The Silent Gap.
As I said above, this song dates from 1981-2, the tail end of my first writing period. I think I rejigged the music and added the bridge last year when I reviewed my old songs to make them compatible with the new ones. I was thinking about how parents never really know what their children are doing and, from kids' perspectives, how it was often best not to tell parents what they were doing. I remember this being the case in my teenage years. We always had the feeling that the parents weren't quite ready to know what we got up to. So not telling them was a way of protecting them. To this day, I have no idea how much they figured out. I decided to put it on the cd because I wanted a change of mood but having done it and listened to it in context I decided I didn't like it. However, as soon as I said this to a friend, she immediately said, 'Oh no. That's one of my favourites'. Go figure!
Palm Trees.
Spring 2010, Sting came to play in Dubai and we all decided to go - me, Chamath and my friend Khalid. However, I screwed things up by, first, forgetting that my visa had expired so I couldn't go and then, when I sent the other two over, not realising that Chamath couldn't cross the border because he was not with his sponsor (me). So he had to come back and had a wasted day and it cost me a fortune in taxi fares. While he was travelling in complete futility to the Dubai border and back, I wrote this from top to bottom. It took me about the full time he was away. I knew it was special as soon as I finished it, in fact while I was writing it. I recently found a scrap of paper with a crude outline for the lyric so I must have planned it sometime before. It was originally much more complex so I must have realised during the time Chamath was away that it wouldn't work and reworked it.
With a longish story like this one where you have event and attitude to compress into the song, not to mention, comment, it's all about economy - what you leave out and how much you can suggest in how few words.
The story in essence is that of two lonely people who find each other but make a silly mistake in the process, one which, ordinarily, could derail their affair, except that, having found each other, they decide to take a chance on it any way. The bridge explains all this and suggests the outcome.
Of course, I made a silly mistake myself, well, more of an oversight really, which I constantly forestall people's noticing by mentioning it myself when I play it live. Dates and coconuts don't grow in the same places! However, my overriding concern was with the exoticism that the housemaid seeks as an antidote to the crushing banality and hopelessness of her working life. Anyway, my actually reaching the notes is such a hit and miss affair that I don't think people actually notice the inconsistency. But I am sure that one day a pedant will come up after a show and say, ''Ere, you know what...'!
Blues For Billy Strayhorn.
BS has been a hero of mine ever since I read (and re-read) David Hajdu's great biography of him.
Here's the deal: a supremely gifted young black boy from Philadephia wants a chance at fame and the good life. He has almost all the attributes for this except one - he's gay and in mid-20th century America that makes him vulnerable. So he makes a deal with the devil (Duke Ellington) and accepts a rather ad hoc system of reward and fame in exchange for security and safety.
The result of this is that he is pretty much unknown outside of his own little coterie. Of course, his little coterie is practically a who's who of the talent in New York's Harlem renaissance so it ain't all bad news. Even so, he doesn't actually make any recordings of his own until quite late in life and these, while much admired by those in the know, were pretty well ignored by the rest of the world. He died of throat cancer in the early 60s, much loved and much-mourned by those who loved him.
What's not to like as subject matter for a song? I just couldn't believe that no-one had written about him before. Writing the song was a labour of love so I was petrified that I wouldn't do it justice. It had to be some kind of sophisticated blues format and getting that part right tied me in knots! I don't have the knowledge to write the kind of thing BS would have done so I went for a late 40s/early 50s r 'n' b feel, with doo-wop backing vocals on the verses and hearty men's shouty vocals in the chorus.
After it was recorded, I had to email David Hajdu to thank him for the book. I hope he likes the song....
Moments In A Life.
I have an uneasy relationship with nostalgia. I hate it myself and never indulge. Signing up with Facebook seemed to bring all those names out of the past and it gave me hives every time anyone tried to befriend me on the basis of past acquaintance. I have behaved quite ungraciously to a few people - unintentionally but apologies are still due.
But at the same time, I am getting on and have, on occasions, found myself wondering what it all adds up to. Out of these tensions, came this song. It's me talking to myself and trying to find meaning in random, unrelated events in my life. A lot of people don't respond to this song but I have always liked it more than most of my songs. It's kind of fatalistic. I modeled the music on Van Morrison's 'Wild Children', all those major sevenths plus the semitone modulation for the solo. That's an homage of a sort too.
Every Shade Of Blue
I consciously set out to write a blue song but, being me, had to go to extremes and so it's not just blue but every shade of blue. This gave me the opportunity to use the word 'gamut' - pretentious git that I am!
As I noted at the start of this, it was one of two songs written after I had decided which songs were going on the cd. Inconvenient that! I wanted a simple bossa on the cd and at that point there wasn't one so it dropped into my lap really. I find the subject of men's emotional lives, particularly after a break up, endlessly interesting and am unsure that it has ever really been handled very convincingly. That's why I have written several.
Occasionally, among other homages that I indulge in, I drop phrases of my mother's into songs and the 'high hopes' in the bridge of this is a case in point. The thing is the music's quite jolly which isn't very appropriate. I'll live with that!
Under The Mushroom
Chamath and I were having as discussion about psychelelics which I have tried and he hasn't - despite being interested in the idea. This was my attempt to explain what it was like. Unfortunately, it morphed into a commercial for buddhism midway through - though I suppose that's no bad thing. Since I last did acid a long, long time ago, it was some feat of memory. It's also a bossa - though I don't know whether that's appropriate for a psychedelic song. We had fun loading this with special effects in the studio - listen out for the strange treated vocals.
This song contains my final two homages - one a semi-conscious steal of 'Girl From Ipanema' in the chord sequence and the other, the initial 'pop' to Arthur Lee again. It's in imitation of the champagne cork from the opening of 'Que Vida' from Da Capo.
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