Welcome to a page all about “Pay For Love”

Click on the arrow to activate the exfm player:  Pay For Love

Read below for credits, the story, and lyrics.

The players:
VC:  lead  & harmony vocals, Moserite acoustic guitar, Danelectro DC 12 electric 12-string guitar (rhythm & lead),  Fender Precision bass guitar, drum programming, “Cousin” Ken Maffeo: backing vocals

The Story:

I wrote these words in 2006 and really wanted this to be a song for my then band, The New Americans. I tried and tried and tried but could not write music to go with the words. Finally in the midst of recording this CD I finally had a breakthrough and the song became what you hear now. I immediately knew this would be a song for my newly purchased Danelectro electric 12 string and knew this would have a mid-sixties Byrds type sound to it. But I also found the song’s inner “Rubber Soul” (think “Nowhere Man) when “Cousin” Ken and I worked on all the backing vocals…again I had recorded them all myself, but Ken just made them so much better. I also had originally envisioned this song as a duet…but that did not work out. Now…this song has been called cynical and as someone who has been famously called a romantic, I have to disagree. I think  it’s much more realistic than cynical. It came to be as a hodgepodge of stories and impressions from people like me on the dating scene. As is often the case the original inspiration for the song was a single line that had bounced around in my head: “What good is your money if you don’t spend it on someone.” But I also intended to show that we all “pay for love” in many ways whether it involves money, suffering or sacrifice. When trying to impress we often “put our money where our mouth is” …both women who in middle age often go to ridiculous extremes and men to who may pay quite more literally to meet their needs. It’s social observation, but it’s also a bit tongue in cheek, and thus I will continue to protest the cynical label. Of course I can’t leave out the guitar lead played with my “magic fingers.” I had written the lead part and played a rough version and waited and waited for several other musicians to do the lead…but wait I did for over a year until I finally just went back and redid it myself! Not bad, if I do say so!

Lyrics

Pay for Love
Chorus:
 When love doesn’t pay
You’ve got to pay for love
What good is your money
If you don’t spend it on someone
You got to pay for love
When love doesn’t pay
We all have been there
Or else we’ll be there someday
She can put another personal ad on the website
Or take a trip down to the corner pub
She can sit and complain about wrinkles and cellulite
Or work out at the gym or dance down at the pub
It’s all about choice, it’s all about changes
And sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is
Chorus
He once had it all; had the girl of his dreams
Now the only sweetness he has is a pint of ice cream
He became the man he always thought he’d become
But nice doesn’t fly with his type of woman
He knows it’s all about choice, knows it’s all about changes
Knows it’s time to put some money where his mouth is
A bayside hotel, a fourth floor view
Naked and naughty sure kills those blues
A girl half his age, bills on the nightstand
Smiling as he slips through the moral quicksand
Since love never paid
Now he’ll pay for love
All that money’s no good
Unless he spends it on someone
So he’ll pay for love
Because love didn’t pay
He’s been there before
Perhaps he won’t be someday
VC
4/8/06