STREAM THE SONG

It’s To Wonderland today. This was the song that got all the interest when I moved to London from York. I wrote it in the basement studio of the house we lived in at 56 Monkgate …  a damp stone walled room that we – and it seems ridiculous now – sellotaped reims of bubble wrap to, both walls and ceiling after nailing carpet into the walls, in a vain and skint attempt to sound proof it. Inevitably you’d be half way through rehearsing a song and a flap would waft down into one of our faces.

We had been leant a Soundcrafter live mixer that suddenly sparked and smoked one afternoon, which was my first lesson in large electrical devices and moisture being a bad combo. That might have been a close call now I think about it. I recorded it at first on a TASCAM porta-04 4 track that I got for £90 from Bulmers, the second hand shop on the corner Lord Mayor’s Walk, and I think it was the first time that I sat with a basic song I liked, and then realised it could actually be really good when I added another guitar and some effected bv’s to it. It was the song that got me through the door with the wonderful Andrew Myers at Clintons, who was my lawyer when I was an artist, and who I believe still has the original Star Wars poster on his office wall that we gave him to thank him for taking such good care of me as a newbie in London. The poster is currently worth about 8 times my publishing now I think about it! He was brilliant with me though, in the way that John Cullen is so good with everyone we intro him to these days.

I demoed it on the 4 track, then I demoed it ‘properly’ with Dave at former The Beat and Fine Young Cannibals guitarist Andy Cox’s house, and then we recorded it for the album. Andy is a story in himself. I had no idea who Andy was at first, being young and daft, and years later I remember Matt (Deighton) being really made up to meet him, being a huge fan of The Beat. After maybe 4 visits, I spied some guitars hidden in a wardrobe. ‘Does Andy play? / Yeah a bit’. The most humble, kind and generous man (and his wife Malu), Andy would go out every friday afternoon in central London with a box of sandwiches and other things he’d made, and feed the homeless. I never saw him miss a drop when I knew him. Amazing people. Such great memories of Chris Farrell legging down from York with his skateboard, so he could go double speed back to the train station at the end, or first thing in the morning, meaning we got maximum recording time in. I think Andy liked Chris – they both have incredibly bright moral compasses, and I think he admired Chris’s connection with his guitar being a more emotional and primal one than many of the session players down here in those days. He’s always been an artist in his own right, but bottled it into what he did for others in latter years of us making these albums. When he finally gets round to it, he’ll make a stunning solo record. We might be in our 80’s, in which case it will be stunning that he can still pick one up! But I hope it’s in the next few years. When we made the final record I really wanted Andy on there, somewhere, just to have him part of it, and he insisted he loved the guitar part already and didn’t want to invade it, but put some shaker on there for us so we knew his soul was with us!

Then a lot of the recording for this song was lost (see studio robbery and Alan Partridge impression post when it comes) and we re recorded it with the drums and bass we got down at Whitfield Street with Tim Weller and Mark Smith (and Mikey on Hammond). The problem was, everyone invested in helping me, or in being any kind of fan, had a different version they loved most, and my approach to the vocal changed from furious to melancholic with bursts of anger over the course of three or four stabs at it. A demoitis pandemic amongst everyone involved. I was happy in the very end, but I remember playing it to Andrew and his then assistant Nicky Stein and Nicky fairly bluntly expressed his disappointment at me not belting this one out, and that I’d pretty much blown it, which while Andrew cut him off mid sentence from saying, really stuck with me. I still think he was right and I lost a little confidence in the song, but it’s the song that tends to be sung back to me the most by old friends, and the few fans I did have back then,  so it’s good to get it out at last. I think all these years later, it’s actually pretty good.

I remember writing the song in the basement having come off the phone from some school friends who were in their first years working for whatever company, and a couple of friends who were older than me had been really struggling with their life totally changing from the freedom of youth to the daily grind. I couldn’t compute it, why someone in their early 20’s would do that to themselves, and was trying to express to them in the song that just because you have £200 on your credit card and you have to pay that rent, that’s the trick they play on us – it’s not real – you can leave any time and do something you love. That gun at the side of your head is a pop gun. It’s strange looking at it at this age, because you see many of those folks now earning tremendous amounts in their 40’s, and those of us who chose ‘doing something you love’ are deep in that struggle still, and no prospect of anything as grand as a pension or ‘savings’, whatever they are. Who made the right choice? I’m sure any artist can tell you they can’t count how many times someone at a party or gathering has said ‘I think it’s amazing you followed your dreams/do something you love” etc – while the artist doesn’t know how they’re paying their electric bill, but you’re 40+ now and can’t possibly let people realise you’re still in that situation. And you know, getting some regular money, it’s a remarkable feeling of peace, for a time. Probably why after 15 years of that fear, I felt less sad about parking everything to get a wage, but only on the condition it was helping other artists and musicians, and Help Musicians and Karousel became a genuine calling for me. Still, I wager when I’m on my deathbed, I’ll return to the original sentiment and die by it.

The song was featured by the inimitable Paul Kramer in his Hit Sheet – a magazine that went out to all the labels to give them a heads up on who was ‘hot’. The first review I ever had, it did me a lot of good in getting people interested. Paul is a wonderfully eccentric fellow (I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying) who genuinely loves songs and songwriters, and has been around many years helping so many of them out. He dug this out for me last night, and it seems like another life now reading it back. Well, it was another life, wasn’t it? Hard not to choke up, remembering that once upon a time I was the next biggish thing for about 48 hours, and there was a little heat around me. In reality it probably meant very little then and less now to have the flies around the flame for those moments, but it’s a trip to remember that feeling of walking to the job centre to sign on for the new deal, and being able to take something in so I could say ‘Look! I’m not making it up! I don’t want a data input job, I’m an artist!’. I always loved Paul from then on, for putting his finger so quickly on the kind of artist I wanted to be. It’s hard to keep that fire going, of “questioning and confronting the world” when you’re a tired parent, and when you’ve seen so many politicians come and go, unable or unwilling to change anything, and so many artists melt from protest into silence. I have so much respect for those who keep fighting into full on adulthood. I’m trying not to lose that.