Amsterdam has always had my heart. When I first traveled there in 2023, I was not prepared for how quickly the city would win me over. Even the busy, touristy areas of the city center had an excitement and beauty to them that gave me inspiration. I’ve been back many times since, and the feeling of the open air and the simple way of life never gets old. A trip to the café or bakery, a drink in the park, or an afternoon taking in some of the most influential art in the world was always part of our daily routine. Ultimately, Amsterdam feels like a home away from home.
When writing for the record, I had a lot of ideas saved as voice memos on my phone. Most of them were me muttering in public places, trying to sing a melody or a lyric so I wouldn’t forget it later. Sometimes I only get lyrics, and that’s what happened with this song. I was doing yard work at my home in Wilmington, NC, listening to the Kings of Leon record Can We Please Have Fun, when the line “There was a man in Amsterdam…” came into my mind. I immediately turned off the lawn mower and started writing lyrics on my phone. Within about five minutes I had the first verse done. At the time I didn’t know if it was a verse or a chorus, but I knew it was a good idea if I could pull it off. The verse I wrote that day isn’t the one that made it onto the album, but it was fairly close. The question I asked myself after writing it out was, “Who is this man in Amsterdam?” That’s when I went searching for the person I saw in my head. Was he a real person, an imaginary figure, or was that man me? I knew that once I found the answer, I’d be able to finish the song.
Around that same time, I had started listening to a lot of Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter and singer who was a renowned performer in the ’50s and ’60s. I would put his music on almost every day in the kitchen while getting dinner ready or doing the dishes late at night. His music quickly became the soundtrack of our home, playing at dinner parties, game nights, and late nights lounging on the couch. The sound of his voice made home feel cozy, but it also inspired great conversation. Jazz has a way of doing that, especially the cool jazz style Chet performed. Even though I listened to him so much, I knew nothing about his personal life. Was he still playing? Was he dead or alive? What was his life like? With those questions, I started to dig.
I came to find out that Chet had a very hard life. He struggled with drug use and abuse throughout his teens and adulthood. He often got himself into situations with drug dealers that ended in physical harm, including a beating that cost him his front teeth and forced him to relearn how to play. He always seemed out of sorts in his personal life, as if the stage was the only place he was ever really free. He wore the years of drug and alcohol abuse heavily on his face, which was deeply lined well before its time. Needless to say, he did not age well. Chet Baker lived to the age of 58, and he died after falling from his hotel window… in Amsterdam.
That’s it! This was the man in Amsterdam. Somehow my subconscious had led me to the life and death of Chet Baker just by listening to his music. Even though I felt triumphant in my discovery, my heart mourned for Chet. Did he know the impact his music had on people around the world? People like me? Did he know he left behind a legacy as one of the most renowned trumpeters and jazz musicians of his time? I knew that to finish the song, I needed to answer those questions for myself.
There is still some mystery surrounding Chet’s death in 1988. At the Hotel Prins Hendrik, on the edge of the red light district in Amsterdam’s city center, Chet fell from room 210 to the pavement below. The coroner’s toxicology report found heroin and cocaine in his system. The mystery wasn’t so much how, but why. Was the fall intentional? Did he slip? Was his mind so clouded by the heroin and cocaine that he thought he was somewhere else? You can read into things, like the fact that he and his girlfriend had an on-and-off relationship and that he may have reached a breaking point after a big fight, but most of it is hearsay. According to a Los Angeles Times article, “no precise reason for the trumpeter-singer’s fall was disclosed” in the official police report. Some eyewitness accounts say Chet locked himself out of his room and tried to climb back in through the open window when he slipped and fell. Other early reports suggested suicide, but that was later considered inconclusive after it was discovered that the window in his room would open no more than 15 or 20 inches, which is not impossible to squeeze through, but awkward. Ultimately, my search for answers left me with more questions.
That’s when it hit me. The song isn’t about the answers… it’s about the questions. In life, most questions go unanswered. Why do people die? Why do children go hungry? Why me?! So I decided to map out those questions. After writing lines for the verses, I jumped to the chorus, and this is where my musing ended up:
I wonder if he found it, what he was looking for
Was he astounded when he went through that door (the door, for me, is the door from life into death)
He was once young but never old
Could’ve been in love, could’ve been alone
Questions I have I’ll never know
Was it all just too much, or was it just his time to go
Those lyrics hit me like a cannonball. At that point I had no melody or chords, just words. Once the lyrics felt like they were in a good place, I mapped out a chord structure that leaned toward a jazz song form, A A B A C A B A, similar to the A A B A form that a lot of jazz standards follow. Funny enough, when I put the music and lyrics together, it formed a limerick, which is a short, humorous, and often bawdy five-line poem with a strict A A B B A rhyme scheme. Here’s an example of a limerick:
There once was a man from Peru,
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He woke up with a fright in the middle of the night, t
o find that his dream had come true.
The most famous limerick-like song in pop music over the past 50 years is Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,”
It's 9 o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sittin' next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin
He says, "Son, can you play me a memory?
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad, and it's sweet, and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
I figured if it was good enough for Billy Joel, it was good enough for me.
Once the song was done, I played it at a couple of gigs to workshop it. I enjoyed the storytelling and the melody, but performing it felt pretty flat. Still, I knew my journey with this song wasn’t over, and there was more work to be done. When I was collecting songs for my debut record, I knew this one was going to make it. Still unpolished, I took it to the studio. The night before we tracked the outline of the song (the foundation we’d build the other instruments on), I had a dream about the acoustic guitar part that would carry it. Up to that point I had been using what I call “cowboy chords” with a 6/8 strumming pattern that made it feel more like a sea shanty than anything else. But I could clearly hear the new guitar part in my dream, and when I woke up, I grabbed a guitar and mapped out what I was hearing. The chords were the same, but I brought in a finesse and articulation that gave it a more ethereal, almost classical feel, a chord structure and melody I think Chet would have found interesting and inspiring. When I showed it to Christian (my producer and cousin), he immediately got excited (if memory serves, he wasn’t too excited when he first heard my demo). I hadn’t told him what the song was about, but it spoke to him anyway. The song came together effortlessly and became one of the anchors of the album.
When it came time to name my debut album, there was no other option. I knew the album would be called Amsterdam before the song was even finished. The story was too important, and my connection to Chet Baker opened up a side of myself I never knew was there. I’ve talked before about my struggles with mental health, and this song came about in the throes of that battle. I identified with Chet’s story. Not the drug abuse, but the legacy he left behind. There was a time when I would have accepted a life of hardship if it meant leaving a legacy. I was willing to trade the goodness in my life for the chance to have my songs heard and known around the world. The fact that I even considered that shows how deep in despair I was. But this song was also a key part of how I got out of it. To bring it full circle, the place where Chet Baker died is also the place where I felt I’d found a new home. There is light and dark. Beauty and decay. Joy and sadness. Life has all of it, but I choose to see the beauty of Chet’s life and the reach of his music. I choose to believe that no matter what we go through, we have a choice. And I choose goodness. I choose joy. I choose life.
Thank you, Chet, for helping me through this. I know your story ended differently, but I hope that somehow you know you were loved in your final moments, and that your life affected mine all these years later.
I’d encourage you to listen to Chet Baker to better understand his story. I also encourage you to listen to Amsterdam, the song and the whole album. It’s one long journey through the state of my life while I was writing and recording these songs. I hope that as you listen, you can hear my story. I hope you can hear Chet’s story. Most of all, I hope you find your own story in these songs. Thank you, and see you soon.
-Carlos
