A friend asked me to write a song for her. That, simply, was the reason for this track and the opening line (“Every time I see the sparkle in your eyes”) came to me easily. The second line was originally “I’m convinced they’re shining for me” but I realised that a more wistful effect could be produced by turning it into a question: “Could it be they’re shining for me?” I liked the rhyme of “eyes” with “what I surmise” and used it in other verses where it doesn’t rhyme, but the hook line is strong enough to…
Read moreViewing: Notes on the tracks of my "Better Late..." CD - View all posts
9. One Day
This track was my public response to an unexpected and devastating family tragedy which came “like a lightning strike from a clear blue sky”. There was also a private response but I have decided that that song was for family and close friends only, and not for release into the public domain.
“One Day” is an expression of the emotional paralysis and anger that are an inevitable part of the grief process and also of reconciliation which can only ever be temporary. My treatment of the song owes a lot to Phil…
Read more8. When the Rich go to War
This track was never intended to be a popular one, but it is nonetheless a sincere statement of my standpoint on war, and the way people’s feelings can be whipped up to a jingoistic frenzy by politicians and the popular press.
Initially, it was inspired by a quote that I saw on Facebook: “When the rich go to war it’s the poor who die”. I felt that this short phrase perfectly summed up my feelings on war and even more so when I tracked down the origin of the phrase and found it to be by French…
Read more7. Caught in the Glare
The song's genesis came about from a number of different directions. Firstly, I read an article about the then Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, where she was described as "looking stunned like some fluffy bunny caught in the headlights of a truck". Early on as I was mulling over ideas while walking in the countryside and I heard the phrase "Did you think? Not at all!" set to precisely the tune it now has. The phrase "Did you think?" goes up, the way questions do, and the answer, "Not at all"…
Read more6. I Wish I Was
This track, which dates back to late 2015, blends the styles of two of my favourite musicians: James Taylor and Mark Knopfler. Of course, the two of them got together for real in the neglected masterpiece “Sailing to Philadelphia” and echoes of that track can be heard in “I Wish I Was” – most noticeably in the jazz brush drums (a vintage 1930s kit recorded in Abbey Road studios) and in the guitar solo.
The song came about because of the way James Taylor plays D and A chords on his guitar. He fingers them in…
Read more5. Call Me a Stranger
I wrote this track at 4:00am in late August 2016. About 90% of the words and the guitar riff in its entirety came to me as a trade-off for my lack of sleep that night. So, unusually, I didn’t write it with a guitar in my hands or seated at a piano; it just arrived in my head. At first I thought the riff was a Beatlesesque one (in the same mould as "Day Tripper" or "Paperback Writer" perhaps) but as soon as I played it on my acoustic guitar later that morning I realised that it was a classic…
Read more4. Butterfly’s Wing
Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” has long been one of my favourite party pieces, although I have never quite mastered the rhythm of the repeated open G-string which runs throughout the song. Apart from that little difficulty though, it’s a deceptively easy song to play and a great song to sing. Mr McC certainly knows how to write for voice!
“Butterfly’s Wing” is my attempt to write a song in a similar vein to “Blackbird”. I remember thinking “I wonder if I could write a song where I am playing two notes of a…
Read more3. Fallen on my Feet
This is the only song I have ever written on a ukulele. It was a borrowed instrument, from Cavan, and I was using it to practise a song for our 2016 Phoenix Theatre show – “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head”, as I recall. I’d had the optimistic phrase “I’ve Fallen on my Feet” running through my head for about a year previously so the line may have been influenced by the Burt Bacharach title or that may just be coincidence. (Incidentally, I’m astonished that no one else seems to have written a song with this…
Read more2. Tell Them I’m Gone
This was one of those songs which I wrote by playing a pair of guitar chords over and over again with my eyes closed, almost in a trance-like state, until gradually a tune began to emerge along with the words “You can tell anybody you want that I’m finally over you”. The perfect marriage of tune with words is something that I am always striving to achieve and I have to say that I’m quite pleased with the result here. Sometimes the words come easily; sometimes they take a lot of crafting; sometimes they…
Read more1. Better Late
Back in July 2015 I upgraded my bog-standard PC to a super gaming machine with 48Gb of internal memory. Previously, I had been used to machines running 4GB, at the most 8Gb of memory, so this was like driving a Ferrari after pootling along in a Mini. The score-writing program Sibelius had been one of my chief music software tools for a number of years previously but with limited memory it would never play back satisfactorily. Suddenly, with the increased available computer memory, new vistas opened. So I…
Read more