The 2nd Pink Martini album, for which I wrote a song with the bandleader.

Only 300 More Hits, I’ll be Just Like Lennon/McCartney

My best known song to date is “Veronique,” which I wrote the lyrics for Thomas Lauderdale’s melody, for his band, Pink Martini. The song, which I named after a girlfriend of my Paris roommate, Fraser, appears on the popular big band’s album Hang On Little Tomato. About, oh, I don’t know, 500,000 copies of the album have sold worldwide. (All of which helps with the ol’ royalties.)

Thomas asked me to write some songs with him ages ago. Literally, a day or two before I traveled to Cuba for the first time while I was working on my book, Fidel’s Cuba, he sat down at the piano and recorded a few melodies and handed me a tape. I wrote the song on the roof of the Casa Scientifico, a decaying luxury hotel in Old Havana. I had a bottle of rum and Thomas’ tape, notebook and pen. Balmy night in Cuba, thinking about France, loss, and sipping straight Havana Club seven-year-old rum. That about sums it up.

I now write little tunes on the ukulele, or my cigar box guitar, for transposing to the guitar or piano for who knows what purpose. Maybe I’ll make a little album using Garage Band, or my Boss Micro BR. Might as well make a lo-fi album. Everybody else is doing it.

Buy Hang on Little Tomato on amazon.com now.

The lyrics that were recorded for “Veronique” were not the full lyrics I wrote. The week after the album came out, Robert Taylor, the trombonist of Pink Martini, who played a great Chet-Baker-like trumpet and sang the song on the LP ran into me on the street and said, “Hey, I forgot to sing all the lyrics.” I didn’t mind. Here are the lyrics that he sang. The actual lyrics are on a hard drive and in a Cuban notebook in a box, somewhere in my study.

Veronique