I Really Do Have a Four Leaf Clover

Here’s how Exene helped me spruce it up

It takes a lot of brass to walk into a recording studio and tell a songwriter he’s gotta change his lyrics. Nobody’s ever had more brass than Exene Cervenka of the legendary band X, so of course that’s just what she did. Old 97’s were making our first major label album in New York’s frigid Hudson Valley in January of 1997, and Exene had flown in from LA just to sing on one song.

We’d recorded “Four Leaf Clover” on our debut, and decided it deserved a better treatment and bigger audience. Playing it live over the intervening years, we’d learned that it was useful, a bombastic rocker in a set sometimes populated by mid-tempo wordplay. So when we were introduced to Exene by our Elektra A&R guy Tom DeSavia (next photo), we thought she’d be perfect for this song that was built on the kind of propulsive floor tom pattern that was practically invented by X’s drummer DJ Bonebrake.

Exene walked into the studio and asked if I wanted to hear some new poems she’d been working on. This was only about twelve years after I’d become obsessed with her band (and her, if we’re being honest) from their albums and a book I’d gotten called Beyond and Back: The Story of X. The book contains some of her poetry, which I thought was cool and weird. And obviously the lyrics to songs like “Riding With Mary” showed fledgeling songwriter yours truly that rock and roll could feature, and even benefit from, thorny, deep, honest lyrics.

In a dimly lit vocal booth in a haunted recording studio outside Woodstock, NY, Exene read me a poem that contained the line “I’ve been sharpening pencils in my heart all day long.” For some reason that line has always stuck with me. And then she asked if we could change the lyric in the verse she was to sing on “Four Leaf Clover.”

I’ve got a real-live horseshoe

I hung it upside-down above my door

But it don’t do nothing to impress you

So I don’t know what the hell it’s for

-“Four Leaf Clover” by Old 97’s, Hitchhike to Rhome version

“I mean, ‘Impress’ is such a weak verb,” Exene told me that day. “What if it was something sexy like ‘attract’?” And she was right. Of course she was. Now that I’m a fancy college professor, I teach my songwriting students about what I call “juicy” words and strong verbs, and I encourage them to strive to find a way to create evocative dynamics in even the most granular moments of their songs. “Attract” is not only a better choice, but a juicier, stronger and more evocative word. And it’s the word I’ve been singing ever since.

Here are Exene and I seventeen years later(!) running through “Four Leaf Clover” backstage at the El Rey in 2014.

I hadn’t seen her in years until Old 97’s were joined by Exene on the Atrium stage of the Norwegian Pearl during Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise a couple of weeks ago, and in many ways it was as if no time had passed. I was still starstruck despite all the years. Now, Exene’s a little crazy. I admire her talent, creativity, and even her brashness. That said, she’s expressed some views and opinions that I definitely do not agree with. But when I looked to my right that day in the Atrium, I saw she was still Exene, ornery and, yes, evocative, and still the poet I’d fallen in love with back in 9th grade study hall.