David Bryan: From Netherworld to Memphis, Part 1

Here's Part One of an interview with Dave on Attention Deficit Delirium, the blog of Bryan Reesman. The bold parts in this bit cracked me up:

In 2001, a script came through the script gods and fell in my lap, and it was Memphis. Joe DiPietro had written it. He had shopped it around for couple years for a composer, and he was looking for an authentic rock composer not a theater rock composer. Not that that’s bad or good, but I am what I am. He had some lyrics put in there already, and I read the whole script. When you see Memphis, I saw that finished product in my brain. I knew it had to be horns, I knew every one of the songs. I called him up and said, “Joe, David Bryan from Bon Jovi.” He was like, “Okay.” “Listen, I hear every one of your songs in my head.” “Okay. Do you hear other things in your head?” I go, “Yeah, but we can talk about that later.” He said, “Okay, pick a song and take it from there.” I said, “I’m also a lyricist. Can I do mess around with the lyrics?” “Yeah, just have fun with it.” So the first song I picked was “Music Of My Soul” because I saw that that was the heartbeat of our lead character. That’s what meant everything to him. The chorus was there and some lines were there, but I added some things. I did that and went down into my studio, and I got the drum machine going. I played piano, bass, organ and guitar on it. I sang lead and all the background vocals. It mixed it onto a CD and FedExed it to him. He got it the next day and was expecting some whiny little thing on a cassette tape piano, and he said, “If you’re not crazy, you’ve got the gig.” I said, “I’m a little crazy, but I’ll take the gig.”

Check out the full article here.

Cheers to Hath for the heads-up. :)