Notes on Cancer Songs
It was while I was on chemo in September 2006, that I felt inspired to write the words for Stayin' Alive. I had, some months previously, written a couple of humorous little EC related ditties and posted the words to the EC Group (an email list for patients and care givers of esophageal cancer), and got an encouraging response from people saying that they got a laugh or even a smile out of it.
The thing I hated most about doing chemo, was being tethered to the 5FU pump. There was a desire to try and carry on with everyday activities and ignore its presence, conflicting with having to constantly remember it was there in case I got out of my chair forgetting to pick it up first! I was provided with a nylon case, so that I could wear the pump around my waist, but this was uncomfortable while sitting down, so I would tend not to use it very much.
One morning, I decided that the kitchen floor needed cleaning and I was going to just bite the bullet and clean it in spite of how awful I was feeling from chemo side effects. I put my pump in its case and fixed the belt around my waist and walked to the kitchen singing "You can tell by the way I wear my pump, I'm a chemoman, I'm gonna get that lump" to the tune of the BeeGee's classic Staying Alive.
I have no idea where it came from. I didn't contemplate it at all. It wasn't that unusual that I had made up a silly little rhyme to some well known tune. I was doing that kind of thing all the time to amuse my wife Rachael, or my son Connor, or whoever. But I realised that the song that I had changed the lyrics of, had a title that described in two words exactly what I was doing on chemo!
I was suddenly inspired to finish it, which I did within twenty minutes! I discovered that as I wrote down lines such as "I'm gonna kick it around, I've got odds to fight", that I felt the adrenaline well up inside me, and by the time I got to "Ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive", I was laughing with confidence in the face of the beast! It made me wonder if others would experience the same emotions from my lyrics.
My own experiences of chemo at the time were pretty mild compared to the poor guy in the song, but even though I didn't suffer hair loss myself, I knew it was a side effect that many chemo patients would relate to. So, Stayin' Alive, was inspired from my own experience, but also the experiences of my fellow chemomen and chemowomen on the EC Group.
When I'm Sixty Four
I don't think there is a better title for a song about chemo or cancer than Stayin' Alive. But after writing my lampoon of this classic, I was on the hunt for other likely candidates.
When I'm Sixty Four, implied a confidence to be around for the next twenty years, and the first line of the original had that "losing my hair" reference. It was another gift as a potential cancer song!
As in Stayin' Alive, I made references again to chemo drugs (carboplatin and 5FU). But this time the song was more directly related to EC, and even had references to "Cathy's Cafe", the home of the EC Group mailing list, and some of the members there. The line "we could make love at 20 degrees", is nothing to do with the temperature, but rather the inclined bed that most people need to sleep on after having an esophagectomy.
Like Stayin' Alive, Sixty Four, was written in a humorous vein, with tongue in cheek. I can't say it was inspired by anything more than the fact that it might make someone in my shoes, have a laugh!
I changed the words to Sixty Four, a few months after writing it, to make it more suitable as a duet. It looked likely that I might one day record these songs, and I figured that if I did, I'd like to do this one with Rachael. In all the years we've been together, we have done little more than talk about recording something together. This was a great opportunity!
Hangin' Around
Hangin' Around is my own personal favourite. Out of all the songs, this one is definitely the most personal and most truly inspired!
It's probably the least familiar song on the CD, as the original was only an album track from a British punk band's first album in the late seventies.
The Stranglers' Hanging Around was playing on the radio. As I sat listening to the song I hadn't heard for maybe twenty years, it occurred to me that the frequently repeating phrase "Hanging Around" was all I could hear, and the rest of the words were lost as I was so focussed on just how simply it summed up my life since my diagnosis. I was still hanging around in spite of the odds, but that's all I was doing... just hanging around!
I don't think I need to clarify anything in this song. It simply tells my EC story to date.
We had a great time working on various arrangements of this song, and then eventually recording it. Rachael worked hard with me on this one and plays all the keyboards and bass on it as well as some brilliant backing vocals. Like I said, my favourite!
The last two songs on the CD are far less humorous than the first two. But I think they would relate more to my fellow EC patients. I think it's important to laugh if you can at whatever trauma one might find themselves faced with. But it is also comforting and encouraging to be aware that there are others in the same boat as yourself.
As I'm a big fan of Pink Floyd, I was keen to find one of their songs that I could re-purpose as an EC fighting song.
We had already fixed our dates with the recording studio to make the CD, and with only two weeks to go, I sat down one evening with my guitar and the song "Shine on you Crazy Diamond" in my head.
The original lyric begins with "Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun", which kind of implies that that's when things were better than they are today. I didn't have to go back as far as my youth to remember that, and I changed the first line to, "Remember when you could eat, and swallow dry bread and meat".
The inability to swallow food, and in particular, dry bread and meat, was the first symptom of EC that I experienced. The rest of the song speaks for itself with the possible exception of the reference to George, Marc and Jane.
George Thompson, Marc Wolfgram, and Jane Pickett, are all long term survivors of esophageal cancer. All their remarkable stories can be read on Cathy's Cafe...
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Jane has survived this disease for 34 years to date, and is regarded as something of an icon in the EC world. The icing on the cake in the making of the Stayin' Alive CD was to have Jane on the front cover!
Ray
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