Geoffrey Asmus is a national treasure and possibly the best most intelligent comic doing crowd work out there. And as a lifelong huge GD fan, fuck I kinda believe Tom. It was when his buddies backed him up about playing Good Riddance at their '84 graduation that made me a believer. Someone do their sleuthing and find out where Tom graduated from, start interviewing classmates, and obtain video of this graduation!
Except at the beginning of the clip, Geoffrey points out that Tom s is 61 years old, which means he would have graduated in 1980 or 81. Perhaps he was held back several grades because he was spending all of his time writing really famous songs?
I love that this was the top google result after searching "Green Day songwriter Tom S". Just finished watching Geoff's video and glad to see someone smarter than I did the research.
Same. I thought no way this first search result is about the same tom. Lol man I called bs but thought ill see what Google can tell me and boom first result proves my bs intuition correct. Oh the beauty of the internet and faster than thought results.
Another problem with the story is that, if you research it, most ghostwriters don't receive royalties. They get a per word or flat fee. So, unless they knew ahead of time that these songs were going to be huge hits, it makes little sense that he would make enough to retire early off of writing a few hit songs. It is possible for them to negotiate royalties but very uncommon. So that doesn't really add up either.
It's VERY common for bands and other music artist to have songs written by other people. The Beatles considered by many to be one of if not THE greatest band of all time for example not only played music that was written by other bands like "Twist and Shout", "Please Mr. Postman", they also hired other people to write music for them like "From a Window" which was written by Billy Kramer. Prince wrote music for Alicia Keys, Sheila E, The Bangles, The Time, Mytae Garcia, Chaka Khan, Sinead O’Connor, Tevin Campbell, Vanity 6, Stevie Nicks, Sheena Easton, Tom Jones, Patti Labelle. Did this Tim guy write a song that was later released by Green Day? Maybe. Anything is possible in the music and entertainment industry and in most cases what seems unbelievable is most often the real deal. Hell, I know a local band that was signed to RCA records and one point RCA attempted to hire them a song writer for a few songs. It happens.
I just had tom as my uber driver so that’s why i got searching to it, he talks about what was in this post. He said when he wrote it and how he preformed it at graduation and tbh i believe him he said how he thought of the song as it was originally called confusion and he was a confused teen i think. He had been a life long musician and talks about being in his fifties. I trust him.
Geoffrey Asmus is a national treasure and possibly the best most intelligent comic doing crowd work out there. And as a lifelong huge GD fan, fuck I kinda believe Tom. It was when his buddies backed him up about playing Good Riddance at their '84 graduation that made me a believer. Someone do their sleuthing and find out where Tom graduated from, start interviewing classmates, and obtain video of this graduation!
Love his podcast with Alex Dragicevich, You're An Idiot
Except at the beginning of the clip, Geoffrey points out that Tom s is 61 years old, which means he would have graduated in 1980 or 81. Perhaps he was held back several grades because he was spending all of his time writing really famous songs?
He was talking about his college graduation, not high school
Sweet Children remains etched into the rafters at Gilman!
Gilman is a brewery now...
Incorrect
I love that this was the top google result after searching "Green Day songwriter Tom S". Just finished watching Geoff's video and glad to see someone smarter than I did the research.
Same. I thought no way this first search result is about the same tom. Lol man I called bs but thought ill see what Google can tell me and boom first result proves my bs intuition correct. Oh the beauty of the internet and faster than thought results.
Another problem with the story is that, if you research it, most ghostwriters don't receive royalties. They get a per word or flat fee. So, unless they knew ahead of time that these songs were going to be huge hits, it makes little sense that he would make enough to retire early off of writing a few hit songs. It is possible for them to negotiate royalties but very uncommon. So that doesn't really add up either.
It's VERY common for bands and other music artist to have songs written by other people. The Beatles considered by many to be one of if not THE greatest band of all time for example not only played music that was written by other bands like "Twist and Shout", "Please Mr. Postman", they also hired other people to write music for them like "From a Window" which was written by Billy Kramer. Prince wrote music for Alicia Keys, Sheila E, The Bangles, The Time, Mytae Garcia, Chaka Khan, Sinead O’Connor, Tevin Campbell, Vanity 6, Stevie Nicks, Sheena Easton, Tom Jones, Patti Labelle. Did this Tim guy write a song that was later released by Green Day? Maybe. Anything is possible in the music and entertainment industry and in most cases what seems unbelievable is most often the real deal. Hell, I know a local band that was signed to RCA records and one point RCA attempted to hire them a song writer for a few songs. It happens.
80-90 percent of stars songs are written by someone else, but theyll never admit it,
I just had tom as my uber driver so that’s why i got searching to it, he talks about what was in this post. He said when he wrote it and how he preformed it at graduation and tbh i believe him he said how he thought of the song as it was originally called confusion and he was a confused teen i think. He had been a life long musician and talks about being in his fifties. I trust him.
He said we was a musician all his life and has worked with multiple bands, and they switch them out every few years. He played guitar.