchcock movies) composed the soundtrack in Obsession. He is famous for composing the soundtracks for Hitchcockian movies, and his waltzes have a manic quality to them. So there is some of that in my waltzes too.

Was Claudia real? Yes and no! Like many songwriters (and artists altogether), I often draw inspiration from the people and places in my actual life, using them as starting points. But then, like all creative storytellers, I may completely transform my sources, to the point where the final character bears little resemblance to the source. I never had a one-night stand. I did know a woman named Claudia. And she did look something like the woman I chose for the cover art:

But the real Claudia was a lovely, warm woman, and a friend with whom I sometimes hung out at a local bar. And yes, reflecting on the opening line of the song: both she and I loved having "good times"! In her case, perhaps a little too much for her own good, as she'd often be leaning on my arm (barely conscious from all she was drinking) as I helped her out to her car at the end of the night (usually when the bar closed).

One night, I got her into her car — and she promptly passed out! Try as I might, I couldn't rouse her. It was a freezing winter night, so I couldn't just leave her there. I got in and drove her to my home. I was still living with my parents at the time, and I parked the car on the street in front of our house. I still couldn't rouse her. So I went inside, got a large blanket, sat down next to her in the car so she wouldn't be alone, covered both of us with the blanket, and passed out myself shortly after. Around 6am, I was awakened by a knock on the car window. It was my mother, and she had a look on her face that said, "WTF?" I rolled down the window, and told her how my friend Claudia had a little too much to drink, and had passed out. I then tried rousing Claudia, this time, successfully. We went inside, where my mother very graciously offered an incredibly embarrassed Claudia a mug of hot coffee and some breakfast.

So that was the actual story of Claudia and the "parked car". The real Claudia was someone who loved a good laugh. . . I lost touch with her before writing this song (she moved out of state), but I think she would have laughed uproariously at how much I transformed events in crafting this song!