International Musician article - Part 3

[nbc%INF.RL.AC.UK@mitvma.mit.edu]

Part 3 of the article in International Musician

****************************************************************

Track seven, Between A Man And A Woman, gets a simpler treatment.

"That was, let's get a groove going at the piano,  and  a  pretty
straightforward  Fairlight  pattern.  Then we got the drummer in,
and I thought that maybe it was taking on a slightly Sixties feel
-  not that it is. So we got Alan (Murphy, Level 42 guitarist) in
to play guitar - who unfortunately wasn't credited -  a  printing
error. He played some smashing guitar. Then I wanted to work with
the cellist again, because I think the cello is such a  beautiful
instrument.  I  find  it  very  male  and female - not one or the
other. He's actually the only player that I've ever  written  out
music for. They're lucky if they get chord charts normally.

"We were just playing around with a groove.  We  actually  had  a
second  verse that was similar to the first, and I thought it was
really boring. I hated it, so it sat around for about six months.
So  I  took  it  into a completely different section which worked
much better. Just having that little bit on the front worked much
better.  Quite  often  I have to put things aside and think about
them if they just haven't worked. If you  leave  a  little  time,
it's  surprising  how  often  you  can come back and turn it into
something."

                The Write Stuff

Inevitably, some of them are set aside for good.

"On this album I probably wrote more than I  have  in  ages,  but
some  of them really weren't up to much. They needed so much work
to get them into shape. It's just not worth the effort.  And  you
tire  of  it  really quickly. You hear it three or four times and
think  it's  so  boring.  I  think  something's  got  to  have  a
personality,  almost.  It  doesn't take much. Maybe just a little
bit that you think works, and then you develop  the  whole  thing
from there."

One track that made it for further developing was Never Be Mine.

"I wanted a sort of eastern sounding rhythm. I wrote it first  on
the piano, though the words were completely different, except for
the choruses. I did it on the piano to a  Fairlight  rhythm  that
Del programmed - I think that maybe because of the quality of the
sounds, it was harder for Del to come up with the patterns. And I
was more strict - he found it much harder. I think the pattern in
Heads We're Dancing is really good - really unusual, the best  he
came  up  with. But Never Be Mine was kind of tabla based. We got
Eberhard (Weber) over to play bass and he  played  on  the  whole
song.  When  we  were  trying  to piece it together later we kept
saying it just doesn't feel right, so we just took the  bass  out
and  had it in these two sections. You hardly notice it going out
at all. I think the song has a very light feel  about  it,  which
helps the whole imagery. The Uilean pipes have a very light feel,
and the piano is light .. I think it's a nice contrast  when  the
bass suddenly come in.

"The piano on this is an upright Bernstein that has a really  nice
sound - I think it has to do with proportions for us. We did have
a big piano and it's a small room, and it didn't record well. The
small piano sounds much bigger."

How do you decide if a  track's  going  to  feature  acoustic  or
electric piano?

"If I write the song on piano in the studio, chances  are  that's
how  it will be. If I write at home on the electric piano, or the
synth, it's probably going to be a synth  track.  I  was  getting
worried  at  one  point  that  so many of the songs are all based
around the piano. On Hounds of Love I got  away  from  that,  and
most of the songs are based around the Fairlight, which gave them
different flavours.

Having used the Bulgarian singers to slot into existing tracks on
the album, with Rocket's Tail she wrote the song specifically for
them.

                A Rocket's Tale

"It was a vehicle to get their voices on a track in as dominant a
way  as possible. So I put this down with a DX7 choir sound so it
had this kind of vocal feel. Then we got a  drummer  in  and  got
this big Rock 'n' Roll thing going. Then I got some friends in to
hear what it would sound like   with  big  block  vocals  singing
behind  my voice, and although they were English people that sing
completely differently,  it  still  gave  me  a  sense  of  vocal
intensity. So these two friends must have spent all day trying to
sing like Bulgarians. But it was so useful, because there were so
many  things I immediately understood we couldn't do, and lots of
things it felt like we could do.

"So we  took  it  to  Bulgaria  and  started  working  with  this
arranger.   I  told  him  what I wanted, and he just went off and
said 'what about this?' and they were great. He  kept  giving  me
all  these things to choose from, and we worked so well together.
It was so good that we decided to hold the  drum  kit  -  it  was
originally  starting  much  earlier in the song. Then we let Dave
Gilmour rip on it, so we'd have this really extreme  change  from
just  vocals  to this hopefully big Rock 'n' Roll kit, with bass,
and guitar solos."

The last track on the album, though not on the CD  and  cassette,
is This Woman's Work, which again started life on the piano.

"That was a really easy song to put together; all that was  added
to the piano was a bit of Fairlight, a bit of backing vocals, and
a tiny amount of orchestra - about four or  five  bars.  But  the
difference it makes is extraordinary.

"That song's really all to do with John Hughes, the American film
director,  who'd  just made this film called She's Having A Baby.
He wanted a song for this  scene  in  the  hospital  that's  very
powerful  where  the father is expecting to go in there with her,
and the nurse comes out and says the baby's in a breach position.
He's   sitting   in   the  waiting  room,  thinking  about  their
relationship, and I think it's at the  point  where  he  actually
grows up. He's sitting there and he's not a little boy any more -
he's got this big responsibility. You can see he's sitting  there
thinking  of all these great times they've had together, and that
possibly she could die with the baby. I wrote  the  song  to  the
film  -  one of the quickest things I've written. The imagery was
so strong. I really enjoyed being asked to do it.

"I think this is the big problem with song-writing  -  it's  this
blank  page.   You can start anywhere. There's too much to choose
from, and I think technology in studios  is  doing  the  same  to
people. There's so much to choose from, so much information, that
you're not working within restrictions that actually help you  to
form  a direction. I'm sure that for me, doing this, it was quick
and easy because the song had to be about that.  It  couldn't  be
about anything else. I think that helps tremendously."

                Extra-Ordinary

CD and cassette buyers get one extra track for their money,  Walk
Straight Down The Middle.

"That  song  was  definitely  the  quickest  I've  ever  recorded
anything. We'd given ourselves a specific day to cut it, so I had
to do it fast. The backing track  I'd  originally  recorded  ages
ago.  At  the time I wasn't happy with the lyrics, and I felt the
song needed more developing. When we came back to hear it  again,
both Del and myself were really impressed with the sounds and how
together the song sounded; previously  we  thought  it  had  been
rubbish.

"I wrote the lyrics, recorded  the  vocals,  backing  vocals  and
synth  overdubs  in  one day, which is totally unheard of for me.
The next day we did some more overdubs, and then mixed. I'm  glad
it was tagged on. We made the gap longer, so that you could get a
sense that the album was finished, it sounds okay,  but  I  don't
think it holds the same depths that the other tracks do."

How did it feel without the hours of agonising?

"Terrible. I couldn't cope. I couldn't sit and  anguish  over  my
lyrics.  It was very  difficult. But I think it's all right, some
nice sounds, nothing special. The whole thing is just  an  album,
that's what I keep telling myself.

"Just an album."

                                        Tony Horkins

***********************************************************************

There are two additional boxes accompanying the main article: one
on Kate's Place, and one on Kate and the Bulgarians. I will  type
these in later.

Be seeing you,
Neil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neil Calton                            UUCP:   ..!mcvax!ukc!rlinf!nbc
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,        NSFNET:
 nbc%inf.rl.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Chilton, Didcot, Oxon  OX11 0QX        JANET:         nbc@uk.ac.rl.inf
England                                Tel: (0235) 821900   ext 5740