Gary James' Interview With
Ellen Shipley
She's a Grammy nominee. She's written songs for Kim Wilde and Belinda Carlisle. You might recognize the title of the song she wrote for Belinda Carlisle, "Heaven Is A Place On Earth". We are talking about Ellen Shipley.
Q - Ellen, where does this skill of your to write songs come from? Did you learn a technique over a period of time?
A - You know, I've been writing in some form since I was a little girl. I have my diary from when I was ten years old. So, I always wrote poetry, like really bad poetry, but I loved poetry. Suddenly I began to write little songs for different theatre pieces and I had no idea how come I can write. None what-so-ever. I mean it was always in me to write somehow. But being a lyricist, I never had a technique. It took me years to figure out I had a technique, but I didn't know that I had one. I made albums in '79, '80 and '83. When I made my first album I needed songs, so I just wrote them.
Q - At sixteen you got a cabaret license. What's that?
A - A cabaret license way back in Brooklyn, New York, I guess it was all of New York, was the ability if you got that license, and I don't remember how I got it from the city some how, then you were able to sing in cabarets, little clubs at sixteen, seventeen and eighteen. I got that because I wanted to sing in clubs.
Q - You were singing in a place called Pearl's Place and you were discovered, for lack of a better word, by somebody who worked for Tommy Mottola?
A - Yes, exactly. Glen, I don't remember Glen's last name, but Glen was in the audience in Pearl's Place because he was a friend of Ralph Schuckett, who I was married to and we did all the albums. Ralph invites him down to hear us play at Pearl's Place. He was working for Tommy and he told Tommy right away. He was really great and very supportive and he loved what we were doing. So that got me to Tommy, which was amazing because he was a difficult person to get to. And then he became our manager.
Q - Did you have an extended gig at Pearl's Place? You didn't just perform there one night, did you?
A - No. There were a few clubs in New York and all of us who were trying to get record deals would play those clubs as much as we could. So, I probably played Pearl's Place, oh, I don't know, three or four times. I can't really remember. But it was one of the clubs that I played and then Glen just happened to come by at one of those gigs.
Q - So, this idea that you could blow into a music city like New York, play one gig and get signed is fiction. That doesn't really happen, does it?
A - In New York, when we were all trying to get record deals at a certain period, 1977, 1978, 1979, there were a bunch of us. We would just gig around, hit all the clubs and wait to get a following. The only way you could get somebody important from a record company down or a manager was if you started to have a buzz about you. In order to get that, you had to play clubs.
Q - One gig couldn't get you signed.
A - Well, I never heard of it happening like that. (laughs)
Q - And you would know. You were there. You have a song that was played three million times on Pandora.
A - Yes.
Q - And you only got a check for $39. What song was that?
A - "Heaven Is A Place On Earth".
Q - That was a big hit!
A - They still play it all the time. I love it. It bought my house.
Q - How long did it take to write "Heaven Is A Place On Earth"? I would almost say that is almost Belinda Carlisle's signature song.
A - Yes, it is. It took just a few sessions with my partner. I flew from Brooklyn to L.A. where my partner was and we started writing. I came in with a title, "Heaven On Earth", which I saw on a car in a gas station, and I thought, "Wow! That would be a great title," and then he changed it too "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" and we wrote it probably in about three days, but then after we recorded the whole song and mixed it we decided that the verse wasn't good enough, so we rewrote the verse and then that became the song. So, it's spread out over months, but we got the initial thing going pretty quickly.
Q - You appeared on Saturday Night Live on December 13th, 1980, five days after John Lennon was shot and killed. What was the mood in the studio that night?
A - Well, in the studio everybody was happy, but I can't really remember if there was a depressing atmosphere. I don't remember it being like that. I remember that everybody was really great and into everything. He died five days before and I was doing a concert the night he died. I was at Avery Fisher Hall. I was about to break open as an artist, but because he died then they put a moratorium on all new songs and they only played Lennon for months.
Q - That really stopped your career.
A - Yeah, it did. I was about to break open and unfortunately this wonderful person got killed. The least of it is my career got stalled, but that he got killed was horrible. We all went down that night to the Dakota. We were having a party in Avery Fisher Hall and all of a sudden we could hear someone scream, "Oh, my God! No!" And suddenly it went around the room. You could hear a pin drop. It got so silent. We all just walked out and went to the Dakota and stood out there.
Q - What project or projects are you working on today as we speak?
A - I stopped writing. I thought I was going to retire about five years ago (2015). I wrote Belinda's last single and I thought I'm just going to stop now because I didn't like what was going on in the business. I didn't like having my songs stolen.
Q - Stolen?
A - Well, the streamers don't pay royalties. Spotify, YouTube, Google, they're all horrible. I got tired of seeing the little checks. So, I sold my catalog, which I wasn't thrilled about, but it was a good thing to do. And then I kind of retired, but I just started writing again with someone who's just made an album. I guess what we're writing will probably be for the next one if there is a next one. He's such a phenomenal performer and such a great writer that I just decided to come out of retirement and work with him.
Q - Are you able to say who you're writing with now?
A - His name is Richard T. Bear. He was on RCA when I was on RCA. It was 1979. Then we didn't meet up until five years ago.
Official Website: EllenShipleyMusic.com
© Gary James. All rights reserved.
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