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Over the weekend of February 10th, three dozen songwriters descended upon the Miami home of songwriter Desmond Child and single-mindedly set to work writing songs which, come this time next year, you will either love or be absolutely sick of, but will likely find impossible to escape.
The occasion was the second annual Sandcastle, the songwriting workshop Child started after being inspired by a similar program hosted by Miles Copeland in France in a medieval castle. "Everybody calls it the Castle," explains Child. "So I decided that as part of my new publishing company [Deston Songs] that I wanted to host writing conferences, and I decided to call mine the Sandcastle as a tribute to the other one, because it's in Miami Beach."
Last year's inaugural Sandcastle, which drew twenty-eight participants, yielded the song "Nobody Wants to be Lonely," the current Ricky Martin single, a duet with Christina Aguilera. It was co-written by Child, Victoria Shaw and Gary Burr, all of who were on hand again for this year's workshop, which ran from February 9th to February 13th. Thirty-six writers showed up this time, and Child has every reason to believe at least one of the weekend's creations will land with a superstar and go the distance on the charts. His own track record as a hit collaborator and song doctor backs up that optimism; Child has had a hand in writing virtually every other massive Top 40 guilty pleasure of the last twenty years, including Martin's other hits, "La Vida Loca," "She Bangs," "Shake Your Bon-Bon" and "Cup of Life," as well as Sisqo 's "Thong Song," Aerosmith's "Angel," Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," and Alice Cooper's "Poison," to name but a fraction.
Among the other writers who attended Sandcastle 2001 were Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, Australian pop star Tina Arena, Julio Iglesias Jr. and Mark Hudson (Aerosmith's "Livin' on the Edge"). "My brain is mush," apologizes Child the day after Sandcastle as he tries to list all the participants. "I've been going to bed every night at like four in the morning."
Sandcastle operates like a cross between summer camp and boot camp. On the first day, the writers meet each other over dinner at Desmond's home. The next morning, at breakfast, each is given a piece of paper telling them where they're to write that day (Child's living room, his studio, his mother's living room, etc.); they don't know who they'll be writing with until they get there. They are to have finished writing a complete song by lunchtime, and afterwards they take one of two shifts in the studio and record a demo. "I was on the late shift, so I was able to write a song in the morning, and then go back with my other writers and write a second song in the afternoon," Child says proudly. "So in three days, I managed to write five songs, and they're amazing quality. The people who are at this thing are really the top writers. And when you put three brilliant minds together, the lines just flow out one after another. It's not an effort at all when you're writing with professionals."
This year, Child's co-creations included "You Made Me Find Myself," destined for Tina Arena's next album, a ballad called "If I Only Had a Heart" he hopes to land with 'N Sync , and a pair of songs -- "I Did it For You" and "Love Me Back to Life" -- written with Richie Sambora with Bon Jovi's next album in mind. "These are all like really snappy titles," admits Child. "They almost write themselves."
On the last night of Sandcastle, all the writers gathered at Miami's Café Nostalgia for a party in which they each got on stage and sang their biggest hit. Mark Hudson and Richie Supa delivered their respective Aerosmith singles ("Livin' on the Edge," "Pink"); Child, Shaw and Burr sang "Nobody Wants to be Lonely," and Arena, singing the song she wrote only the day before with Child, "brought the house down," Child reports. "It's what I do this for, to have that moment." "But it was just one songwriter performing after another," Child continues. "Mark Hudson, was the MC, he was calling it the SandCatskills. [Laughs] It was cute."
RICHARD SKANSE
(March 9, 2001)