Seth Swirsky is one of the most accomplished artists that you’ve likely never heard of. A songwriter on the Sony Label, he has written songs for some of the biggest artists of the 80’s and 90’s (such as Taylor Dayne and Celine Dion) that have gone #1 worldwide. He directed and produced the award-winning Beatles documentary “Beatles Stories” that Cameron Crowe called “an epic and timeless masterwork.” He has released a series of acclaimed solo albums and collaborations, and his greatest hits album was just released by Sony in Japan to great fanfare. His newest album, “Songs from the Green Couch,” comes out this April. He has written a series of national best-selling books on baseball as well as the lauded “21 Ways to a Happier Depression” and the recently released children’s book “Shh…Your Toes Are Sleeping.” The latter books were informed from Seth’s Masters in Clinical Psychology. He is currently the artist in residence at the Margarita Mix Studios in Santa Monica where there is an exhibition of his paintings.
FMM: You have written songs for some of the biggest artists of the 80’s and 90’s (such as Taylor Dayne and Celine Dion) that have gone #1 worldwide. Tell us about this time in your life.
It was the 80s and I had just graduated from Dartmouth College. I had had a song that was taken by Thomas Toaster Cakes Thomas’s English muffins, which was a national commercial.
So, I easily could have gone into writing jingles, but I really remember thinking to myself, do I want to write about peanut butter the rest of my life? And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I thought it was very defining moment for me because I thought no, I don’t. But what do I want to do? I want to write Beatles songs. I want to write 3-minute pop songs that you can sing and make you happy.
I was fortunate that I got signed to Chapel Music which is the home of George Gershwin and Cole Porter, and the Bee Gees and Sting and The Police and Culture Club. There I was in my early 20s, in New York City, writing songs for all these artists, and some made it on their records. It’s very difficult to get on a record, but one of the biggest thrills was that every time I got onto a record it was kind of surreal. When Michael McDonald from The Doobie Brothers recorded one of my songs, or Al Green, recorded one of my songs, I would think that it was just yesterday I was sitting in my room as a kid with my headphones on, listening to their music. Now here I am writing for them, and my name is on their albums. So, it was it was extremely gratifying, especially when you hear your songs on the radio, or when you’re in a restaurant or a club and you see people mouthing the words or on the dance floor.
When ‘Tell it to my Heart’ became a big hit, I was in a few clubs in New York City and the moment that song came on, everybody got up and started to dance and you think to yourself, wow I had a part in making them do that. It was also just fun to have an assignment. Try and write for Tina Turner. Try and write for Céline Dion. It’s still surreal.
FMM: Where do you draw your inspiration from for your songs?
When I wrote for other recording artists, I was always trying to think about what they would want to say. I would listen to their last recordings and try to think about where they are in their lives. So, I would tailor certain songs to the artist, but when I started recording my own music in 2004, I drew on my own experiences and what I was feeling at the moment. Every time I pick up a guitar, sit down at a piano, I never know what I’m going to write, and I just sing nonsense lyrics. That’s the way I sketch out a song. I’m not comparing myself to Picasso, but when you see a great Picasso painting, you can also see some of his drawings that lead up to that painting. It’s just the same with songwriting as well. You sit down and you start writing it and you don’t know what you’re feeling at the moment. It kind of goes through you down your arms, into your fingers, and you play. And then if you like that melody, you “put the drapes on it.” As I like to say, the lyrics are the drapes in a room. I like to sing about things that are going on in my life, what I’m thinking and feeling. One of the songs on my new record is called ‘New Painting’ and in it I describe the process of how I go about making it. In my home, it’s difficult to get a canvas up my spiral stairs, and I draw inspiration from little everyday things like that. You never know where you’re going to get a song from. That’s why I think writers are always writing even when you’re in a drought. They just don’t realize it. If you keep your ears open, you might hear a good title when you’re in line at a grocery store with somebody else talking to their friend.
So I always keep my ears open for something that might be quirky and fun in life that might make it into a song, but especially things that are moving me at the moment. Whether it’s an emotion about a relationship I’m in or simple everyday things. I think that that’s what inspires most of my songs.
FMM: Tell us about the “Beatles Stories.” What did you enjoy the most?
Well, I was playing the Cavern Club that The Beatles made famous back in the late 50’s and early 60s, and it was such an honor. I couldn’t even believe I was playing there. I brought a handheld camera, and I started filming people that had stories to tell about The Beatles. I was in Liverpool, and I thought I knew everything there was, but they started telling me these stories that were unique. When I got back to LA, I began searching for people that have more stories that go incredibly deep. So, before I knew it, I got Ben Kingsley to go back to the stage where he first started, but when he was first on stage it was not as an actor. He was on stage as a budding singer, songwriter, and John Lennon and Ringo Starr were in the audience. His story is so fascinating.
I loved researching and finding the people that had these great stories, and they invited me in. They were turned on by the idea, and the next moment, I was hanging out with Art Garfunkel and his apartment. Or with Justin Hayward before a show from The Moody Blues. The Beatles engineers invited me to their house, and we would hang out and have lunch together. Graham Nash had me to his house. I was supposed to interview him an hour, and I ended up being there all-afternoon thing, discussing philosophies of life and all these different things. So, I got to meet all my favorite people in life, and they were really fun and interesting, and they respected my work as well by being a part of it. It’s not that often that an artist gives you their time and their name for your project, so that was very, very thrilling.
When the movie got picked up, the first Film Festival it was in was the European Independent Film Festival in Paris. So, I’m flying to Paris, for an opening of my movie, a songwriter and then a then a book author who is suddenly a film maker.
Next thing I know I’m watching my movie with an audience of 500 people, and then it gets into 20 other film festivals, and then it was in all these movie theaters around the world. It’s still playing in England on TV annually.
I always ask myself, how did this happen? And I think the answer is when you have passion about things, good things happen. I always give people the advice if they want to write a book or want to make a painting or want to do anything creative, they just got to do it. They got to do it.
FMM: Your greatest hits album was just released by Sony in Japan. Tell us about this album. Why is it special?
I never thought that one day when I was taking guitar lessons at seven years old trying to be Paul McCartney, that one day I would see best of Seth Swirsky on Sony Records. Not many songwriters become their own artists, and it is a very thrilling thing to know that they wanted to put my records out in that territory. Japan has some of the biggest fans of The Beatles.
They wanted to do the Best of Seth Swirsky record, because they felt my music had what they called “Beatles DNA.” Of course, that’s the ultimate compliment for me and on the sticker on the album. It says, Beatles DNA. It’s one of those things where I just need to pinch myself to remind me it’s real.
FMM: Tell us about “Songs from the Green Coach.”
Well, I have a green couch in my art room. It’s very comfortable, and I sit at the left hand side of it almost all the time. Whether I’m thinking about making a book, writing a song, or I have a guitar in my hand, that spot is my comfort zone. It’s like that Beach Boys song In My Room. That’s what it really is. It’s very quiet and I just like creating there. I try to always have an honest title for my records to represent where I was during that period. These are songs from the green couch. Fifteen of them that were written on that couch. My piano is downstairs and when I would write a melody, I’d come up stairs to my green couch and write the lyrics to it. This record was born of this couch. And of this, you know, as were the lyrics and things like that.
It’s a very personal album. I had a relationship during the making of this album, one of those big relationships that you have in life, and we went through a lot. During the whole period of the pandemic it’s not that easy to have a relationship during that time. When I was in the studio, I didn’t necessarily finish all the songs beforehand. Sometimes, when a drummer was coming to record, and I’ve got to finish it up in 15 minutes, that time element, that boundary, really helped squeeze out what I was really feeling and a lot of what I was going through in that relationship came out in the record. There are a lot of different kinds of songs on the record. That’s what The Beatles did too. They really liked to stretch out and give you all their moods, and that’s what I really like to do too. Not just write one kind of song or record. I like to think I write in a circular way, where there’s just a lot of different things going on, but it’s still in the confines of a 3 minutes of song, and hopefully you can sing them.
FMM: You have written a series of national best-selling books on baseball. What do you love the most about baseball? Tell us about your books.
Well, you can find them on Amazon and eBay, all the other places that have books, Barnes and Noble, and places like that.
Back in 1994, the baseball players went on strike and my son, my first child Julian was born, and I thought God, the sound of baseball is not in the house. There’s no games on in the background. That’s kind of the wallpaper of your life in many ways if you like the game of baseball like I do. So, I decided to write to old baseball players through their old teams. And I wrote to 90-year-old guys and guys that were famous for different plays.
Bobby Thompson, Bill Buckner, and Mickey Mantle – all of them. I wrote them letters on my music stationary. It said November Nights Music. They all answered at the bottom of the page “Well, that play, I’ll tell you what happened.” It’s not like it had been written up in books before, and I couldn’t believe I was getting all these letters back. Every day, ten letters back, twelve letters back.
So, I chose the best ones with photographs, and I called the first book ‘Baseball Letters ‘ because that’s what they were – just letters to a fan and it became a bestseller. I found myself on the Today Show and Good Morning America. I was doing a book tour. It was a totally different experience. I wasn’t used to signing. I was used to hearing my songs on the radio if I was lucky enough, but all of a sudden, I’m doing book signings around the country. I love the game of baseball. I love the pace of it. I love that it’s it goes over six months. I’m not someone who wants to speed the game up. What I love about it is that it’s basically the same game it was when it started in 1869.
What do we have in our world or in our country that is anything like it was in 1869? I can’t think of anything, so it’s quite an amazing thing when something as culturally important that is the same as it was then. It’s almost like a through line. The British have the royalty. We have baseball. I just love that. I love that I could be sitting and watching a game in the 1870s and somebody from then could be put in a stadium right now and they could relate to it. Take them outside the stadium and they couldn’t relate to airplanes overhead, cars or the food that we have and all that. There’s just so many things. But the game of baseball is kind of the through line in American history and I love that.
FMM: What would people be surprised to know about you?
I think they’d be surprised to know that I’m a very social person and I really love people. I love going out and doing things and all the stuff that you know people do. But I’m mostly introverted. I really like being home. I live a very, very simple life. I really enjoy going to the grocery store and wheeling a cart around. It’s just very simple. I like going to the car wash. I don’t really have celebrity friends. I don’t crave fame. I love simplicity. I love a fireplace going. I think people might be surprised that because of my books, my movie and you know, being a songwriter and a recording artist that you know I mingle with all these people and they are my friends, but it’s just not true and I like it that way.
FMM: You recently released the children’s book “Shh…Your Toes Are Sleeping.” What do you want kids to take away from this book?
Well, I’d like them to take away that you don’t have to fall asleep right away. That they could have less anxiety, if they just think about what happened in their day. How each of their body parts like their toes and their feet and their knees and their armsvall did things that day that would make them tired. And it might help them to get to sleep in a different way than just like, well, the lights are out and go to sleep. So that’s what I really wanted to accomplish.
I also wanted it to be a book that parents, or adults could also learn from. When adults go to sleep at night, they can start thinking of things like this as well, like I did these things today and I don’t need to fall asleep right now. I see anxiety as like a brick in your head – it’s very hard to get through. If you can take 10% of anxiety away, it’s like taking 50% of the brick away. Whether it’s this book or my other book “21 Ways to a Happier Depression, its about ways to ease the depressed or the anxious mind, whether they be from a child or an adult.
Kids don’t need another burden. They don’t need to think too much. They don’t need a big, long book to explain things to them. You know they need something simpler. That’s what I wanted to accomplish with that book to lessen anxiety for both the child and the parent.
You can purchase the book “Shh…Your Toes Are Sleeping” through Amazon.
FMM: What’s next for you?
I’ve written a 90 page book, all in rhyme, about a Victorian hippopotamus named VanTongerloo and his voyage back in time when he falls asleep. It’s called VanTongerloo’s Dream, and I’ve also illustrated the whole book. Hopefully that will come out in the summer.
I’ve done a number of interviews for Beatles Stories Part 2. I found a bunch of people that no one’s ever heard of that have these incredible personal stories about each one of The Beatles. So, I’ve been traveling all over – from Louisiana to London in the last few years to get these stories.
So, what’s next for me is VanTongerloo’s Dream and to finish Beatles Stories or should say More Beatles Stories, I think that’s what I’m going to call it. And as always, write songs and paint paintings – that never stops.
