Ian McMillan: Waxing lyrical with a song in my art

The reason I’m warbling so much is that I’m currently writing loads of song lyrics and the only way I can work out if they’ll be successful is by trying them out, opening my mouth and breathing them into life. Of course, the tune they end up with may not be the tune I give them, but I’m just testing.

I mainly write songs with my mate, Luke Carver Goss; I do the words and he does the music, and we’ve just been writing a new piece for the Holmfirth Festival that’s happening later this month.

He calls himself Luke Carver Goss mainly because it’s his name but also because he often gets mixed up with the former member of Bros, Luke Goss.

We often do songwriting workshops in schools and I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve turned up in reception to be met by a committee of women of a certain age clutching copies of Bros albums to be signed. And, to Luke’s credit, he signs them all.

The reason I like writing lyrics is that I’ve always been surrounded by song. My dad sang all the time. My mam hummed as she did her jobs around the house. The radio was always on, tuned to Radio 2 or local radio, always something with plenty of songs.

I vividly remember one Sunday afternoon drive from my childhood that I’ve come to call since The Journey of Song, and, in retrospect, it must have been the moment that made me into a lyrics writer. Our Sunday afternoon drives took us from Darfield via Great Houghton to Brierley crossroads, where we’d have a cornet from the ice-cream van.

As soon as we set off, my dad would start singing. His song of choice was the Andy Stewart classic, Donald Where’s Yer Troosers? and he’d fill the car with his light tenor.

My brother was feeling car-sick and somebody had told him that if you sang, it made you feel better, so he gave us The House of the Rising Sun in a grumbling adolescent rumble with a green face. My mother was looking forward to listening to Sing Something Simple that night and her way of looking forward was to sing the opening line of the theme song over and over again: “Sing Something Simple, as cares go by…”

I was sitting next to my brother in the back and for some reason I couldn’t get the Bonanza theme tune out of my head. So I was sitting there going “Danga la lang la la danga la lang Bonanza!” repeating it until it became like white noise or the sound of a distant burglar alarm three streets away.

The volume in the car increased as we each fought our corner. It was like a game of Song Poker. My dad raised his Donald Where’s Yer Troosers? and I saw his Donald and bid my Bonanza. My brother held his cards close to his chest and opened his mouth wider to tell us about the house in New Orleans, and my mother trumped us all by holding the last note of “cares go by” for what seemed like hours.

Beat that, Luke Goss!