The Lyrics:
I got the idea for the lyrics for this song as I was listening to an old song called "The Wizard" by the band Uriah Heap. Their song had nice music and great vocals, but I thought their lyrics missed the mark. Their lyrics begin:
"He was the wizard of a thousand kings,
and I chanced to meet him one night wondering."
So far so good; I'm intrigued, please continue.
"He told me tales, and he drank my wine.
Me and my magic man kind of feeling fine."

What the? That's not a wizard; that's some smooth talking hippie enjoying a free buzz!

It got me thinking: instead of telling a story about a wizard, what would the wizard want to share with us? Assuming we're not talking about a Disney character magically manipulating their environment, it's far more probable that a modern-day wizard would be a master of consciousness; someone with a high degree of mastery in setting up their energy field, and determining how they would like their mind and emotions to function.

Naturally, my first reaction is that you can't condense all of that wisdom into a song! Then I thought - just be playful! Don't take it so seriously; just have fun creating the wizard's message.

So these lyrics are my version of what would happen if you were fortunate enough to meet a wizard, and asked him to reveal the secrets for magical living.

The Music:
The first time I sat down to figure out the chords for the song "Highway Star" by Deep Purple, I was stunned to discover that they had one set of chord changes to sing over, and a completely different set of chord changes to play solos over! My mind was blown! Up until then, musicians were supposed to play solos over the chords to the song; but Deep Purple did not accept that limitation. I don't know if they just wanted cooler chords to jam over; or if they wanted to expand the range of the song by adding more elements to it - but I was very impressed!

So I applied that technique for this song. The chords for the Intro and Outro, as well as the Violin and Guitar solos in the middle, use a completely different chord progression than the chords used for the Vocals. The violin solo was recorded "last century" (wow, that makes me sound old) while the guitar solo was recorded this century (I think in 2014). I am virtually co-creating music with my younger self.

Also, to my great surprise, I had found an old recording on one of my ancient reels of audiotape in which I had written and recorded a string section (three violins) for this song. I had completely forgotten that I had ever done this! I was listening along to the tape, not really expecting to hear anything I needed to save, when all of a sudden I heard these Violin plucks (pizzicato) come in. I broke out laughing with delight and amusement! I was able to extract them from tape into the computer, and I have added them to my current recording for the third verse and chorus. I then realized I now had to write a string section for the Outro; it didn't sound right for the strings to just disappear once they became a part of the song.

From the point of view of a composer, this is one of my best compositions. I hope you like the combination of composition, arrangement, lyrics and performances as much as I do.

Tags: Fusion, Rock, Jazz Funk, Progressive, Vocals