Album Notes

The Magic of Jerry Fagan

A master poet, a master of delivering a song, and a pretty good guitar player.

He has stories to tell and a way with words that is fresh, exciting, and picturesque. He puts the listener into his scenes. The voice…it’s strikingly different - you won’t get a tired ear listening to him. The album is 37 minutes and 13 seconds long and it feels like 3 minutes! I play it again from the top. Every time I catch something different and it’s like “HELLO” where’d that come from - and that’s weird because I arranged it, I produced it, I recorded it, and I mixed it. I for one should know what's there!

Perhaps you can pick a favorite song – I can’t. I’ll listen and think song “So & So” is the best. The next time that I play it I’ll think it’s another one. Well HELP! What do I really know?

What I know for sure is this: Mutual acquaintances said, “You can’t work with Fagan, he’s too difficult” WHAT? That’s so far off. Not one second of a problem. Fagan is the pro’s pro. If someone can’t work with Fagan, then they have and they are the problem. We were hours, days, weeks, months on this project, and not one, NOT ONE, problem. Things would come up like – “Jerry you’re playing too much guitar, let it breath, get simple”. Quickly, he’d say “OK” and we would nail it. I only regret that I didn’t meet Jerry Fagan years ago! A pleasure to know, a pleasure to work with.

I recall a paragraph that I read in the book “Mortal Games” by Pierre Salinger & Leonard Cross, that kind of puts this project into a perspective for me: “The difference between a composer and a performer. The performer plays the composer’s works. He interprets but doesn’t create. It’s the composer who makes something out of nothing, something that didn’t exist before he made it and would never have existed except for him”. Jerry composed these songs. I, as his arranger, interrupted what he had written. Then as a performer he came back and performed his work within the framework of what I had interpreted. I think it worked. You listen. I hope you will agree. At any rate I think you will find a new musical friend.

Gerald Nelson