Sorry to be delayed in contributing, its not been the best of weeks for me. On top of my mothers serious illness (which some of you know of) I picked up a terrible case of poison ivy (so bad my doctor misdiagnosed it as shingles), and a pedestrian is suing me for a collision we had... in which he walked into my car while I was reverse parallel parking..... ( the fact that he hit me because he was looking at his cell phone seems not to count for much in pedestrian / vehicle accidents)....
So in the spirit of compartmentalising ones troubles I turn to music ( the only true mental saviour) and pick up marc's thread about solo artists....

Id have to say that while true... most solo artists have a great help from terrific bands, (Mick Ronson w Bowie, Marsalis with Sting (during his non police days) etc...,however I think the solo artist in these situations is usually the overwhelming controlling player by a large degree.

In fact my very limited exposure with songwriting made me think that it is very difficult to have a democracy work in a band. Even in the most sucessfull bands like the beatles democracy was limited --paul might write a verse in one of Johns songs ie "a day in the life" or visa versa. Or with bands like led zepp where Jimi page wrights the music and Plant wrights the lyrics. There are few truly collaborative songwritting partners that I can think of where they both contribute to the music of the song. Brian you may have additional insight here....