Song of the week #12
Where the Sea Comes In
I often start writing a song by playing two chords on the guitar over-and-over-again and improvising a vocal melody over them. I did this with Tell Them I'm Gone, Winston's Black Dog and Childish Dream amongst many others. Very often I have no idea where the song is leading when I do this: it's the musical equivalent of the artist's “taking a pencil line for a walk”.
With this song the first line to arrive was the first of the song (which is not always the case):
Been a while since I heard the seagulls crying.
As I sang this, I remembered that there was a belief amongst fishing communities that the souls of dead fishermen are reincarnated as seagulls. and, knowing that many fishing communities on the south coast have disappeared within the last century-or-so I arrived at the first line of the second verse:
Been a while since the trawlers sailed out fishing
I've long been an admirer of punk poet Dr John Cooper-Clarke so I shamelessly borrowed the title of the poem which he wrote for the National Trust (That's where the sea comes in) and used it for the title of my song:
The rhythm of the line suggested to me the chorus of the Beatles' Tell Me Why (from A Hard Day's Night). I love the sound of John and Paul's harmonies on this track so I tried to do something similar here, although with a minor key flavour rather than their bright majot key harmonies.
So I had an embryonic verse and the beginning of the chorus but nothing to connect them. I quite like the idea of having a pre-chorus section in my songs which builds up and paves the way for the chorus proper. After a few ideas which didn't work, I tried a musical idea borrowed from the Beatles' We Can Work It Out - the middle section which has the words “for fussing and fighting my friend”. As the section was leading towards the title of the song in the chorus it seemed obvious to describe things which are literally “where the sea comes in”. So I ended up with:
Where the mountains roll down to the shore
And the shingle and sand meets the watery tidal-sea roar
The alliterative S- and SH- sounds were deliberate here - to suggest the sound of waves on shingle - and the multiple adjectives in “watery tidal-sea roar” reminded me of Dylan Thomas's
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
from Under Milkwood.
As I progressed further with the song I realised that the title was ambiguous. As well as meaning “that's the place where the sea meets the land” it could also mean “that's what the sea can DO”.
With part of my mind on the visual aspect for a possible song video I decided to turn the song into a tribute to the RNLI and, specifically, the institution's worst-ever disaster in their history when all seventeen members of the Mary Standford lifeboat were lost on November 15th 1928 while answering a call for help in Rye Bay, Sussex.
I have a connection with the tragedy for the children's novelist Monica Edwards lived in Rye Harbour where her father was vicar and one of the drowned crew-members was her boyfriend. A few years ago I was honoured when the family of Monica Edwards asked me to write her official biography. Today is the 96th anniversary of the loss of the Mary Standford and her crew .
When the song was finished and I had made a recording and video of it, a friend said that it was a complete one-off as it didn't remind them of any other song they could think of.
Click on the link below to watch the video:
Where The Sea Comes In
Been a while since I heard the seagulls crying
Been some time since they scoured the sky with their screams
Oh, I see them when I'm sleeping
And I hear them in my dreams
Been a while since the trawlers sailed out fishing
Been so long since they hauled up silver and gold.
Oh, I catch them when they’re falling
And I see inside their souls
Where the mountains roll down to the shore
And the shingle and sand
Makes the watery tidal-sea roar
That's where the sea comes in
That's where the horizon stoops down low...
That's where the sea comes in
That's where the sea comes in
Where the sea comes in
Where are they now, those fiery fishermen's souls?
Gone to the grave where the seagulls welcome them in.
And I hear them as they’re dying
And I see their lives begin.
(That’s where the sea comes in)
Where the mountains roll down to the shore
And the shingle and sand
Makes the watery tidal-sea roar
That's where the sea comes in
That's where the horizon stoops down low...
That's where the sea comes in
That's where the sea comes in
Where the sea comes in
That’s where the sea comes in
That’s where the sea comes in
And I... see them when I'm sleeping
And I catch them when they're falling
See them when they're flying
Hear them when they're dying
That's where the sea comes in!
