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?