There are a lot of reasons for becoming a songwriter — for the money, for the glory, for the self-satisfaction that comes from sharing ideas and simply for the love of writing a great song. After a conversation with contemporary Christian songwriter Rich Mullins, it’s easy to see he falls into the latter category.
Mullins’ approach to the profession of song writing is very different from most people. When he was first approached by a publisher, he wasn’t sure he wanted to sign a writers contract, and when he writes a great song, he doesn’t always show it to someone the next day.
It almost seems as if Rich Mullins has become a hit songwriter in spite of himself. If he seems hesitant to follow the conventional path to song writing success, it’s because his idea of success is different. He gets more satisfaction from the proc¬ ess of creating songs than he does from the accolades that follow their release.
Rich believes songwriters should write for enjoyment, not for profit.
“Money will perish and they’ll perish with it,” he says. “And they will have missed the fun of having written beautiful songs, having said something that really mattered without any kind of ulterior motive.”
Writing for pleasure is a philosophy that has worked well for Mullins.
He’s written 39 of the 40 songs that have filled his four Reunion Records albums. Debby Boone and Amy Grant have recorded his songs. He’s been nominated for two Dove Awards, the first in 1983 for “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” recorded by Grant.
This year he’s nominated for “Awesome God.” Three of his songs have reached number one on A/C Christian radio Miracle,” “Awesome God” and “If I Stand.”
A native of Richmond, Ind, Mullins began writing at an early age. Developing into a Christian songwriter seemed like a natural step for Rich. Raised in a Christian home, he became a member of an inter-denominational youth choir, attended college at Cincinnati Bible College and then began working with Zion Ministries.
His songwriting talents came to the attention of Amy Grant’s managers, Mike Blanton and Dan Harrell, when they heard “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” on an album released by Zion Ministries. Blanton had been looking for one more song to include on Grant’s Age to Age album and he wanted that one.
“When they called me I didn’t know who Mike Blanton was. He said he was Amy Grant’s manager and I didn’t know who Amy Grant was,” Mullins recalls. “Mike wanted to know if the song was copyrighted and if I had a publishing agreement. I said, well as far as I know it’s not copyrighted’ and he said, 'we’d like to talk to you about publishing rights’ and I was like T really don’t want to talk about all that stuff, it sounds really boring to me.’ They could have taken [advantage of] me, but they flew me down to talk. I was fairly hostile toward the Christian music industry at the time because being from the rural midwest, we believe that religion should be costly, not profitable.”
Blanton and Harrell soon earned Mullins’ respect They reached a publishing agreement and with some advice from his church he resolved his feelings about going commercial with his music.
Mullins signed with Reunion Records as an artist and released his self-titled debut lp in 1986. In addition to being a singer and song¬ writer, Rich plays nine different instruments, among them piano, guitar, hammer and lap dulcimer, mandolin, and some brass instruments.
“Picking up an instrument that I don’t know anything about how to play and figuring out how to play it can be very inspiring for me as a writer,” he says. “Different instruments have different character and the character of the instrument can inspire a song of the same character. I wrote one song on the last album on the fife because we were backpack¬ ing and it was the only musical in¬ strument I had with me.”
When asked to describe his song¬ writing method, Rich explained, “I start out writing the accompaniment and it generally sounds to me like a movie soundtrack. Then I imagine what would be going on onscreen. It all happens simultaneously and the lyrics are like subtitles.”
Mullins says writing every day helps tunesmiths improve their craft. “Write a lot and make a lot of mistakes,” the 34 year old songwriter urges. “When you’re writing, don’t worry about writ¬ ing a great song. There’s no crime in writing a crummy song. Anyone that ever wrote a good song wrote some real flops.
“People have this idea that writing is real fanciful, wildly creative, like let’s have no limits. It is just the exact opposite because you have to make something fit into words and that is the first limitation. Then as a music writer you have to fit that into a very exact set of limitations. Limitations is really what you’re dealing with, not freedom.”
As dedicated as he is to his craft, there are some aspects of writing that Rich doesn’t enjoy. For example, he doesn’t pitch his own tunes. “I never pitched in the first place,” he says. “That’s one advantage to having a publishing company is they do the pitching for you. I would be awful at pitching.”
Mullins is also sometimes reluctant to let his songs go once he’s written them. He held onto “Awesome God” for a long time before let shared it with many people. He penned the tune on his way to a conference in Colorado, where he taught it to a group of kids.
“The first time I heard them do it, it was one of those songs where you kind of go "did I write that?’ I don’t know if it’s a great song or not, I don’t know how can you tell what a great song is, but I know that it had a definite power. I knew then that it would be very well received in the Christian market and that’s why I didn’t tell anybody that I wrote it for a year. Something happens when a song becomes popular. It’s like you have to be willing to give that song up and let people have it as their own. Then it’s not as personal any¬ more and I guess I just wanted to enjoy that song awhile before I gave it up.”
Many aspiring songwriters have often been told if they could do anything else for a living they should do it. Rich Mullins agrees with that advice. “ You have to have a certain shamelessness to write,’ he says. “You have to be willing to drop your pants in front of anyone that might want to look. And you don’t do that because you’re proud of it, you do that because you have to write. It’s not a choice you make if you’re a writer. You write because you have no other option, not because you’re getting cut, not because what you’re doing is great, not because it’s important, but because you could not go through a day without writing.”
