Riffing on Influence: a Creative Writing Exploration of Music, Lyrics and Performance after Listening to Mick Softley.

This thesis explores my own practice as research into songwriting and performance from the perspectives of Influence, Intertextuality and Cultural Absorption. Starting with the influence of Existentialist thought and Beat literature on the 1960s folk revival, through reflections on psychedelia, mainstream culture and revolution in song language, this thesis considers the relevance of Julia Kristeva’s Intertextuality and the validity of Harold Bloom’s theory of Influence for music and song lyrics, while simultaneously recognising the social foundations of the product through the cultural studies of Raymond Williams. It introduces Mick Softley’s lyrics and music to the critical archive through the functions of communication, wordplay, social comment, passion and imagination, and the creative enigma. My creative work centres on Softley, his life and works, and the contrasts in our respective social-historical contexts, as a catalyst for my own musical and lyrical output. Reflections on my own songwriting further explore relations between songs, poems, and stories through the practice of the poet and critic Simon Armitage, and the combined interplay between words and music, extending practical examples from Donovan and Softley and considering ways of innovation while still recognising tradition. The research as practice explores the language and style of delivery in the performance of live solo gigs with some reference, amongst others, to Richard J. Watts and Franz Andres Morrissey in Language, the Singer and the Song (CUP: 2019) and the interactive dynamics between the performer and the audience within the social context. This includes ways of engaging an audience, as well as ways of initiating songs for possible later development through spontaneity and serendipity based on Softley’s oeuvre as well as from personal experiences.