Who is your most influential song writer?

This not favourite but infuential. Which song writer has made you want to write your own songs more than anybody else?

Mine is probably Pual Simon, everytime I listen to his songs it inspires me to write my own. Morrissey is probably a second but for difference reasons. Ian Curtis is also up there but who didn't really live long enough to produce many brillaint peices of work.

I like the work of the Gibb brothers but I can't really say their lyrics have inspired me, the same goes for New Order.

 

Bon Scott and Jerry Reed Hubbard spring to mind

 

Tool as a whole.

 

Richard Strauss - I could die happy if I'd written the Four Last Songs.

 

Schubert or failing that Elvis Costello

 

Not a 'song writer' in the traditional sense, but ever since I first heard Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Vol. II" when it was first released a decade ago I was moved to make electronic music, which I do to this day (purely for personal pleasure). That album, for the naive teenager that I was, opened up my horizons as to what music and sound could be, and that with modern electronics the imagination is the only limiting factor. It also told me that you don't need to be able to play or understand a traditional instrument in order to create and realise your own musical ideas.

 

Nice Cave for me this morning...listening to No More Shall We Part. Amazing album and the songs are just so well written, all great stories. Real song smith.

 

Bootsy Collins and George Clinton..

 

Too many to mention all of them, but Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Diamond would all be on the list.

By the way, has anyone heard of Lennon & McCartney?

Chris.

 

Lennon and McCartney are possible be a bit over rated in my opinion. I am not saying they were bad or anything I just don't think they are at the same standard as Dylan.

I have listened to much folk lately but Dylan is high up on my list.

 

that last post is priceless

 

Captain Beefheart.

-- Ian

 

Ivor Cutler.

Tony.

 

There's a blast from the past. Is he still alive?

From memory:

"Everybody's got a little triangle of hair
But nobody talks about it
I am a quiet and unassuming man,
But I'm thinking, thinking, thinking about it all day long"

The finest song about pubic hair that I know of.

-- Ian

 

Page/Plant
Nick Drake

 

Gamble/Huff
Jacques Brel

 

Neil Peart
Peter Gabriel
Roger Waters

 

Good call.

 

I'd have to say Roger Waters being a huge Floyd fan, then possibly Neil Young and Lennon/McCartney.

 

Jim Steinman