Any Other Man

Notes on "Any Other Man "

This song, in its current form, arose from a writers’ group idea – to resurrect and recreate a song from my first years of songwriting.

I haven't thrown much of that stuff away, so a quick trip through the files brought up a lyric fragment - a chorus. After some reconstruction of events, I think it was written when I lived on Brunswick Ave. in Toronto, and I left there at the end of 1970.

Somewhat surprisingly, I remembered the tune and chords pretty well, and liked them (and kept them in the new version), but there were no verses (or so I thought). So I reckoned I would start by writing verses to see where that would get me.

The chorus suggested a sad tired relationship that was breaking up. The chorus moves a lot so I started with musically simple verses. As often happens now, the verse was asymmetrical, and needed a repeat. but then it didn't fit really snugly with the chorus - so I tried repeating the last line as a pre-chorus, and then verses and chorus married. The story brings out the theme of a break-up that doesn't seem to be able to happen - previewed in the chorus - though its not clear why. Pride perhaps - in any case a picture of two young people making each other unhappy: very much my mood in those years.

The recordings referenced above include both a fragment that I found on a worktape from 1971, and the complete version finished in December, 2010. The picture of me is from 1971 or 1972 ...