Song of the week #31

Wake Up!

The original song
I wrote this song in July/August 2018 for my Big Issues album. I had known Martin Niemoller's poem for years; it is inscribed on many Holocaust memorials in the USA, and I thought it would provide suitable material for one of my more serious songs. It is usually known as First They Came. 

The version on the Holocaust memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, translated from the original German, is:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

However, the impetus for me to write the song came about for a more mundane reason. In 2018 I had started to perform at local open-mike nights and wanted a song that would make people sit up and listen. So the song's title and opening line were born. As is usual when I write a song based on an existing poem I don't set the poem to music - I try to absorb the spirit of the poem as I am writing the song. So instead of Communists, Jews, trade unionists and Catholics I used “beggars and scroungers”, “travellers and tinkers”, “poets and playwrights” and “philosophers and thinkers” for the first verse and “ministers and rectors”, “pastors and preachers”, “tutors and trainers” and “lecturers and teachers” for the second. I like the rhymes and alliteration here which came almost without me thinking.

I needed a middle eight for the song and for this I used Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare's poem Not My Business for inspiration. It has the same message as Niemoller's poem: injustice is everyone's business, not just for those who are directly affected by it. It begins:

They picked Akanni up one morning
Beat him soft like clay
And stuffed him down the belly
Of a waiting jeep.

What business of mine is it
So long they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?

I soon became aware that, for dramatic effect, the song must end abruptly as the fourth wall is broken and the singer becomes the victim of the song. So for the third verse I used “players and performers” and finally “singers and guitarists”.  At open-mike nights this confused listeners who didn't know where to applaud at the end! But I am unrepentant: the song HAS to end the way it does. Although the song's subject is the world political situation at the time I wrote it (and increasingly now in 2025) but I hope that it is a message for all times.

The re-edited version
I have always been disappointed by my original recording but it is only now that my recording techniques have matured enough for me to fully realise what I heard in my head. Although I extensively edited and rebalanced the parts I didn't re-record anything. I was especially pleased with the lead guitar part which I played on my Variax guitar miked up through a tiny Marshall amplifier - using the same method that David Gilmour used in recording his solos with Pink Floyd.

I also used an AI effect for the vocals which gave a raw edge to their quality.

The video

As with my other recent videos, I have used AI to generate the images I needed - specifically the Google ImageFX website and I have now become more practised at formulating the right instructions to get what I need. As is the case with any search engine if you ask a stupid question you will get a stupid answer! At first I asked for images with British soldiers but the AI interpreted this as 18th century British soldiers who might have fought in the American War of Independence! I also had to specify that the individuals being arrested at various points of the song were “looking worried” as early attempts made them look quite happy to go along with the procedure.

One of the first ideas I had for the video was to illustrate the “but I didn't speak out” line with a modern-day Dylanesque folk guitarist wearing a scarf around his mouth. This also conveniently hid his true feelings behind the scarf. The second idea was for the “no business of mine” middle eight. I imagined the singer walking off into the sunset. Using Photoshop I isolated the rear view of the guitarist walking away with his guitar case on his back. I then had to make a shadow for him so that he would fit into the open road images. Perhaps I should have made the shadow a bit longer as it's sunset but it works nonetheless. I also wanted people with masks who needed to “Wake Up!” which accounts for the hordes of people wearing masks - especially the musicians in the middle section.

I am very pleased with the song and video and hope you like it too. 

Click on the link below to watch it on YouTube:

Wake Up!

Wake up! Wake up!
And see what is coming down.
‘Cos there’s a whole lot of bad things going on
Way over on the other side of town

Rise up! Speak out!
It’s time for you to stand up and shout
‘Cos there’s a lesson to be learned
For anybody who knows what their history’s about.

First they came for the beggars and the scroungers
The trav'llers and the tinkers
Then they came for the poets and the playwrights
Philosophers and thinkers
Oh but I didn’t speak out
Although I knew it was wrong
‘Cos I could play my guitar and I could sing my songs

Wake up! Wake up!
And see what is coming down.
‘Cos there’s a whole lot of bad things going on
Way over on the other side of town

Rise up! Speak out!
It’s time for you to stand up and shout
‘Cos there’s a lesson to be learned
For anybody who knows what their history’s about.

Then they came for the ministers and rectors
The pastors and the preachers
And next they came for the tutors and the trainers
The lecturers and teachers
Oh but I didn’t speak out
I didn’t try very hard
‘Cos I could still sing my songs and I could play my guitar.
 
Why on Earth d’ya think it should be 
Any business of mine?
Who they came for in the night?
And who was in the firing line?

Wake Up!
Wake up! Wake up!
And see what is coming down.
‘Cos there’s a whole lot of bad things going on
Way over on the other side of town

Rise up! Speak out!
It’s time for you to stand up and shout
‘Cos there’s a lesson to be learned
For anybody who knows what their history’s about.

Then they came to take the players and performers
The singers and guitarists.

Song of the week #30

Curious Idea

The song:

A friend asked me to write a song for her. That, simply, was the spark which lit the creative fire for this track.

The opening line came to me easily. The second line was originally “I’m convinced they’re shining for me” but I quickly saw 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 bear repetition. (I used “what it implies” as a variant of this line). This resulted in the type of verse which can easily be transformed into successive verses by altering a word or two, with the focus of the lyrics linked by the senses: seeing, hearing and tasting, respectively.

I then played around with alternative meanings of the word “curious” for the middle section of the song. In the verses, it means “strange” but in the middle eight section it takes on the meaning of “inquisitive”. This section took only slightly longer to write than it does to sing; I have never known a middle eight arrive so easily. As soon as I sang the line “if you string me along” I knew the section would end with “sing this song” with a pleasing double rhyme. The section also includes some of my favourite alliterative phrases in “founded on fact” and “sing this song”. This is not something I consciously work at but I acknowledge them when they arrive.

The instrumentation for this album was something I borrowed completely from Paul McCartney’s Wanderlust – an unjustly neglected Macca masterpiece. On that track, the conventional band of piano, bass, guitar and drums is augmented by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble – specifically two trumpets, French horn, tenor trombone and tuba – and I have used that exact instrumental line up for Curious Idea. I used the style of brass contrapuntal writing found in the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, before valves were invented for trumpets and horns.

If the sound of the piano on this track seems vaguely familiar then it’s because it is! I used a virtual instrument based on the Vertigrand piano from Studio III at Abbey Road Studios. The list of tracks the original instrument was used on reads like a litany of Beatle music from 1966 to 1970. Here goes:

Tomorrow Never Knows, Penny Lane, With a Little Help from my Friends, All You Need is Love, Magical Mystery Tour, Your Mother Should Know, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Lady Madonna and Martha My Dear. Oh, and some band called Pink Floyd used it in the mid-70s when they recorded their Wish You Were Here album!

This was the first track on which I used my Variax bass guitar; previously I had used virtual basses. I had also been using a Variax 6-string at gigs for the previous 12-or-so years as it can emulate just about any electric (or acoustic) guitar you could imagine. When the focus of my musical life turned to home recording in 2016 my Variax came into its own. My Variax bass would, and still does, continue to be a mainstay of my home recording setup with its ability to emulate just about every bass guitar ever used (including an upright acoustic bass).

The remade version

Curious Idea was one of those songs which, to my mind, always failed to live up to the sound I had in my head. So when I began revamping my earlier songs in 2024 this was a prime contender. I tried updating the piano sound but when I listened back to the original I found I liked that version better so I left the piano part alone. Likewise the bass guitar had nothing wrong with it but I did add a plug-in to increase its clarity. I augmented the original strummed acoustic guitar by recording four different guitars - two of them on my Fender acoustic and two on my Variax six-string.

I used the same AI effects for voices that I have used on recent remakes. In the original version I sang it in octaves with a low bass part growling away in the depths - just like Peter Gabriel used on Mercy Street. In the remake I altered the mix for this low part so it's not quite so prominent.

I also remixed the brass parts so that each instrument is prominent when it should be. I often describe the creation of my songs as me wearing several hats in turn: songwriter hat, arranger hat, performer hat, recording hat and so on. But here in the remix I was using my conductor hat.

The video

Initially I tried asking ChatGPT for ideas based on my tentative thought of using animated versions of pictures in an art gallery. The AI engine suggested using classic portraits such as the Mona Lisa, The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Klimmt's The Kiss. This sounded fine in theory but didn't work in practice as the images felt detached; I wanted the images to be animated in a way that the coldness of AI still fails to achieve. So I turned to the website Videezy which I have used in the past for short non-AI video clips. I found videos to match “sparkle in your eyes”, “laughter in your voice” and “taste the sweetness of your lips” and then set about making still portrait versions of these videos. It is much easier to turn videos into still images than the other way round.

For the brass section, however, I couldn't find any suitable videos so was surprised and delighted by the (free!) website ImageFX which produced unlimited copies of images of brass players for me. I was trying to reproduce the feel of the Robert Palmer Addicted to Love video here so I used the following text prompt:

An elegant long-haired woman in a long flowing black dress and red lipstick playing a 
trumpet (or French Horn, trombone or tuba) on an empty stage - close up shot.

It was about this time that I realised what the song was really about. It is a retelling of the Greek myth of Pygmalion which has been the inspiration for countless artists and musicians down the centuries. In the myth, the sculptor Pygmalion makes a statue so lifelike that he falls in love with it. The story was the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion and for the musical My Fair Lady which was based on it. It also inspired Tony Banks of Genesis to write Anything She Does which was based on pin-up calendars. In the original story Pygmalion's love for his statue was so strong that it came to life and this inspired the story of Pinocchio where the puppet eventually turns into a real boy. Pygmalion can also be seen, in a modern context, as a commentary on Artificial Intelligence.

I needed something special for the closing seconds of the video so came up with the idea of the four portraits hurtling down the gallery corridor and bursting through the doors to escape their confines.

The video took me two months to make, largely because I was feeling my way in the dark not really knowing what to do next. Now that it is finished I am very pleased with the result. I hope you like it too.

Click on the link below to watch the YouTube video.

Curious Idea

Ev’ry time I see the sparkle in your eyes
Could it be they’re shining for me?
And if that sweet look means what I surmise
What a curious idea that would be!

Ev’ry time I hear the laughter in your voice
Could it be you’re calling to me?
And if that sweet smile means what it implies
What a curious idea that would be!

But I’m curious to know if that idea of mine
Is founded on fact or if it’s pure moonshine
How would I ever know if you string me along
It’s taken all my courage just to sing this song

Ev’ry time I taste the sweetness of your lips
Could it be they hunger for me?
And if that sweet kiss means what I surmise
What a curious idea that would be!

Ev’ry time I taste the sweetness of your lips
Could it be they hunger for me?
And if that sweet kiss means what I surmise
What a curious idea that would be!

But I’m curious to know if that idea of mine
Is founded on fact or if it’s sheer moonshine
How would I ever know if you string me along
It’s taken all my courage just to sing this song

Ev’ry time I see the sparkle in your eyes
Could it be they’re shining for me?
And if that sweet look means what it implies
What a curious idea that would be!

What a curious idea that would be
But stranger things I have known.
 

Song of the week #29

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 that song was for family and close friends only, and is 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 Collins – and Genesis who have always been my favourite prog rock band (including their early albums with Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett). So I couldn’t resist beginning the song with an 80s-style drum machine. Although it might be thought that “In the Air Tonight” was my influence here, I was thinking more of “Fading Lights” and “Dreaming While You Sleep” from the “We Can’t Dance” album and “Mama” from the 1983 Genesis album.

I enjoyed recreating Phil’s classic drumkit from the 80s with its, over-the-top, four rack toms and two floor toms. I also couldn’t resist using his signature gated snare drum, first heard, of course, on “In the Air Tonight”, a sound which became ubiquitous throughout the 1980s. This is the most powerful snare sound I have ever created – I used two different layered snare drums (and two kick drums) and all sorts of dynamic processing to produce it. Originally the Phil Collins drum kit only entered in the last verse but Mark Thomas persuaded me to make more use of it earlier on in the song and also to include some cymbal swells, timpani rolls and tubular bell hits. As always, his instinct was spot on! However, I resisted the temptation to use a Vocoder on the vocals (which technically I could have done) as this would have been too close to “In the Air Tonight” for comfort! (It would be years later before I finally used a vocoder on “Where the Sea Comes In” - see Song of the Week #12)

Other influences crept in as well, including the Bee Gees (in the harmonies of the chorus), Sting (for some of the lyrics) and, most notably, Pink Floyd for the closing minute-or-so where the influence of David Gilmour is unmistakeable in the soaring slide guitar solo. For the musos out there, I recorded this solo completely dry – no effects at all –then created the long, sustained notes by editing them in a piece of software called Melodyne, which gives complete control over every note in an audio file. I turned to the Guitar Rig effects plugin to create the massive delay and reverb and it was almost by chance that I hit on the correct setting here. But as soon as I heard it I knew it was the one I wanted. This guitar solo is like a huge outpouring of grief: one which never fails to give me goose bumps when I listen to it.

The Great War references in the first and last verses are metaphors for reconciliation where both parties know that it cannot last, that it is truly for “Just one day”. Perhaps also my “When the Rich go to War” was still in my mind and its influence spilled over into this track.

The line “It arrived like a lightning strike from a clear blue sky” did just that. I didn’t have to think about it; it arrived fully fledged and all I could do was acknowledge that it was the perfect expression of my feelings, and those of my family and friends.

I knew that the song had to end the way it started, with the drum machine’s loop playing out for a couple of bars on its own, but achieving the fade-out of everything else, once it had reached its searing climax, was not something that was easy to achieve – the timing of the fade-out was crucial. I think I learned more about recording and production in these few bars than I have ever done.

Click on the YouTube screenshot below to watch the video.

One day

For just one day call a Christmas truce
And we’ll kick around the ball in the Great War trenches. One day

This time there’ll be no excuse
As we trample down the wire in the enemy defences. One day

One day when we swallow our pride
Put our arguments aside with the world as witness. One day

‘Cos it arrived like a lightning strike
From a clear blue sky. Don’t know why
It was just one day. Nothing that words can say
And it was just one day. What could anyone do?

For just one day as in years gone by
We shall be there together standing side by side. One day

This time in the cold, cold sun
There are tears to be shed and a song to be sung. One day

‘Cos it arrived like a lightning strike
From a clear blue sky. Don’t know why
It was just one day. Nothing that words can say
And it was just one day. What could anyone do?

But don’t tell me how I should feel
It’s all too vividly real
Can’t tell the nightmare from the day
So don’t tell me how I should cry
It all happened in the blink of an eye
Those tears are real and here to stay

One day maybe years away
We shall look back in sorrow at this sad sad story. One day

One day walking hand in hand 
Into No Man’s Land through the fields of glory. One day

Ooh but I doubt it. I have to say that I doubt it
I don’t know why but I doubt it
Cos it was just one day. It was just one day.
Baby it was just one day
It was just one day

Song of the week #28

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 a non-standard back-to-front way which means he can use his first finger to hop down to the bass strings and create finger style patterns which can’t be played if the chords are fingered conventionally. I tried playing the chords the way James does and a phrase came in to my head: “I wish I was a sailboat racer”. I had no idea what it meant (I still don’t, to be honest!) but it quickly grew into a verse along the lines of the folk song “I will give my love a cherry”. The notion of land, sea and air appealed to me as it had a timeless folksy feel to it, as the singer searches the vast emptinesses of land, sea and air for his love. At first the third verse began “I wish I was an airline pilot” but my friend Cavan felt, quite rightly, that this neologism broke the spell of the other two verses so I changed it to “airplane” pilot”. Once I had that structure in place, the chorus “Over land, sea or air” almost wrote itself.

I’ve always loved the way Mark Knopfler uses space in his music. Someone once said that the last thing a musician learns is when NOT to play, but Mr K must have been born with that instinct! Just listen to Private Investigations to see what I mean. I’ve tried to capture that sense of space in the solo of I Wish I Was which fits nicely with the open spaces of prairie, deep blue skies and ocean in the lyrics. The echoing of each phrase by an acoustic guitar (in the opposite stereo channel) is not a Dire Straits device, however. I pinched it from Paul McCartney (What would I do without his limitless treasure store of musical ideas?!) The solo of his Some Days uses a similar idea.

The long outro again pays homage to Dire Straits and especially the loud snare hit which occurs every four bars or so. This was influenced by a similar idea in the closing section of Calling Elvis where the late Jeff Porcaro beats the hell out of his snare in the same fashion. The drum pattern throughout the song is intended to mimic a steam train in full flight. I remember seeing Genesis at Knebworth Park in the early nineties. During the performance of Driving the Last Spike, a tribute to the railway navvies of the nineteenth century, the huge video screens showed a close-up shot of a steam train’s wheels travelling at speed which Phil Collins’ drum patterns perfectly counterpointed. I must have kept that image in the back of my mind for the last twenty-odd years – you never know when an idea like that will prove useful!

If I have an awkward expression on my face in the song's video it's because I was, quite literally, on my knees when I recorded it on my Kindle Fire because I had no stand for the tablet! This was the first music video I attempted so apologies for its shortcomings. I am still very pleased with the song, however, and immensely proud of it.

Click on the link below to see the YouTube video:

I Wish I Was

I wish I was a sailboat racer
Skimming swiftly over the sea
I’d search the oceans for my true love
And bring her safely home with me

I wish I was a railroad engineer
Whistle blowing over the plain
I’d search the prairies for my true love
And fetch her back to me again

I wish I was an airplane pilot
Soaring through the deep blue sky
I’d search the heavens for my one true love
And bring her back to be by my side

Over land, sea or air
I would find her anywhere
Though she tries her best to hide from me
I know she has every right to be
What she wants, what she needs
All her words and all her deeds
Tell me she should be beside me now
It just seems to be so right somehow

I wish I was a deep sea diver
Swimming down to the ocean floor
I’d fish for pearls to give to my true love
To bring her back to me once more

Over land, sea or air
I would find her anywhere
Though she tries her best to hide from me
I know she has every right to be
What she wants, what she needs
All her words and all her deeds
Tell me she should be beside me now
It just seems to be so right somehow

And it really makes me wonder how
She could force herself to disallow
Every feeling that I feel right now
‘Cos it seems to be so right somehow

Song of the week #27

Epiphany

This song, which I wrote and recorded in the summer of 2017, was the track that nearly got away. Let me explain:

When I made my first rough demo of the song the result was so far from my usual writing style that I was convinced it had no value as a song. I tentatively played it to Mark and Cavan, warning them that it wasn't any good and that I would bin it and get on with something else. To my surprise they both looked at me in bewilderment, saying that it was probably the best song I'd ever written. Which just goes to show how much I know!

The song's theme is the power of language and the way that words can be used to justify the unjustifiable and to think the unthinkable. Like Caught in the Glare of the Headlights it's a “diss” track. The lyrics came first and I nearly painted myself into a corner with the first verse's tight rhyming and alliterative structure. In the past I have often chickened out in a similar situation and used a simpler scheme for subsequent verses. But I was determined not to do that this time. I eventually came up with six verses (from which I chose the best four) which stretched the definition of "rhyme" almost to breaking point in places! Well, have you ever tried to find a rhyme for "epiphany"?

One of the things in the rough demo that Mark advised me to change was the drumbox rhythm track, and to use "real" drums instead. So I used one of the excellent Abbey Road virtual drum kits and edited every note in the song to give the impression of a young, indy drummer determined to bash his snare drum into extinction.

The final recording is a first for me in that it uses a vocoder (remember ELO's Mr Blue Sky and Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight?) and a heavily processed autotune effect as heard in Cher's Believe. The pulsing synth in the chorus section owes a great deal to the Who's Won't Get Fooled Again (for the techies out there, it's a Korg Polysynth pad modulated with a LFO synced to the tempo of the song) and the piano solo wouldn't be what it is without Bruce Hornsby's influence (most noticeably in The Way It Is).

I spent more man hours on the video than on any of my others including one marathon 13-hour session. I wanted a cartoon effect for the live performance part of the video and a simple pulsing stage lighting effect synced to the tempo of the song. I enjoyed making multiple copies of myself singing the "Woh ho ho" crowd chorus and I knew from the start that the end minute-or-so (influenced by the likes of Coldplay and Snow Patrol) would need some fireworks. Lots of them!

There, I've almost convinced myself that I like the song now!

Click on the link below to view the YouTube video:
 

Epiphany

Who would ever think you could do that?
Did you really feel it was right?
It beggars all belief
You acted like a thief in the night

Could it be some evil possessed you?
What was going on in your mind?
Cos when you turned to go
You didn’t even throw me a line

You said there was no evil intention
You swore that you just needed some help
But let me make it clear
You’re fooling no-one here but yourself

You must have needed something badly
But I don’t even think you knew
Just what your plans would do

Woo hoo hoo. So that was your epiphany you call it.
Woo hoo hoo. You swallowed up a dictionary for it.
Woo hoo hoo. And even though initially I bought it
Woo hoo hoo. You used up all my sympathy before it

Did you think they all would be with you
Just the way they were in the past
But now it needs to end
You’re running out of friends pretty fast

You must have planned it all precisely
But baby I don’t think you know
Just where those plans will go

Woh ho ho. So that was your epiphany you call it.
Woh ho ho. You swallowed up a dictionary for it.
Woh ho ho. And even though initially I bought it
Woh ho ho. You used up all my sympathy before it

Song of the week #26

Caught in the Glare of the Headlights

My first album “Better Late..” was something of an experiment. With the benefit of hindsight, I now  see that I was trying out different music genres to find those that suited my songwriting style. Fifty-plus years of playing in cover bands meant that I was very familiar with a wide range of rock and pop songs from the last 50 years of the twentieth century and my three years at music college studying classical composition meant that I had the technical means to reproduce those styles. So I tried my hand at pastiches of the Rolling Stones (Better Late..) , Led Zeppelin (Call Me a Stranger), James Taylor and Mark Knopfler (I Wish I Was), Paul McCartney (Butterfly's Wing and Curious Idea) and even a Dylan-influenced protest song (When the Rich Go To War). 

I also included what is often called a "diss song". Most usually associated with hip-hop, this is the very opposite of a love song. Famous examples include Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone and Carly Simon's You're So Vain. 

Caught in the Glare of the Headlights is a song about karma and reaping what you sow.  Its lyrics were inspired by an article about the then Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, in which she was described as 

looking stunned like some fluffy bunny caught in the headlights of a truck.

I often mull over ideas for lyrics while on walks in the countryside and I remember trying out the phrases in my mind: "Did you think? Not at all!" set to precisely the tune it now has. "Did you think?" goes up, the way questions do, and the answer, "Not at all", goes down. I didn't plan that; it just happened. It was only when the song was finished that I realised what I'd done.

I chose to arrange the song in the jangle-pop style of the Beatles in their 1964 Hard Day's Night and 1965 Help eras. Even though the unmistakeable sound of the Rickenbacker 12 string was also used by the Byrds, it is with George Harrison that it will be forever associated - the Hard Day’s Night album is full of its jangly arpeggios. The John Lennon track Anytime at All, from that album, is a classic Ricky-12 song and it is the doubling of piano by the 12-string on that track that I have used here.

The George Harrison Something chord sequence that I used in Fallen on my Feet puts in another appearance here, and I have also borrowed one of John Lennon’s finest chord patterns, which he used in the middle section of It Won’t Be Long (“Since you left me, I’m so alone…” etc) so there is a constant chromatic downward motion in the run up to the chorus which takes a side-step at the last minute into an unexpected key. This is a technique that Paul McCartney often used – most notably in Lady Madonna. 

The structure of the lyrics borrows something from Paul McCartney’s Here There and Everywhere. In that song, which Paul has often described as his finest song, he begins each verse successively with the words “Here”, “There” and “Everywhere” and then combines them in the final chorus. In Caught in the Glare I have started each of the three sections of the verse with “Did you think?”, “Did you care?” and “Did you worry?” then those three phrases are conflated just before each chorus.

A Hammond organ phrase introduces the middle-eight (“And did you coldly calculate…”) which features a passing nod to the Beach Boys in the backing vocals – the “Ba ba baa” vocals are close relations of those in God Only Knows. Actually, this section is more of a middle-eleven; I'm rather proud of the odd phrase lengths in this song – a very Lennonesque touch!

The internal rhymes and alliteration were very deliberately put in, but when I scanned through the completed lyrics I thought "I'm not going to be able to sing this; it's too wordy." However, I surprised myself with just how easily it DOES sing. The rhymes and alliteration make the words trip off the tongue more easily, if anything.

A friend of a friend made this comment about Caught in the Glare which I rather like:

[He] impresses with his ability to trace a direct and effortless line from Gerry and the Pacemakers 
to The Las - no mean feat at all! The Merseybeat is strong with that one, Master Obi-wan!

Click on the link below for the YouTube video:

Caught in the Glare of the Headlights

Did you think nobody would see through the size
Of the lies you spread in their name?
Did you think they all would agree to be fooled
By the rules made up in your game?

Did you care what they thought
When at last you were caught
And you showed no capacity for shame.
Did you worry what they’d say
At the end of the day
As you spread around the blame

(Did you think?) Not at all.
(Did you care?) Don’t be a fool.
(Did you worry?) Not what you would call.

Now you’re caught in the glare of the headlights
And a lesson’s about to be learned
Like a rabbit that’s hypnotised
Staring with sightless eyes
Wondering which way it should turn

Did you think your curious take on the world
Was observed not only by you?
Did you think if anyone questioned your views
You’d abuse them until they withdrew?

Did you care what they felt
About the hand that you dealt
Ev’ry stage of your crooked little game
Did you worry ev’ry day
That they might not wanna play
So you’d blacken their name
Did you think? (Not a lot)
Did you care? (Not a jot)
Did you worry? (Gonna tell you what)

Now you’re caught in the glare of the headlights
And a lesson’s about to be learned
Like a rabbit that’s hypnotised
Staring with sightless eyes
Wondering which way it should turn

And did you coldly calculate 
Ev’ry word that you said
And then proceed to fabricate
All the drama you need
To feed the hunger in your head.

Did you care what they thought
When at last you were caught
And you showed no capacity for shame.
Did you worry what they’d say
At the end of the day
As you spread around the blame

Did you think? (Not at all)
Did you care? (Don’t be a fool)
Did you worry? (Not what you would call)

Chorus: Now you’re caught in the glare of the headlights
And there’s only place you can go
Caught in the glare of the headlights
Caught in the glare of the headlights

Song of the week #25

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 guitar later that morning I realised that it was a classic Led-Zeppelin-style riff and the rawness of the vocal line left me in no doubt about the treatment which the song needed.

I used the score-writing software Sibelius to arrange a provisional drum track for the song. This is where 50 years of standing beside the kick drum in bands left its mark; I know which drum grooves work and which ones don’t. However, my first attempt was far too busy and when I played an early (and very rough) mix of the track to my friend Mark Thomas, he pointed me in the direction of Kashmir for inspiration. In this classic LZ track it is the simplicity and power of the drum track which holds everything together: the cross-rhythms in Jimmy Page’s guitar line and in the string orchestra parts. Mark’s instinct was, as ever, rock solid. As soon as I stripped back the basic beat to a simple four-in-the-bar, the drum fills became twice as effective as they had been in the old version.

The bass guitar part almost wrote itself, as the song is entirely riff-based. In the original recording I used a Rickenbacker virtual bass which may not be authentic John Paul Jones (who used Alembic instruments) but it works in context. For the remake of the track in 2025 I used my Variax bass guitar, adding one or two slides to establish its authenticity as a "real" instrument (virtual bass guitars don't handle slides very well).

The Jimmy Page part was comparatively easy to put together. My soloing style has always borrowed a great deal from his. I am not the fastest of players so I tend to use cross rhythms a lot when soloing. For the musos out there this means lots of three-quaver licks crossing over the beats in a four-crotchet bar. In my band we often played Stairway to Heaven in which I sang and played lead guitar and the influemce of the Stairway solo can be cleatly heard here.

But then came the hardest part of all - singing the Robert Plant vocal. I put this off for a long while, thinking I would never come close, and my first few despondent rehearsals singing to the backing track convinced me that I wouldn’t be able to do it. But then after about a dozen practices (and a couple of glasses of wine to loosen my vocal cords and inhibitions) a raspy rawness began to develop in my voice - not surprisingly, as the vocal line is very high. A few "ooohs" and "ah yeahs" during the guitar solo also helped to create the live feel to the track. For the 2025 remake I used an AI effect for the vocal to give it even more raspiness - the correct term is "vocal fry" for these non-piched vocal sounds.

The video uses AI-generated images of Led Zeppelin which, hopefully, add a further layer of authenticity to this tribute to one of my favourite rock bands.

Click on the link below to view the YouTube video:

Call Me a Stranger

Well you can call me a stranger
Or you can call me your friend
But don’t you call me your lover
‘cause that’ll be where it ends
Don’t need to spell out the danger
‘cause we should both know the score
So if you call me a stranger
We won’t be friends any more

I don’t think you quite understand
Where you’re going to. Where you’re gonna wind up
Where you gonna wind up?

Well you can walk if you’re going
Or try to run if you can
But don’t you stand in my shadow
Cos honey I’m a marked man
Don’t need to spell out the danger
Cos you should know me by now
And if you call me a stranger
Well you’d be better off somehow

I don’t think you quite understand
Where you’re going to. Where you’re gonna wind up
Where you gonna wind up?

I don’t think, I don’t think, I don’t think you quite understand
Where you gonna wind up?

Well you can call me a devil
Or you can call me a saint
But if I call you my woman
Well you won’t have much complaint
Don’t need to spell out the danger
‘cause are you sure that you’re not
Just like a dog in a manger
Who doesn’t need what he’s got

I don’t think you quite understand
Where you’re going to. Where you’re gonna wind up.
Where you gonna wind up?

Song of the week #24

Fallen on My Feet

At the time that I wrote Fallen on My Feet in 2016 it was the only track I have ever written on a ukulele and it still has that distinction. It was a borrowed instrument, from my friend Cavan, and I was using it to practise a song for our 2016 Phoenix Theatre show – Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head. 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 surprised that no one else seems to have written a song with this title.)

It wasn’t long before the title phrase dragged along the rest of the song in its wake and I used one of my favourite chord sequences for the “They say that every cloud has a silver lining” section. I borrowed the chord sequence from George Harrison’s “Something” (the “I don’t wanna leave her now” line) and it’s a sequence that works well on a ukulele. When Paul McCartney plays George’s Something these days he always begins it with a ukulele introduction as a tribute to his fellow Beatle. However, I was afraid of overdoing this chord sequence (you can have too much of a good thing!) so I changed it to another, related sequence for the “But don’t you know that just a little while ago” line to give more harmonic variety.

I made an initial demo of the song using ukulele in the style of Bruno Mars but it didn’t seem to work. After briefly considering a Tamla Motown approach to the song, I settled on a style which was much closer to my comfort zone: the Beatles in their Sergeant Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour periods. 

With a Little Help from My Friends, Getting Better and Your Mother Should Know all feature a repeated four-in-a-bar chord pattern on piano and guitar and I can remember being blown away by Paul McCartney’s syncopated bass line on With a Little Help from My Friends when I first heard it. It is that melodic bass style which I have tried to reproduce in “Fallen on my Feet”.

The lyrics to “Fallen” are more optimistic and upbeat than many of my songs. I can remember friends being surprised that I had included the Americanism “Sweeter than the candy from a soda-pop store” but this was quite intentional. I wanted to recapture that American small-town homeliness which pervades my favourite Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life. The scene with the young George Bailey, Mary and Violet in the soda store has always struck a chord with me – I have no idea why!

For the video to Fallen on my Feet I chose an earlier American movie theme – that of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, who were constantly getting themselves in and out of catastrophic scrapes in spectacular fashion. And I couldn’t resist using the famous falling building sequence for the opening of the video. I made the video shortly before I lose nearly 2 stone in weight and, although to my eyes the video is a little "clunky", I have a soft spot for it and so, apparently, do my YouTube viewers as it is second only in popularity to my Hampshire Born.

Click on the link below to view the YouTube video.

Fallen on my Feet
I’ve fallen on my feet
And I don’t need to be discreet     
Cos life currently is sweet
It’s sweeter than the sugar that I stir in my tea
Sweeter that the nectar from a honey-bee.
Life’s sweet. So neat. Since I’ve fallen on my feet.
        
They say that every cloud has a silver lining
Well just right now I think the sun must be shining for me.
And I think you will agree.
But it didn’t used to be. No no.

Well don’t you know that just a little while ago.
I was beaten down so low
That I thought I would never find a place where I could go
But with a little bit of help from a lot of those I know
It was just a little while till I was ready to grow my wings
And fly way up there into the sky.

Cos I’ve fallen on my feet
And I’m feeling quite upbeat             
Cos life currently is sweet
It’s sweeter than the roses growing round your front door
Sweeter that the candy from a soda pop store
Life’s sweet. So neat. Since I’ve fallen on my feet. 
       
They say the darkest hour is just before the dawn
Well take a look at me now and you would think that I was born
To tread this way. But I think I’d have to say.
That I nearly went astray. Yeah yeah.

Well don’t you know that if it hadn’t been for you
I don’t know what I would do.
I would probably have ended up in something of a stew
But with a little bit of love from the people that I knew
It was just a little while until I grew those big white wings
To fly way up there into the sky.

I’ve fallen on my feet
And I don’t need to be discreet             
Cos life currently is sweet
It’s sweeter than the sugar that I stir in my tea
Sweeter that the nectar from a honey-bee.
Life’s sweet. So neat. Since I’ve fallen on my feet.    It’s sweet    
Since I’ve fallen on my feet.
I’ve fallen on my feet

Song of the week #23

Don't Quit

I was just three weeks away from my eighth birthday on the “Day the Music Died”. I don't remember much about Buddy Holly's death in early February 1959 at the time that it happened for, in those days, news often took days to travel across the Atlantic rather than hours or even minutes as is the case nowadays. However, my brother Alan and sister June were big fans of Buddy Holly, and other contemporary US rock-n-rollers, so I was very aware of his songs. Peggy Sue, Every Day, That'll Be the Day, True Love Ways and Raining in My Heart were some of my earliest musical memories. 

Buddy Holly's music was tremendously influential on bands and solo artists during the 1960s including, of course, the Beatles who started writing their own songs because Buddy Holly had done so. Paul McCartney (who now owns the rights to all of Buddy Holly's back catalogue) is on record as saying 

“People these days take it for granted that [bands write their own songs], but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, 'Wow! He writes and is a musician.'”

Soon after I started seriously writing songs in 2016 I also began performing at local open-mike nights. Will Shepherd hosted one of these every month in Shottermill and he was a big Buddy Holly fan so inevitably we would round off the evening with a few Buddy Holly songs. I therefore decided to write my own tribute in Holly's style and this was the result. It features pizzicato strings and rushing string scales borrowed from Raining in my Heart and I adopted his trademark hiccupping vocal style. For the video I wore horn-rimmed glasses and a dark suit and tie!

Click on the link below to view the YouTube video:

Don’t Quit

When you’re feeling down
And you search all around
But there’s nobody to pick you back 
Up off the ground...
Well it’s times like these
When you’re down on your knees
Don’t quit

Just remember that Rome
Didn’t happen in a day
That it all takes time
In the old-fashioned way…
Everything comes along
Like the words in this song
So don’t quit

Pretty soon those clouds will pass on by
And there’s gonna be a clear blue sky
And then the sunshine’s here to stay
To chase all your troubles away

Well it’s all too easy
Just to give it all up
When your life seems hard
And the going gets tough…
But if you keep on trying
Pretty soon you’ll be flying
Don’t quit

Pretty soon those clouds will pass on by
And there’s gonna be a clear blue sky
And then the sunshine’s here to stay
To chase all your troubles away

So remember when there’s nothing
But clouds in the sky
And the rain keeps falling
Like the tears in your eyes...
There’s a golden sun 
Right behind ev’ry one
So don’t quit
Please don’t quit
Just remember don’t quit. 

Song of the week #22

Turn Out the Light

This track began life as a simple love song which I wrote on an open-tuned acoustic guitar, but it soon became a lot more complex and serious. I think it was the line "our time on Earth is not for us to tell" which first hinted to me that something darker and deeper was going on. As the lyrics developed they dragged in references to Wordsworth's "Intimations of Mortality" and to Tolkien's "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us", spoken by Gandalf in "The Fellowship of the Ring". I have paraphrased that line in the chorus as "But the one thing that we choose is what to do with all our time", as it sings better.

In the lengthy coda there are also nods to the Greek Orpheus and Eurydice legend, to Charon (the ferryman of the Underworld), the Wizard of Earthsea novels of Ursula le Guin and to Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". The rhyming scheme of this section is AABCCB and I avoided the temptation to abandon the strait jacket of this structure, as I often do, until I arrived at the final three lines where the return to the opening lyrics of the song breaks the pattern, and brings the song to a close.

I decided that the arrangement would need a 1970s prog rock feel and especially Genesis of the "...and then were three..." era. So I have used a Mike Rutherfordian guitar line (played on a heavily processed Fender Strat with multiple echoes), a Quadra Pro synth lead, an instrument much used by Tony Banks at the time, some Korg Trinity pad sounds, deep Moog Taurus bass pedals and, of course, VERY LOUD Phil Collins drums with his signature gated snare sound and, in the coda, a full set of octobans (high pitched tube tom-toms). I also used some industrial percussion sounds mixed into the drum track to give it a more complex texture.

Inevitably, Richard Burton puts in an appearance in the coda reading "Do Not Go Gentle" and I quite liked the idea of this going on in the background, only faintly heard, until the last verse appears over the dying chords of the song. It's a little like the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus" where lines from King Lear are heard indistinctly at the end of the song.

For the video I have used scenes from Jean Cocteau's "Orphée" and tried to match some of the special effects used in that masterpiece. I still have no idea how the "falling-sideways" effect was achieved by Cocteau - remember that this was made in 1949, long before CGI and green screens were invented.

Click on the image below to view the YouTube video:

Turn Out The Light

We could turn out the light, whisper softly “Goodnight”
We could pray another day will turn out right
As the moon begins to rise through the starlight in the skies
With a glow we know the darkness cannot hide.

There’s no need to break the spell 
Even though we know darned well
That our time on Earth is not for us to tell
Should we walk or should we run? Cos when all is said and done
At the finish no-one there can say they’ve won

But the one thing that we choose
Is what to do with all our time
And if we win or if we lose 
As we pass through the finish line then it’s alright.

We could relive the past. Nail our colours to the mast
Should we fear another year might be our last
Scared to think too far ahead, fearing time’s relentless tread
Paralysed by all the lies inside your head

But the one thing that we choose
Is what to do with all our time
And if we win or if we lose 
As we pass through the finish line then it’s alright. Oh, it’s alright.

In the autumn of our years through the laughter and the tears
There’ll be space enough to chase away our fears
Though anxieties remain still the sun shines after rain
And the springtime follows winter once again

With all our hearts and all our souls
And all our thoughts beyond control
There’s never time enough to stand and stare

With all those sacrifices made
And though our debts remain unpaid
The ferryman demands his rightful share

The quest to reach the farthest shore
To tread those sands beyond the door 
With not a glance behind to see the light

The darkness slowly falls around
And all our footsteps leave no sound
With nothing to disturb the endless night

It’s all we need and all we know
Like actors playing their final show
The curtain falls upon the darkened stage

The dying of the darkened light
Is never gentle, it's never right
And no-one dares to turn the final page

So, when we each turn out the light
We whisper one last soft “Goodnight”
To pray another day will turn out right