Check out this week’s Scene for a profile of Mark Avsec, the Cleveland musician-turned-attorney who co-wrote “Angel Love (Come for Me),” the first single from the new, expanded reissue of Santana’s Supernatural album.
Avsec penned the song with Texas guitar hero Mason Ruffner and Cleveland blues veteran Alan Greene, who had been Avsec’s bandmate in Breathless. Avsec’s biggest, best-know music project, however, was Donnie Iris and the Cruisers. Avsec continues to co-write, produce, sing and play keys on Cruisers albums.
In the early ‘80s, the Cruisers had a small string of top-30 singles. Filmed at Blossom, a live clip for 1981’s “Love Is Like a Rock” landed the band on MTV for a spell. The group fared even better on hard rock radio, where songs like “Ah! Leah!” cracked the Top 20 and are still in steady rotation. Testifies WNCX 98.5 FM DJ Michael Stanley, “Anywhere I go in the country, there are seven or eight [Cruisers] songs I can play that people will recognize.”
The Girl Songs, early songs collected on MCA’s 2001 comp The Best of Donnie Iris: 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection:
Avsec and Iris wrote some great love songs in their various projects. In the Cruisers, if they referenced a girl’s name, it was an unusual one — see “Ah! Leah!,” “Merilee” and “Agnes.” Avsec says the offbeat names weren’t strategic. At first, in fact, “Ah! Leah!” wasn’t about Leah.
The first draft of the lyrics that became “Ah! Leah!” were about Russia invasion of Afghanistan. The background lyrics “Here we go again” were all that survived for the version that’s still in rotation on the FM dial.
“When I write songs,” explains Avsec, “it’s easier to have a girl’s name, like ‘Roxanne.’ It makes it very personal.
“It’s hard to write lyrics,” he continues. “My best songs, I write the lyrics first, but I usually write the music first — then it will suggest something to me. It’s craft. ‘Merilee,’ I don’t know, maybe it suggested itself phonetically. ‘Ah! Leah!’ started as a chant, like the Wizard of Oz with the monkeys and the soldiers, ‘Oh-wee-oh.’”
“Agnes” starts with Iris telling a smooth story about the beginnings of a disastrous love triangle between him, a bar waitress named Agnes and her hothead boyfriend, Louie.” Avsec says neither he nor Donnie were “Agnes” kinda guys. “It’s just a story,” saya Avsec. “Donnie wasn’t Donnie Iris then. He was still putting together that persona.”
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2010.