Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Tony here and welcome to the second episode of the TSE podcast.
Speaker: I thought being clear
Speaker: to ending up with this.
Speaker: As usual, my co-conspirators Stuart Glanville and John Bicknell joined me to discuss the making of the song Sweet Scented Cherry Bomb.
Speaker: I hope you enjoy the podcast and I'll see you on the other side.
Speaker: So we're going to talk about Sweet Sempted Cherry Bomb.
Speaker: John, first question, how did the idea for the song come about?
Speaker: Well, it must have been around 2015.
Speaker: I'd met Ray and we decided to record the Drums and Wires album and it was during the recording of the Drums and Wires album that I wrote the actual music just on acoustic guitar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was originally the music for a song called Population Overload, which then changed to a song called Lest We Forget, which I wrote, as I say, back in about 2015,
Speaker: pretty much about, you know, the way this country's going and how all the people that fought for us in the wars might think about, you know, some of the current issues and stuff.
Speaker: But I thought, I don't do politics and I wasn't happy about putting it on the album, so it was kind of shelved.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: Until one day, coming back from Reyes, I sat in a field on the way back and I just thought, you know, I'd recently recovered from an addiction and I kind of sat in this field and I wrote the lyrics, you know, I just sat there for about an hour listening to the birds singing, watching the trees swaying in the summer breeze.
Speaker: And I wrote this totally depressing song about my experiences through addiction.
Speaker: I actually also recorded the demo vocals in that same field because I had a little portable 8-track machine.
Speaker: So I laid the backing track down and then I went into this field on the way down to Rays again.
Speaker: And I just sat on a log in this field and I did the vocals for the demo.
Speaker: It's odd to know how it works, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: But I'd had the tune in my head ever since I gave up music back in the 20... Well, around the millennium, I just gave up music for about 15 years.
Speaker: But then, you know, I saw Ray and we decided to record all the old songs that we used to do.
Speaker: And I just thought, and I had this tune in my head and it wouldn't go away.
Speaker: And that was it.
Speaker: And then I wrote the lyrics and it was still rejected for the Drums and Wires album.
Speaker: Sorry, John, just talking over you there.
Speaker: But just to reference, Ray is the drummer and your co-conspirator in your other band, Drums and Wires.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So kind of the next question was, why did you think the song might be ideal for that sformato effect for us rather than, you know, release it through your Drums and Wires album?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As I said, it was kind of rejected by Drums and Wires because my original Dero was...
Speaker: about seven minutes long.
Speaker: And it was a kind of mid-paced song.
Speaker: It had, you know, I wanted a lot more for it than we could actually do as a three-piece.
Speaker: And it was kind of left by the wayside.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: When me, you and Tony decided to get the album together, you know, I thought this would be ideal because it fits the mood of the album.
Speaker: Because it's about serious subjects.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's about personal experience.
Speaker: And thankfully you latched onto it.
Speaker: Me and Tony did a demo before you...
Speaker: even heard it yeah and we cut it down from uh seven minutes to about five minutes because uh i think you were kind of got separated the wheat from the chaff and chucked out a couple of verses and some repeat choruses as i say between us we decided on the epic ending that it ended up with well we're going to come to that in a minute i've
Speaker: I guess the next question really is, you know, once you decided that you wanted Tony to produce the track for the band for That's From Arto Effect, did you have a vibe or a sort of sound in your mind regarding how the track, how the song should, you know, be?
Speaker: Yeah, kind of, because it was written about a period in my life where I was kind of indulging in mind-altering substances and stuff.
Speaker: And it kind of made itself into a kind of mid-paced, psychedelic-type feel song.
Speaker: And I do remember the original demo, and that middle-aged section where it drops down to the E minor.
Speaker: I mean, it's a classic Floyd trick.
Speaker: And the Beatles as well.
Speaker: And I kind of asked Tony to...
Speaker: to think about that and listen to maybe something like sergeant peppers and um and see what he could do with it because i wanted that psychedelic vibe to it and yeah tony tony knows the rest because he knows what he did after that
Speaker: Well, it leads perfectly onto the next question.
Speaker: I'm going to jump on to the question to you, Tony.
Speaker: Cherry Bomb has a more, you know, we all felt it on the album.
Speaker: It has a more traditional sound than the other tracks on the album.
Speaker: So from your perspective, where did the inspiration for the musical feel of the song come from?
Speaker: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker: I took the lead directly from John because he mentioned that he wanted a 60s psychedelic feel to it.
Speaker: And then he mentioned Sergeant Peppers.
Speaker: No, he mentioned Strawberry Fields.
Speaker: So we all know what that typical Mellotron sound sounds like from Strawberry Fields.
Speaker: So I remember that it was quite funny because I used Studio One from my main software and all the virtual instruments there didn't actually have a Mellotron.
Speaker: So I had to...
Speaker: come out of Studio One and then use Logic Pro X and they have a very very good Mellotron simulation or virtual instrument.
Speaker: So I recorded that and then I had to export, had to import the video back into the Studio One session but
Speaker: Yeah, and that was the main inspiration.
Speaker: John said I wanted it to sound psychedelic, so immediately I thought, Strawberry Fields forever.
Speaker: It's funny, I don't know a lot of songs from that area that is so-called psychedelic.
Speaker: Bands like The Move, etc.
Speaker: I'm not really too familiar with their work, but I have some idea of what psychedelic music is supposed to sound like.
Speaker: And then it really just went from there.
Speaker: I do remember actually somebody suggesting there should be a harpsichord, which I think you can just about hear in the mix.
Speaker: should also be included.
Speaker: And I thought that the obstacle would give the whole song this sense of Englishness.
Speaker: That was actually a suggestion, Tony.
Speaker: Yes, somebody suggested a harpsichord.
Speaker: So it's kind of playing in there as well.
Speaker: So I went for two choral sounds for that middle eight section.
Speaker: I had the sort of staccato chords just playing the steady sort of 2-4-2-4, if you like, rhythm using the mellotron.
Speaker: And then I had another mellotron sound, which was just playing block chords.
Speaker: I can't remember whether it was at the same pitch or, you know, they were just slightly higher or lower register, but that formed the main part of the middle eight.
Speaker: And then I'm not very good at playing guitar, but then I remember we ought to have a guitar solo here.
Speaker: And then I really just used a preset that I found and modified it from another piece of software.
Speaker: And it just had all these typical sort of long echoes and delays, very little distortion.
Speaker: It wasn't the kind of song that needed sort of in-your-face heavy metal distortion.
Speaker: And I came up with this kind of dreamy sort of wandering guitar solo.
Speaker: And I think that was it for that middle-eight section.
Speaker: I don't think we added too much.
Speaker: No, it definitely worked.
Speaker: It was originally Stuart sang the vocals over that first part of the middle eight section.
Speaker: I don't want your sympathy I just want you by my side Yeah, to give the instrumentals some space and people to hear that kind of dreamy, psychedelic vibe, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, the vocal did repeat itself.
Speaker: I think there's like two parts of that middle-aged section and it did repeat itself.
Speaker: And I think I suggested that probably just repeating it probably didn't actually bring anything to the song.
Speaker: And I think we dropped that.
Speaker: So it just has a middle-aged section with the lyric and then just leaves it instrumental before it breaks into the next verse.
Speaker: So Stuart, I had a question for you.
Speaker: As this song was actually not written by yourself, what were your first impressions of the song when you first heard it?
Speaker: It's interesting this because John didn't give me any idea about what the song was about lyrically, what it was about.
Speaker: So I just, I took the lyric I got from John.
Speaker: The first time I listened to it, I thought my immediate impression was it's about some girl, someone that he, you know, is close to.
Speaker: And on about the second or third listening, I suddenly thought, nah, this isn't about a girl.
Speaker: I didn't know what cherry bomb was.
Speaker: I didn't know it was a drug of sorts.
Speaker: But after about two or three listens, I thought, nah, this is more serious than that.
Speaker: This is about a drug.
Speaker: And I remember texting you guys on the chat and saying, John, this is about drugs, isn't it?
Speaker: And he said, yeah, definitely.
Speaker: And then the story came out that obviously it was inspired by, you know, a pretty bad experience and a bad time for John in his life.
Speaker: So, yeah, that was my first impression.
Speaker: Then my second impression was listening to it.
Speaker: I thought it sounded quite Beatles-y and I thought, yeah, I quite like this, but I'm not sure.
Speaker: whether I'm going to be able to do anything with it that's going to add value and improve it.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's my answer to that.
Speaker: Yeah, I actually do.
Speaker: I remember the first time I heard the song, it was, John, you sent me a demo of some songs that were going to be on drums and wires.
Speaker: And there were lots of songs that were on that demo that I thought were particularly good.
Speaker: And I remember Cherry Bomb and exactly like Stuart, I thought, yeah, this is going to be another story of love lost.
Speaker: And I literally thought that I had this image in my mind of this woman, this Cherry Bomb, somebody obviously who's voluptuous and had long flowing blonde hair.
Speaker: And that's exactly how I saw it.
Speaker: And when you came up with the story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when you came up with the story about drug addiction, I was kind of thought, wow, I just didn't see it that way.
Speaker: Shows you how much of a useless lyricist I would be at the end of the day.
Speaker: I kind of disguise most of my songs as love songs.
Speaker: You know, always have done.
Speaker: You know, I like them to be ambiguous.
Speaker: And that kind of...
Speaker: And yeah, I can understand how that could be mistaken as a love song, but it was a kind of love-hate relationship that I had with that substance that I had a bad time with.
Speaker: I mean, it all dates back to the 2010s, when there was a lot of people like myself who'd grown up as failed young pop stars and have turned into aging old wrinkled pop stars.
Speaker: And, you know, I've always had a problem with addictions.
Speaker: You know, I'm currently addicted to the gherkins.
Speaker: But I've always had to watch myself because I think a lot of creative people...
Speaker: I have that problem, you know, I tend to go, I tend to go into black periods where, where I can't reason really or judge what I'm doing with myself.
Speaker: But anyway, it was a bad experience.
Speaker: I came out of it and I felt that I wanted to write some lyrics that could maybe help other people.
Speaker: as well that had been through the same experience um and it turned into that kind of um very very personal heart on sleeve song you know i bared my soul with with that one stew of course he got hold of the lyrics edited them down and um cut the wheat from the chaff and uh and added some of his own style to the song which in my opinion turned out absolutely fantastic and i don't think it could have been done better
Speaker: That's kind of you to say.
Speaker: I thought this could have been an anthem, a bit like I Will Survive is an anthem for one reason or another.
Speaker: I just suddenly had this image in my mind, you know, you go to these over-50s and over-60s parties, and your song could have actually been an anthem for men who loved and lost.
Speaker: And I just see it playing in the background, you know, and all these sort of hundreds of over-60-year-old men singing sweet cherry-balms.
Speaker: No, I mean, it's a very subtle lyric.
Speaker: I mean, there's the genius in that.
Speaker: I guess I don't write any lyrics, but I thought that was a bit of a genius touch, and I had this lightbulb moment went off when you explained that it was actually a song about drug addiction.
Speaker: Tony, just on a related note, you might want to edit this out, but the Drums and Myers album that you've recently remastered,
Speaker: um the song probably also sounds like a love song but that that is also about another addiction which is uh my struggle with alcohol over the years um you know it is it is dressed up as a love song but if you go back and listen to it knowing that um you'll see it in a different light and and it's the same with a lot of my songs yeah
Speaker: How do you actually get the courage?
Speaker: I wouldn't say the courage, but I would find it very difficult to write something personal that happened to me, even if it wasn't the third person.
Speaker: How do you actually make that leap?
Speaker: And maybe, Stuart, you've got some thoughts.
Speaker: How do you make that leap?
Speaker: Because you're really just burying your soul on a piece of paper and then putting it to music.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: I would say straight away that absolutely everything I write is pretty much from personal experience and my angle and my view on the world.
Speaker: And the next podcast we do, which will be about the song I Can See Your Face, is intensely personal.
Speaker: I won't go into it now, but absolutely it's about something that happened to me, which doesn't happen to many people.
Speaker: But we'll talk about that some other time at the next podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely, mate.
Speaker: At our age, we write from the heart, don't we?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Heart on sleeve.
Speaker: No, I wrote this question down, but I think it's actually, again, not being able to sing and not writing any lyrics.
Speaker: I just wondered, Stuart, what are the differences when you're performing someone else's song?
Speaker: I mean, you've played in many bands, you write your own lyrics with pillow fights back.
Speaker: Are there any sort of particular challenges, you know, like when you're having to interpret someone else's song, someone else's idea that's different from writing for yourself?
Speaker: Actually, you know what I find, I found, and I've always found it quite liberating and quite enjoyable to sing and to come up with, if I'm allowed to, to come up with ideas for other people's songs.
Speaker: In my early days of learning to be a singer in the sort of late 80s, I did some session work through a guy called Roger King who now plays keyboards and produces Steve Hackett.
Speaker: He was an in-house engineer at Island Records back then, Island Music.
Speaker: And I got some session work with him and I did loads of sessions for, well, two or three, four or five sessions for different artists that were signed to Ireland at the time, just coming in and doing vocals for them.
Speaker: And I really massively kicked on in terms of moved on in terms of being a singer back then, because it really taught me so much and just listening what someone else wanted on their song, which I'd never really, you know, really experienced that before.
Speaker: And it really made me much more professional.
Speaker: And in this case, it had been quite a long time since I sung or came up with any, was asked to sort of come up with any ideas for somebody else's song.
Speaker: But John, you know, as we know, John came up with this idea of bouncing it over to me and just said, look, fill your boots, mate, just do what you can.
Speaker: And if you come up with some ideas on it, then great.
Speaker: So for me,
Speaker: I just jumped to the chance, because the original demo I quite liked, but I felt, yeah, I can do something with this, because I know Joel will understand me when I say this.
Speaker: It was quite busy, there was a lot of lyrics in there, and the melody was quite bouncy, there was an awful lot going on.
Speaker: And I felt straight away when I first heard Cherry Bomb, I thought, this needs to be stripped down a bit because actually there's a brilliant song in here that's kind of like waiting to get out almost.
Speaker: And it had been, it had almost been overdone.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, that's how I felt about it.
Speaker: And so, yeah, it was a brilliant opportunity for me.
Speaker: So I just, I stripped it down, came up with a few more ideas, took a lot of the melody ideas from John's original demo versions and John's original ideas were a lot.
Speaker: I didn't really contribute much to the melody.
Speaker: But it was, I loved it.
Speaker: I really loved doing it.
Speaker: And in the end, I went bananas with it.
Speaker: I had so many backing vocals on it.
Speaker: I just went nuts with it because with my own songs, I don't tend to do that.
Speaker: I kind of tend to just, you know, just write a few, I come up with a few lines and then I harmonize and I do my bits and pieces.
Speaker: But this is a great opportunity for me to go nuts.
Speaker: And I really did.
Speaker: So thanks for that.
Speaker: Yeah, there was quite a few people comments that have been made about the album, especially about Cherry Bomb, is how catchy the chorus is.
Speaker: Sweet scented Cherry Bomb, you lied to me
Speaker: And I think that's absolutely true.
Speaker: And I think somebody did a review of the album, can't remember the very talented chap's name, but he actually said even the goddamn backing vocal was actually catchy as well, which actually backs up exactly what you just said.
Speaker: I was going for a dog walk with my little doggy at the time, and I'd just recorded the main vocal for Cherry Bowl.
Speaker: And I started getting these ideas in the chorus about...
Speaker: You know, the backing vocal being, you lied to me and all that stuff.
Speaker: And I was just on a dog walk and I could hear it in my head because I always hear music in my head, as most writers do.
Speaker: And I just got straight back and thought, yeah, I've got something down to remind me that I've come up with that little moment.
Speaker: And I did it.
Speaker: And John went, yeah, I came up with that too.
Speaker: That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker: And we were like on the same, literally on the same hymn sheet on this song so much at the time.
Speaker: So it was really good.
Speaker: Once we'd sorted out the choruses, the middle age section, somebody came up with the idea to have some psychedelic ending of the song, which we'll probably talk about.
Speaker: There's another follow-up question.
Speaker: But I can't remember whose idea it was to come up with spoken words or the story that closes out the songs.
Speaker: Yeah, that's Stuart's fault.
Speaker: Me again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hang on.
Speaker: Before you start, Stuart, on my original demo, I just extended that ending.
Speaker: I went back into the middle eight chords, but then it faded out after about 20 seconds.
Speaker: And I think you must have heard that version and thought, yeah, that can be extended so we could do something with that.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: It's such a nice musical.
Speaker: That section is so musically with the Mellotrons and everything that Tony had done.
Speaker: I love that section more than any other part of the song.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I just thought this is really derivative.
Speaker: When you know it's coming, it's something to look forward to, isn't it?
Speaker: You know, if you don't know the song, it's a nice surprise.
Speaker: But if you do know the song, it's like, okay, the rest is okay, but I'm just waiting for that ending.
Speaker: Because that spoken part ending gets me every time.
Speaker: Every time.
Speaker: I remember at the time, I was sitting down with my wife, Claire, and I said to her, I've got an idea for the end of this song.
Speaker: I'm going to do like a spoken, really daft spoken section.
Speaker: And she went, really?
Speaker: Are you sure?
Speaker: And I went, do you know what?
Speaker: I think this is going to work.
Speaker: I remember texting you, John, and saying, I've got this idea for this spoken thing.
Speaker: And I wrote quickly, literally, about two minutes flat, I just wrote this story down.
Speaker: and sent it to you and you just went, yeah, go for it.
Speaker: That's just mad.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: And so I just went upstairs and recorded it and just straight away.
Speaker: I don't know where that came from, that spoken thing, because I've never, ever done that before.
Speaker: Well, we do have to mention the fact that, like in Where Are The Angels, there is a Bowie influence there somewhere.
Speaker: I mean, the spoken ending is kind of, you know, a little bit Bowie-ish, not as much, yeah, as Angels, but it's just, you know, you just go off on this little journey and you've got this awesome music behind it.
Speaker: Then this red seagull swoops down beside me and he says, what are you doing?
Speaker: You don't belong here.
Speaker: And I say, no, I belong here.
Speaker: He says, you dropped the bomb?
Speaker: And I say, yeah, that's why I'm here.
Speaker: But how did the seagull come into the equation?
Speaker: Well, you know, this is all about where I live.
Speaker: I live in Dorset and I'm quite close to the sea.
Speaker: And I visit the Jurassic Coast a lot.
Speaker: At the time that we recorded this song and that we were doing it, I was visiting... We have a little place down on the coast overlooking the sea, which is like a caravan thing, and I was visiting there and...
Speaker: You know, just I've always needed to be near water.
Speaker: And all it was was coming up with an idea about a drugs trip, a druggy trip.
Speaker: At the time, we sort of called ourselves or we used the idea of calling ourselves RGB after our surnames as a name for the band.
Speaker: That Somato effect we'd sort of dismissed as an old name.
Speaker: So we'd used RGB as our name at that time.
Speaker: So I wanted to reflect, I just wanted to have some fun with it.
Speaker: So I wanted to reflect red, you know, and green and blue, which were in our sort of logo at the time.
Speaker: in that bit of lyric and I thought what better way to end this song than to have a trip and I'm up flying I'm flying in the sky and this big red seagull comes down and there's a green blue water below me at the blue sky Wow I've never made that connection never made that connection
Speaker: Yeah, that's brilliant.
Speaker: A bit of fun, really.
Speaker: And then it just got, it kicked on a bit from that.
Speaker: But the bit I love most is right at the end when the seagull starts talking.
Speaker: And this goes back to Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Speaker: Way back in our youth, guys, in the early 1980s, when we used to love that whole series.
Speaker: I remember there was this talking seagull in this...
Speaker: But then he had, I think it was a talking seagull or a talking bird.
Speaker: And anyway, I was having this conversation with this seagull in the air while I was flying over the sea.
Speaker: And the seagull says, says,
Speaker: Why are you here?
Speaker: And I said, nah, what are you doing?
Speaker: You don't belong here.
Speaker: Sorry, yeah.
Speaker: What are you doing here?
Speaker: Have you dropped the bomb?
Speaker: I said, yeah, that's why I'm here.
Speaker: And I just thought, as the minute I wrote it, I just thought, oh my God, I love that.
Speaker: It just sums it up perfectly.
Speaker: And yeah, it was, what I love about this song, loved all along, was that it was such a nice opportunity for me to do something I've never done before.
Speaker: And it was great.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Yeah, the ending was sort of almost very Michael Caine.
Speaker: No!
Speaker: I purposely, I know, actually, Tony, thanks for mentioning that, because I purposely, I don't like the sound of my spoken voice very much.
Speaker: I'm not desperate about my singing voice, but that's another story.
Speaker: But I've never really liked my spoken voice.
Speaker: And I thought on this, I'm going to use what I would call my normal accent, which is kind of a bit West London accent.
Speaker: And I, again, I mean, in reference to my great hero, Dave Bowie, I do sound a bit like him when I talk normally because I've got a bit of a London twang about my voice, as you can probably hear now.
Speaker: So I just thought, no, I'm going to sing it.
Speaker: I'm going to speak this in my normal voice, which really, really scared the crap out of me at the time.
Speaker: But I'm glad I did it.
Speaker: I remember laughing, though.
Speaker: He did something on that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: There you go, you see.
Speaker: You know, that's it.
Speaker: I did kind of, for me, I remember when the first time I heard the idea about having a spoken bit at the end of the song and storytelling, I think I remember, as you both know, I'm a bit of a pre-Gabriel, well, yeah, Gabriel Genesis fan, massive Gabriel Genesis fan.
Speaker: But I think actually he came up with a short story which ended up on the sleep notes or the back of Genesis Live, which was a live album they released sometime in the early 70s.
Speaker: Later on, I think some film director in Hollywood actually read it and wanted him to write a script.
Speaker: And this was one of the big arguments they had during the recording of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Speaker: Because Gabriel went off to Hollywood in the middle of recording, if I've got my story right, to talk about writing this script.
Speaker: And the rest of the band were left, I think they recorded it in Edleigh Grange at the time, were left just to record huge parts of The Land Lies Down on Broadway without Peter Gabriel.
Speaker: But that kind of tied into Cherry Bomb to the 60s or early 70s, into this whole sort of prog...
Speaker: psychedelic feel immediately I heard the story and the idea that's the thought that came into my mind you're probably this is probably subliminal because I was a massive Peter Gabriel fan back in the days still am still think he's a genius it is subliminal I think you're right I think a lot of you know I can remember listening to you know I know what I like and Gabriel talks at the beginning of that about I'm just a lawnmower and all the rest of it
Speaker: So yeah, there is probably a huge influence in there in terms of writing a daft bit of prose like I did from Gabriel.
Speaker: Absolutely, it's a good point.
Speaker: Yeah, another point of inspiration is that lyric, there's Howard Hughes in blue suede shoes, smiling at the majorette, smoking Winston cigarettes, which is, again, I don't know which song that comes from, from The Lamb, but it is actually almost spoken rather than sung, isn't it?
Speaker: Because the music just goes really down low.
Speaker: Broadway melody, I think.
Speaker: Broadway melody of something or other.
Speaker: We're talking about someone else's music here.
Speaker: This is not good.
Speaker: and it's a song and dance begins yeah it it was it was a storytelling isn't it which i think actually that's one of the good things about cherry bomb is actually a story and the the whole crazy thing at the end um it was just it just works beautifully and it ties the whole sort of 60s psychedelic feel of the song i think it's what john was trying to get across musically just ties it all in
Speaker: And I remember I wrote the introduction at the last thing.
Speaker: I remember actually, I always have problems with introductions.
Speaker: I kind of have a half an idea, but I get so excited about developing the choruses and the big sections and the middle eights and the melodies that I sometimes just completely forget the introduction.
Speaker: And I think we'd almost finished the production on this.
Speaker: And I thought, well, the introduction sounds a bit bland.
Speaker: And I don't know what we had before the beginning of the song, but there was this other virtual instrument that just had this musical box instrument that you just play using a MIDI keyboard.
Speaker: And I always wanted to include it somehow.
Speaker: And then I thought, this is going to be perfect.
Speaker: This is a bit like up the vicarage, you know, Victorian England, Steve Hackett kind of feel to the whole song.
Speaker: And then I thought, I'm going to take just the chords from the chorus and then play the music, this music box instrument.
Speaker: And I think the first time I sent across a demo, it just launched straight into the song.
Speaker: And then I thought, oh, what about if it slows down a bit like a mechanical box?
Speaker: that eventually you wind it up and it plays this tune and eventually it just slows down.
Speaker: And I thought that fitted perfectly.
Speaker: And for me, that was after the great ending with the storytelling about the seagull.
Speaker: I think it needed selling at the front.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the last things I did on production on the song.
Speaker: That w as a genius idea.
Speaker: Do you remember when the first take, the first version you did with that musical box...
Speaker: You put Stuart's vocals mixed up to Mickey Mouse sound.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, oh God, I'm guilty as charged.
Speaker: I couldn't, I just listened to it.
Speaker: I thought, no, I don't, I really don't.
Speaker: I just.
Speaker: Sounded like the chipmunks.
Speaker: I know, I couldn't do it.
Speaker: I thought it was okay, but you know, I mean,
Speaker: You had to have the final say on that, Stuart.
Speaker: I'm sorry, yeah, it would have been fun, but I just couldn't deal with it.
Speaker: As I said before, I do struggle listening.
Speaker: Most singers are the same.
Speaker: You struggle listening to your own voice.
Speaker: You don't really want to listen to it because you don't think you're that good.
Speaker: You don't think you've done it right or you think there's so much room for improvement.
Speaker: listening to myself turned up two octaves and sat in like city on acid you know it's like not city the other one well anyway um yeah it was like a bridge too far for me
Speaker: There was a song by Kenny Loggins.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: I don't know how I ended up listening to Kenny Loggins.
Speaker: But when I was living in the States, he had a huge hit with a song.
Speaker: And it was played on the radio almost endlessly over there.
Speaker: And it starts off with, I think, his six-year-old child who just sings the lyric to the beginning of the chorus or the verse.
Speaker: And then it kicks into the song.
Speaker: And that's where I tried to get the inspiration.
Speaker: So I thought, along with the musical box...
Speaker: it would have been nice to have a child's voice, perhaps, if we'd have just could have found somebody who was, you know, a daughter or someone who could have just sung the first few lines, but with an authentic child voice.
Speaker: So that's why I tried to, if you like, turn Stuart into a six-year-old.
Speaker: But as you say, it just didn't work.
Speaker: Well, he's there mentally anyway.
Speaker: Stuart, I'm trying to...
Speaker: Another great favorite band of mine from years ago, The Smiths.
Speaker: Johnny Marle produced the God Save the Queen album, and there's a song on that called Big Mouth Strikes Again.
Speaker: And in the chorus of Big Mouth, you hear this sort of really very similar high voice to what you had, Tony, for the beginning of Cherry Bowl, singing backing vocals.
Speaker: And at the time, everyone went, who the hell's that?
Speaker: What is that?
Speaker: But Ma had basically, as producer, done what you did.
Speaker: He'd switched up Morrissey's vocal up a couple of octaves and put it through some sort of sequence or something.
Speaker: And Morrissey, being much more sort of sensible than me, said, yeah, that's fine, Johnny.
Speaker: I can deal with that.
Speaker: If it had been me, I would have gone, no, no, I don't want to make it.
Speaker: I don't like it.
Speaker: I don't like it.
Speaker: Because I'm not very creative like that.
Speaker: I could have lived with it, but, you know,
Speaker: I got a question for you, John.
Speaker: If you actually hadn't developed it with us, how do you think it might have turned out if it had been a drums and wires or an arm song or developed with somebody else?
Speaker: I don't think it would have made any drums and wires releases.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Ray was never particularly enamoured with it.
Speaker: And we had loads of other stuff to choose from.
Speaker: You know, it was...
Speaker: In demo form, it was almost seven minutes long with all the extra verses and choruses that Stuart chopped out and then made up with his spoken part.
Speaker: But it ended up about seven minutes on anyway, didn't it, or something?
Speaker: Yeah, because I noticed this with some of the songs you write, some of them are just like power-prop songs.
Speaker: And then suddenly you just come out with these sort of, I wouldn't say whimsical, but I don't want to go too much.
Speaker: It's not a drums and wire podcast, but there are some songs like I Want to See the Sun and All of This Time.
Speaker: What's that song called?
Speaker: All of This Time, yeah.
Speaker: They're just completely different to some of the other songs you've written.
Speaker: Had I...
Speaker: had i had more um control over it i don't think i think all of this time and i want to see the sun i probably wouldn't have planned that album um i would have probably saved them for such an occasion like cherry bomb where um given it to you and stewart and said we can do stuff with this
Speaker: Because they're kind of mid-paced musical pieces, you know, that need a lot more love than a three-piece band can basically do.
Speaker: We talked about this on a podcast, an interview with Smudge, Darren Smith, but there'll always be a place in my heart for Cherry Bomb because it was the song that really got us back together and kicked us on to finish the entire album.
Speaker: Because without repeating ourselves, we wrote Angels, we kind of worked on it, and then we had a bit of a break for a year and a half, can't remember.
Speaker: And then you and I worked on Cherry Bomb.
Speaker: You said, I've got this song and you sent it over to me.
Speaker: And then we started to talk about it and I just developed the music.
Speaker: And then when we had the bones of it together, then we actually then said, well, Stuart, do you fancy singing this?
Speaker: And then that just kicked off the whole...
Speaker: um flow and led to all the other songs and it got stewart writing as as well after doing one of my songs he said right i'm gonna better this i'm gonna i'm gonna do some writing myself and he ended up writing the other six songs with you on uh on the album which uh yeah cherry bomb is not my favorite song on the album you know that's all i say you know but uh
Speaker: Well, we did a recent poll, and although we didn't get many votes, because let's face it, we're just a small band that no one's heard of, but it did actually get quite a few votes.
Speaker: It does resonate with a lot of people.
Speaker: But, yeah, I think that's why I'll always like the song from that point of view, because it actually kicked us off and kicked us on.
Speaker: And the fact that after that, we didn't get a look in writing any more songs because Stuart wrote them all was, you know, neither...
Speaker: I feel guilty about it, I really do.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, you know, all I would say is that for me, Cherry Bomb is really and truly, for me, it's the most...
Speaker: exciting song on the album.
Speaker: It's certainly different because, as you said, you know, a lot of the other material I did come up with.
Speaker: But it's unusual and I really love doing it because it's something I wouldn't normally have done.
Speaker: I wouldn't, you know, I'd never have written or even attempted to
Speaker: Well, this is what collaboration is all about, isn't it?
Speaker: It's fabulous, and it deservedly... The other great thing about it is that it sits brilliantly on the dark side of the album between angels and I Can See Your Face.
Speaker: There's no other place it could have gone.
Speaker: And it works so well between those two songs, because we'll talk about I Can See Your Face next week when we do the next podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It just, honestly, it is perfect.
Speaker: And I have a, it's a really special song for me.
Speaker: And for the same reason, as Tony said, it brought us all back into this place where we suddenly thought, yeah, we can do this.
Speaker: And it did kick me on.
Speaker: It inspired me and made me think, yeah, I need to write some more music.
Speaker: And I did.
Speaker: And so I'm eternally grateful for that.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: All for the good.
Speaker: There was one question, John.
Speaker: I remember in the last podcast we talked about your bass lines following vocal melodies.
Speaker: One of my favorite parts of the album, I can't remember, I think it actually comes out of the pre-chorus or the end of the verse.
Speaker: And this is a very intricate bass line.
Speaker: There's lots of notes going all over the place.
Speaker: And I tried to follow it a little bit with some of the staccato strings and some of the other instrumentation I wrote around it.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Was that inspired by a vocal or was that just you jamming along and thinking I'm going to make this complicated?
Speaker: Do you mean the part where it, in between verses, where it goes do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do, like that?
Speaker: I think without singing it goes do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do, I'm thinking about angels again.
Speaker: The trouble is there's so many bass vines that sound the same.
Speaker: Oh, no, no, no, of course, Cherry Bomb.
Speaker: Yeah, where it goes into the bridge before the chorus where it goes, and now a guest come flirting.
Speaker: Yeah, that bit.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That was kind of like Angels.
Speaker: I thought I would put something off the beat, you know?
Speaker: Not the root notes, just a little run that actually follows the chord structure, but is actually not on the beat.
Speaker: It's one of my bass tricks that I've done on countless songs.
Speaker: You know, I just get the idea that, I mean, you know, most of the time through the verses and that on this song.
Speaker: I'm playing the root notes and it's very sort of following the bass drum and making it kind of quite a smooth feel.
Speaker: But then when it goes to that bridge section before the choruses, that's when I kind of mix it up a bit.
Speaker: And it's a bass counter melody, really.
Speaker: No, it's absolutely perfect.
Speaker: And I remember actually, because that's how I came up with the idea for these brass stabs.
Speaker: I quite like brass.
Speaker: in a bit of music and I've used it quite a lot on the album.
Speaker: It appears in other songs at the end of Born to be Free where we go into the orchestral bit.
Speaker: I've got some of these sort of like slow brass melodies in the background but the end of that bass riff before it goes into the chorus there was a gap and I thought it was perfect just to slam in some kind of some brass blast if you want to call it that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And actually, it was immediately I heard that bass line and there was a gap there, isn't there?
Speaker: It's like this bit of a pause before it goes into the chorus.
Speaker: And I thought, I've got to fill that gap.
Speaker: And I just thought, yeah, okay, earth, wind and fire.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll stick some brass in there.
Speaker: Also, funny enough, inspired a bit by madness because, I mean, that's something they use a lot in their songs.
Speaker: I mean, there's lots of horns and brass.
Speaker: It kind of harks back to the feel of the song that reminds me of something off Sgt.
Speaker: Pepper's because you've got like
Speaker: You know, like, got to get you into my life with the horns and the horn stabs.
Speaker: And, you know, they're just there in certain parts of the song.
Speaker: You know, they don't dominate the song.
Speaker: But it's, yeah, I love a bit of brass.
Speaker: Well, there's a link, actually.
Speaker: Funny you should mention Got to Get You Into My Life, because I recently saw a documentary where McCartney said that's not about women or anything.
Speaker: He was talking about they had they like marijuana or drugs and they had to get them into their life.
Speaker: And McCartney admitted admitted, you see, that that was why he wrote the song.
Speaker: Got to get you into my life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's the link with Cherry Bomb.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We left-handed bass players have got a certain mindset, mate.
Speaker: I just wish I had his money.
Speaker: Or I could write songs as great as his, but there you go.
Speaker: We can't have it all, can we?
Speaker: No, we can't.
Speaker: I hope you enjoyed our discussion about the making of Sweet Scented Cherry Bomb.
Speaker: Please do join us next week for another episode of the TSE podcast.
Speaker: Until then, cheerio.
