Gettin’ Kinky
I don’t recall this being a particularly grueling co-write (honestly, how “grueling” can a co-write really be? I remember 100-degree days, sitting, dirty and exhausted, on the third floor of a music row building as a carpenter, hanging my legs out through the hole where a wall used to be, watching guys walk into publishing houses with their guitars and thinking…”if only”), but, near the end of our writing session, we were talking about ANYTHING else, just to clear our heads. At some point Louise mentioned something about having grown up in actress Jayne Mansfield’s infamous “Pink Palace”, the Los Angeles mansion her father had purchased when she was young. Of course Burton and I were fascinated. She specifically mentioned the all-pink dressing area that had been Jayne Mansfield’s and had become hers, and how Louise would sit in the same pink, pleated chair where Jayne Mansfield had done her famous and magnificent blonde hair.
I don’t remember if it was Burton or I, maybe it was both simultaneously, but our minds suddenly started to celebrate the chance of riffing on anything but yet another harmless and wholesome love or love-lost song idea. The writing changed from the slog of trying to come up with a catchy cliche’ country song with no sharp edges and one big hook to the absolute joy of catching whatever sparkle was in the air and letting it come to life in whatever shape it chose.
So Burton, Louise and I spent several hours that day working on what was probably a perfectly good song that I now have no recollection of, and a half-hour joyfully writing “Gettin’ Kinky in the Mansfield Chair”. Will it be recorded by Tim McGraw and danced to on The Bachelorette? Don’t think so. But it makes me smile every time I hear it.
Here it is. There’s a bit more to the story but that’s another post.
