Guitars, songwriting, producing and more: A talk with Richard Marx
By Courtney Grimes
Richard Marx has done it all. With a musical career spanning over 17 years, he began singing in commercials that his father wrote and was a background singer for Lionel Richie. From there, he rose to adult contemporary radio star in the late '80s with such #1 hits as "Don't Mean Nothing," "Right Here Waiting," "Hold On To The Nights," and "Satisfied."
When the '90s rolled in with its grunge and alternative-rock scene, the polished pop songs that were Richard's calling card shifted out of the mainstream, but Richard and his music somehow made the transition quite seamlessly. Perhaps that is what helped him become what he is today, one of the world's favorite singer-songwriter-producers. He works now more behind the scenes than he does in the forefront, writing and producing songs for some of music's superstars, and also doing his share to help new talent break onto the scene. He also supports various charities and causes such as the Dick Marx Foundation (named after Richard's father, funding music scholarships to DePaul University), the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Richard performs at the 2003 All-Star Music Bash
fund raiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
With seven albums already under his belt and a list of credits that ranges from writing *NSYNC's "This I Promise You" to co-producing a Barbra Streisand/Vince Gill duet, Richard remains humble, dedicated and passionate about the future. While his new solo album, My Own Best Enemy, and a production project debut are both set to release this month, Richard took an afternoon off to check out some guitars at Gibson's Custom, Art & Historic division and to chat about his remarkable career.
CG: What was your favorite part of the Custom Shop tour?
Richard: My favorite part was just meeting guys who have been working at this company for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, who after decades, still take such pride in making such great guitars. You can't really point to one aspect of building a guitar as being more important than another; it's all just part of the process. These are really, incredibly beautiful instruments.
CG: What is the greatest guitar you own?
Richard: My favorite acoustic guitar is this J-200 that I got probably in '89 or '90. It's proudly displayed in my studio and beyond that I have an original '57 Strat. The only guitar I've ever had stolen from me, was a 1963 Country Gent that my band gave me, 'cause that's the year I was born, and it was stolen while we were touring. It was this gorgeous guitar, but it was the sentimental part of it that got me. The band had collectively got together and collected the dough and gave that to me on my birthday and it was just a really special gift.
CG: Do you write on guitar?
Richard: I write mostly on guitar, but over the years I have stopped writing on any instrument.
CG: How come?
Richard: Because I'm not a great guitar player and I'm not a great piano player and I find that if I can get away from an instrument, then I'm not limited to write what I'm able to play. So, on piano sometimes you'll stumble upon a chord and once in a great while you'll do that on guitar.
CG: So how do you normally write a song?
Richard: I just write, in the car, in the shower, at the dinner table, it's all hard to articulate. But music almost always comes first, and it starts with this quick, linear melody but within seconds of me hearing this melody, I'm hearing the record. So its not like I'm hearing, you know, one note at a time. I'm hearing what the guitar is doing, the bass, the drums and piano, what they're all doing at the same time. When I start writing songs I'm hearing the record as I'm writing the song. In fact, if anything, a guitar or piano will only limit it. So I usually only grab a guitar to make sure that it's the right chord in order to check in. So when we cut the song in the studio I'll chart it out.
I find that it's so much more melodically driven that way. If you write on an instrument, the song becomes so chord driven. But if you write without one, the song is all about the melody.
CG: But how do you literally remember all of what you hear in your mind as you're creating these songs?
Richard: On my answering machine. I've got a zillion of them. I mean on my answering machine right now, there are probably six of them. Thank God for cell phones. I've been doing that forever. I remember the most expensive song I ever wrote, I was in Australia and I had this idea and I went to the men's room and I got on the pay phone and had to make a phone call to my answering machine and it was probably a $37 phone call but it was a good song.
CG: You have such a distinctive sound. Do collaborate a lot with other artists?
Richard: Years ago, I had a hit early on, this song called "Satisfied" (plays some of the song). Well, "She's a Beauty" is one of my favorite songs of all time and David Foster and I have been friends forever, Steve Lukather and I have been friends forever and Pete Waybill is my kid's godfather, the three guys who wrote "She's a Beauty." So when I wrote "Satisfied," I realized when I was writing it, it was so borrowed from "She's a Beauty," it was not melodically. Not even two notes were the same and you can't get sued for the riffs, but it just felt so not right to me. So before we overdubbed, we just had the basic track, I had all three guys into the studio and I said "Look, ya gotta tell me, 'cause I'll put all three of your names on this, it'll be a gang effort," and they just looked at me and said "Dude, no way, it's not a problem!"
CG: Do you feel that anything is original anymore?
Richard: Nothing is original anymore. We only have 12 notes, you know? I've had a couple of people start these bogus proceedings, hoping people like me will just toss them $5,000 and say "Here, go away" kind of thing. But when it comes to integrity, I'll go broke, defending the integrity that I've never ripped anybody off. So when somebody else has ripped me off it doesn't make me want to go sue them. Because I think accidents happen all the time. I've changed songs luckily at the last minute going "Oh, no wonder I loved this melody so much, it's not mine!" It was better when so-and-so did it!
CG: Tell me about your new record.
Richard: It's just much more of a rock record. I hadn't made a record in a long time. The guy who signed me originally, back in 1902 (laughing), signed me again to EMI and he asked me to make a record and at first I was thinking "I don't really do that anymore." But he said I could make whatever record I wanted, and I said, "Really, I was thinking of making a polka record," and he said, "Anything but polka." So I went in and made a rock 'n' roll record.
CG: What song or album are you most proud of and why?
Richard: Album. It's a tie between my new record, and I'm not just saying that, and a record I just produced for a band here in Nashville called Emerson Drive. I kind of came in at the end of their first album a couple of years ago and did one song which they kind of threw on at the end. They're a really hard working, talented group of guys and I've never done an entire record for anybody else besides myself. We did the entire record at my house. We did all the overdubs at my house, it was like Camp Marx and we brought them in one at a time and it was just so much fun. But I found as I was making the album, that I was getting performances out of these guys and we were all working on a level that we hadn't been before. And this was just a totally different thing. If I never have another hit record again, I've had enough, I can't complain. But when you have a band like this that's so deserving of having a record that explodes, the pressure that goes into producing it, you know? I fell in love with these guys as humans, so I want to see these guys win because they deserve to win musically and personally. I'm so proud of this record we made together and now it's coming out in a week or two! And I'm 30 times more nervous about that record coming out than I am about my own.
CG: Are you a good judge of when you've nailed it on an album? When you've got a hit?
Richard: No. I mean I'm a good judge of when I've nailed it musically, yeah. I know when I've made a good record, but whether that's going to become a hit?I've never written a song I thought was going to become a hit. Never. Probably the song I'm most associated with, "Right Here, Waiting," I did not want to put on my album.
CG: How come?
Richard: Too personal. Nobody's gonna understand this, it's too personal. I had people look at me and go "How stupid are you!?" So I don't know. I wish I had that ability to pick hits. I just know when I've done the best I can do as a producer and a songwriter.
CG: Which part do you like the best, the singing, the songwriting or the producing part of it? And which part are you gearing more towards now?
Richard: Well, right now I feel like I have a pretty good juggle going. Even when I started having hits as an artist, I knew I wasn't going to be one of those guys who was going to have a 20-25 year career as a singer. I just wasn't unique enough and certainly didn't have any kind of image at all. It was all about the music. So there was nothing to sell magazines. People who had long careers as artists were always reinventing their images, so I knew there was a finite period, which was longer than I even predicted. So after a while, when I did put out that record that didn't go platinum or didn't really connect, instead of panicking, I just thought "Okay, well, I've really wanted to write and produce for other people. Let's see if I can get that going." And it wasn't six months before I sort of stumbled into that with *NSYNC which sold over 99 million copies. And that sort of opened me up to writing and producing rock 'n' roll acts and a lot of country artists to even classical and jazz artists, and all these different projects that came along that I could have never pulled off if I was still an artist. I love writing and producing things for other people, that's where I've been blessed in my career so far, so that's where I think my future is, but I would love to be able to do all three things. So, I've been really blessed. It's been a blast.