PBS: Songwriting Is The Life Force That Drives Me

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/for-lucinda-williams-songwriting-is-the-life-force-that-drives-me/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Anyone aware of the consonant change suggested by Miller while Lu was writing Drunken Angel? This is the first time I recall reading this.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS: Yeah. I would show him things. My father and I had a really special bond from the time I was born. He was really my rock, and so, I wanted his approval. I set really high standards for myself from an early age, because he set high standards for himself. And so I would show him my songs pretty much all the way through the Car Wheels album. I was finishing the song “Lake Charles,” and I showed him some of the lyrics. You know that line that goes, “Did an angel whisper in your ear?” And he said, “You’ve already got a song on this album with the word “angel” in it, “Drunken Angel.’” I really think it’s a mistake to use that word again in this song; you shouldn’t be repeating, you’ve got to come up with something else.” It was kind of this rule of writing in the poetry world anyway, I guess. And he said, “What about devil?” I said, “No, no, no, no, that’s not going to work.” And he said, “You can’t come up with anything besides ‘angel’?” And I said, “Dad, I’ve got to put my foot down on this one. It’s got to be ‘angel’.” And he said, “Okay, but that’s it. You’ve used up your quota of ‘angel;’ you can’t keep using it in songs all the time.” And I said, “Okay, okay.” There’s a line in “Drunken Angel” — “Blood flows out from the hole in your heart.” Well, the original line was — this probably seems really trivial to most people — “Blood flows out from a hole in your heart.” And my dad said, “Change a to the. The hole.”