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