Transcript
Speaker: Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of the TSC podcast and this week we're going to talk about the making of the song Born to be Free.
Speaker: Yeah, so here we are, and it's Tony here with the TSC Podcast.
Speaker: Joining me are Stuart Glanville.
Speaker: Hello, Stuart.
Speaker: How are you today?
Speaker: I'm very well, actually.
Speaker: Very well, indeed.
Speaker: Brilliant.
Speaker: And where are you?
Speaker: That looks very sunny.
Speaker: I am by the coast in Dorset on the Jurassic Coast, and it is beautiful down here.
Speaker: That's where dinosaurs belong.
Speaker: That is correct.
Speaker: And John Bicknell's joining me from sunny Hazelmere.
Speaker: I assume it's sunny.
Speaker: it's at the moment yeah but I've got a giant tree in my front garden so it's blocking out all the lights so I'm not actually sure
Speaker: Anyway, it's nice to see you guys.
Speaker: Nice to see everybody.
Speaker: So, yeah, so we're carrying on this series where we do a quick podcast and we talk about the songs that appear on our debut album, Where Were the Angels, and who the hell thought of them and how come we decided to record them and what they're all about.
Speaker: So anyway, I'm going to let Stuart actually kick this off because who wrote the track Born to be Free, Stuart?
Speaker: Well, I'm guilty as charged, I'm afraid.
Speaker: Although I do have to acknowledge that an old band I was in years ago, my songwriting partner back then was a guitarist and clever guy, good songwriter.
Speaker: And he came up with a couple of chords, but it was just a germ of an idea.
Speaker: Then he went on holiday.
Speaker: And over the period of a week or so he was on holiday, I just wrote it.
Speaker: I think he kind of wrote a bit of the chorus chords and that was it.
Speaker: And there was nothing else.
Speaker: It was a real German idea.
Speaker: And then I just turned it into really one of the first songs I'd fully written, music and lyrics, I guess.
Speaker: And that was back in, God, 1989, I think it was originally.
Speaker: But it was a very different song to the one it is now.
Speaker: Did you write the music and the lyrics to the song?
Speaker: Yes, I did.
Speaker: I'd started off with basically...
Speaker: This was quite an easy song because the chorus was straightforward.
Speaker: I added a few bits to his couple of chords that he'd come up with and the melody came straight away.
Speaker: And at the time, I was always going into falsetto halfway through my choruses and it was a really easy melody.
Speaker: It just came straight away.
Speaker: The verses were much harder.
Speaker: Um, but I'll say much harder.
Speaker: They, they weren't hard, but, but they took a little longer to come, but yeah, I basically, um, had the lyrics, some of the lyrics were written and, um,
Speaker: The chorus came quickly, the verse lyrics weren't written, and I wrote those after I'd come up with a few chords for the verses.
Speaker: So yeah, that was it really.
Speaker: So the demo that you sent over before I did the production on it that actually had keyboards and synths, did you write it on guitar first of all, or was it written with your fellow keyboard players sitting there working it out together?
Speaker: No, no, it was written on guitar totally by me, and I took it to the band and the keyboard player in the band who was the guitarist's brother.
Speaker: Yeah, they came up with the added bits and the bassist at the time who was a great guy and he could actually play bass unlike John.
Speaker: So no, you couldn't.
Speaker: He wasn't as good as John.
Speaker: But anyway, and he basically was instructed on what to play on bass by the guitarist as well.
Speaker: So, but yeah, the song's written, the idea came from me.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Did you ever play it live with your band Pillow Finds Back?
Speaker: Yeah, we did.
Speaker: Yeah, not very often.
Speaker: It's one of the songs we didn't do live very often because I think guitarist Tim didn't really like it.
Speaker: And I think probably because he didn't write it.
Speaker: And I remember him coming back from holiday and I said, I've finished that song.
Speaker: And he said, what?
Speaker: I said, I've finished, it's done.
Speaker: I said, really?
Speaker: I said, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: What's it called?
Speaker: Born to be Free.
Speaker: Oh, okay, let's have a listen.
Speaker: He liked it, but I think because it didn't come from him,
Speaker: I think he was a bit miffed.
Speaker: I'd taken an idea and turned it into a song.
Speaker: But anyway, we did play it live once or twice, but not very often.
Speaker: What was the lyric all about?
Speaker: You know, the meaning, the symbolism behind it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At the time, I'd just been reading this book called The Silent Spring, which is one of the first sort of eco books, you know, years ago.
Speaker: I think it was a book from the 60s even, and I'd just picked up an old copy of it somewhere.
Speaker: And I was quite getting into, you know, that type of thing.
Speaker: And I wanted to write something about a man's kind of relationship with nature and the world around us.
Speaker: And so it was quite a naive lyric because I was a lot younger then.
Speaker: But yeah, that's really where it came from was I wanted to write something that dealt with man's place in the natural world, not the fact that, you know, we're not,
Speaker: we might be the dominant race in many ways on the planet, but we're not in control.
Speaker: That was really it.
Speaker: Well, this is quite relevant if you think today just stop oil or whatever these protests are.
Speaker: You wrote it in the 80s and now we've come full circle and everyone's worried about the environment and the planet.
Speaker: And of course, as most people know, it's us humans that are destroying it, whether it be through deforestation or God knows what else.
Speaker: So maybe it has a relevance even more so today.
Speaker: I think it does, and that's why when we looked at songs for the album, and I put it forward purely on that basis, because I knew going back that, yes, it's an old song, but it was that song and another one called Pandora, which we'll come to next, I think, those two songs were obvious candidates, and Born To Be Free was crying out to be arranged and produced by someone who knew what they were doing, and
Speaker: As it turned out.
Speaker: But then Tony did it.
Speaker: But then Tony did it, yeah.
Speaker: So it was crying out for it.
Speaker: And as you say, it's a really relevant message to today, more so today than it was in 1989, 1990, really, to be honest.
Speaker: I remember you played it.
Speaker: I came and visited you sometime before COVID.
Speaker: And I remember that I sat in your living room and we listened to a couple of songs.
Speaker: The first time I've heard any of the songs that you recorded or wrote with Pillow Fights Back.
Speaker: And I remember this song particularly because when it came around again and you sent another demo, I instantly recognized it.
Speaker: And actually, I think back then, three years ago, when I came to visit you, you said, yeah, yeah, I think I'd like to re-record this or I'd like to do this song again.
Speaker: And yeah, it was a great song.
Speaker: Yeah, it was one that we never really did it justice back then.
Speaker: And as I say, it never got its way into the live set very often.
Speaker: It was a very rough recording.
Speaker: I think we did it at CTS Studios in Wembley, but it was done quite quickly and we didn't give it enough care and attention.
Speaker: But there we go.
Speaker: When did you first hear the song, John?
Speaker: When did you first hear the song?
Speaker: I remember Stuart sending over the demo.
Speaker: Oh, God, it must have been two years ago now, at least.
Speaker: And I immediately connected with it because, to me, it was just...
Speaker: It had a little bit of an 80s kind of synth pop feel to it, the way it was done on the demo.
Speaker: But I could hear real pop music in there.
Speaker: I could hear real hooks.
Speaker: And this could be... My immediate thought was... And I'm pretty sure I did send you a reference song for this one, Tony.
Speaker: Did you?
Speaker: I'm pretty sure I did.
Speaker: um which was uh it it really reminded me of sowing the seeds of love oh i remember now yeah i remember now yeah yeah the tears for fears song sowing the seeds of love and i thought because because the demo had all those hooks it had all those like air sections where you could have jangly guitars add the sections where you could have the mccartney bass lines
Speaker: you know like in the bridges i do all the mccartney stuff on the base um uh and then you've got the the kind of pre-chorus bit where it goes really quiet and you hear a lot of space around which i thought was really kind of psychedelic and spacey and then we go into the chorus which i
Speaker: Honestly, I thought it was an XTC song, you know, and it needed that kind of treatment with that kind of laid back bass, especially after I heard your guitar parts on it, Tony.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because you did all that dreamy guitar stuff with the delay on it.
Speaker: And I thought, yeah, this has got to be a sowing the seeds of love type kind of
Speaker: you know, a song about, and because it's called Born To Be Free, it kind of follows the same thing, you know, like, live your life, do what you need to do, you're a very short time here, this, you know, this is not how it's supposed to be, we all need, we're all born to be free.
Speaker: You know, I read the Joy Adamson book back in the day about the lions and all that.
Speaker: And it just seemed to me to be a really good message, which I think sowing the seeds of love was as well.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Good point.
Speaker: Yeah, so it kind of gave me the whole song with all its different sections, which is just a bit like, if you listen to Sowing the Seeds of Love, there's about seven or eight different sections in it.
Speaker: Yeah, the first thing that really hit me, I really liked the chorus, and that was the first thing I heard.
Speaker: I don't know how Stuart did it, but it starts off with the, and then it suddenly almost goes into falsetto at the end.
Speaker: That's right, yeah.
Speaker: And it sings like a bird over sea.
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: How did he do that?
Speaker: No, it felt like the right thing to do, to just lift it an octave into my head voice.
Speaker: And so I did.
Speaker: So it lifts an octave on bird over sea.
Speaker: And then my...
Speaker: Our lives are filled with a longing to be the next line.
Speaker: I quite like that melody in that bit.
Speaker: It's quite nice.
Speaker: So I kept the lyrics exactly the same in the choruses, but I did rewrite the verse lyrics for our, for that's for MatoFX purposes, because
Speaker: It needed a bit more.
Speaker: It was very naive, the original version.
Speaker: And I just rewrote the verses too.
Speaker: And I'm really pleased with how they came out because they're updated and they just sound more relevant now than they did back then.
Speaker: So yeah, that's how it works.
Speaker: I was really hooked into the urgency actually.
Speaker: Obviously, looking back on the entire album, I do remember when the first time I heard the vocal,
Speaker: there seemed to be a little bit of urgency in the first verse.
Speaker: I think that slightly influenced my approach to writing the song, but that I really liked because I think probably on the album, it's one of the few songs where you do have that urgency in your voice.
Speaker: You know, you're really pushing the verses along and then the nice contrast is you're pushing the verse along and it comes to the chorus and then there's sort of like this sort of majestic, sort of floating, sort of airy quality to it.
Speaker: I don't know whether you deliberately did that.
Speaker: No, I didn't.
Speaker: I didn't at all.
Speaker: I remember the
Speaker: some of the lyrics in the first verse, the original lyrics were quite all about, you know, it was all about stuff like walking on an Island and things like that.
Speaker: And I just thought it was all a bit, a bit naive.
Speaker: So I changed it to, you know, the green fields around you and everything and green fields and fold you and that sort of thing.
Speaker: So I wanted to get, Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was, it was very different.
Speaker: But anyway, it worked out, worked out well.
Speaker: Tony, I've got a question for you, mate.
Speaker: Yeah, go for them.
Speaker: How did you come up with the seagull guitar sound on the other choruses?
Speaker: Well, that was... Because that was a golden touch that really makes it.
Speaker: Well, that was Stuart's idea.
Speaker: That was nothing to do with it.
Speaker: Oh, that was him again, was it?
Speaker: Well, tell you what it was.
Speaker: I think it was this.
Speaker: Bloody creative bugger.
Speaker: Sorry to jump in, but...
Speaker: You might recall on one of our old versions of our old songs, that Somato effect, when we recorded that song years ago, I was playing some lead guitar over the end choruses and it was all a bit similar to that.
Speaker: And I remember saying to you, Tony, why don't we make that sound like that old song of ours and you can just take it away and make it sound even better with your guitar skills, which are fantastic.
Speaker: superiors of mine and you did and I think that's where it came from because we definitely had those weird sort of noises over the original version of that's for my make it yeah making the connection now yeah yeah yeah you're right that was that yellow washburn that I think you used the gig with you put this hideous constant looking guitar had a rosewood neck and I remember and you played that all the gigs we played um you used to play something
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: I don't know if it was mixing for us.
Speaker: I think we paid him 50 quid to make sure it was turned down.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it needed to be.
Speaker: I was never a guitar player, just about stroms and chords, but that's all I need to do, really.
Speaker: Well, there was a confession about the end of that song.
Speaker: I'm going to talk about Bore Everyone to Death, but I mean basically how I approach producing the song, because it's quite interesting, actually.
Speaker: But going back to the guitar, it wasn't a guitar at all.
Speaker: I tried to play it on guitar and my guitar skills are not brilliant, even though you say that I'm slightly better than yours, Stu.
Speaker: But I just couldn't get the sound I wanted to.
Speaker: So I loaded up a virtual instrument and just took a sort of standard Fender Stratocaster type guitar tone and I ran it through...
Speaker: some effects so i actually recorded it actually playing on midi keyboard oh my god i played the midi keyboard and i used the pitch bend to get that sort of like extreme so almost like wailing because immediately i had three of us i'm bloody cheetah i had an image of a seagull splitter cheetah
Speaker: It's all sounds at the end of the day.
Speaker: It doesn't matter what it sounds like.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Everyone listening to it.
Speaker: So everyone is listening to this now and bought the album, all 20 of you, and thinking, God, I thought that was a guitar.
Speaker: I feel totally cheated.
Speaker: We will now take your album back.
Speaker: We'll give you a refund if you basically think, obviously, we're cheating.
Speaker: Well, I thought it was a bloody guitar.
Speaker: No, actually, in fact, it was a MIDI keyboard.
Speaker: But I got the sound that I wanted.
Speaker: I think it was important to get that pitch bend.
Speaker: And it was really important to get that sort of like, you know, almost that squealing sort of like screaming of a seagull.
Speaker: And yeah, that's exactly what I did.
Speaker: Yeah, and it worked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Honestly, you couldn't tell it's not a guitar.
Speaker: You really couldn't.
Speaker: It really sounds like a guitar, doesn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I'm sure no one's going to watch this, so if they do, anyone who listens to it on Spotify would probably think, what a great piece of guitar playing.
Speaker: But, you know, if people actually knew the fact that you played the last note of Pandora on bass, they probably would hate that track, wouldn't they?
Speaker: Yeah, that was expediency.
Speaker: That was just obviously getting the job done.
Speaker: Sorry about that, John.
Speaker: You're never going to forgive me, are you?
Speaker: There's one note on the album that I don't play, and it kind of bugs me.
Speaker: You're stealing the thunder from the Pandora podcast now.
Speaker: No, what I wanted to say was the, I remember I got the track from Stu and originally I tried to faithfully reproduce it.
Speaker: So I was putting all these keyboard textures, especially in the verse, and I was trying to copy, if you like, the format, the original demo that came over because it was heavy synth based.
Speaker: Yeah, it was like 80s pop synth.
Speaker: And I remember there was even, there was a guitar solo as well, wasn't there?
Speaker: Yes, there was actually a guitar solo, like a break.
Speaker: So I spent time working out the structure of the song.
Speaker: I remember actually sorting out the structure of the song and then I'd recorded a lot of stuff like angels and I can see your face and I was working on other bits.
Speaker: And I just thought it's funny.
Speaker: Stuart mentioned about competency on guitar.
Speaker: Cause I thought I'm a pretty poor guitarist and I want to challenge myself.
Speaker: I want to record something just completely with guitars.
Speaker: I'm not going to touch a keyboard.
Speaker: I'm not going to touch a piano, not going to touch a synth.
Speaker: So then after spending about two weeks trying to come up with various keyboard patches and, you know,
Speaker: reproduce what what the demo was telling me to reproduce i just threw all that away i started again and i started to record on guitar so um some of the melodies um that i heard or the melody the keyboard was playing on the demo i just recreated it and wrote it on guitar and recorded it and the same was with the choruses as well and um
Speaker: And the middle eight section where I spent quite a lot of time actually working out the guitar parts.
Speaker: I have basically two guitar parts with counter melodies and there's actually four guitar parts playing that middle eight section.
Speaker: So that's how I approached it.
Speaker: And I thought, yeah, it was a bit of a challenge.
Speaker: And I was quite happy that the way that it all turned out.
Speaker: And then one of the other questions I was going to come on up to, I think we'd all listened to the demo.
Speaker: We'd all said, yeah, we're happy with this.
Speaker: And then we got a messenger, um, um, um, chat from Stuart saying, yeah, I've got some different ideas to the ending and the ending changed completely.
Speaker: I think actually I'd finished the production.
Speaker: I'd recorded all the guitars and I think I'd even mixed it.
Speaker: And then suddenly Stuart, you came up with the ideas that we needed a different ending.
Speaker: Dead song.
Speaker: Did I?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I really can't remember that.
Speaker: Yeah, I did.
Speaker: Born to be free.
Speaker: Yeah, it definitely had a guitar-based ending, and I had some guitar solos, and basically I think it was just the chorus repeating itself.
Speaker: And I don't know what we were doing at the time.
Speaker: I think actually we'd...
Speaker: Recorded a few demos of I Can See Your Face, and I think Stuart might have been inspired and said, yeah, let's do some more of those orchestral elements.
Speaker: So I completely rewrote the last three choruses.
Speaker: And then actually, I'm glad I did because... Sorry, I'm very, very slow on the uptake, but I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker: now i've got the demo i've got the i've got that piece of music i use for the podcast introduction it's probably yeah it's one of my favorite it's one of my favorite pieces that almost happened by accident so then i then wrote the strings um and then we re-recorded it and then i think the bird guitar came on top of that at the same time but uh
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that was, that was my approach.
Speaker: I wanted it to be, to be a complete guitar piece, but it wasn't quite in the end, but I'm still happy with some of the, um, I'm happy with the second verse.
Speaker: I really liked the counter guitar and the tones that I got in the second verse.
Speaker: Um, because I thought I got to play something different here.
Speaker: Um, and then I think there's like a, there's like a call and response system between two different types of guitars.
Speaker: Um, and of course I came up with the introduction with the, um,
Speaker: No, I didn't actually come up with that.
Speaker: That was Where Are the Angels.
Speaker: But, yeah, I was really happy with the guitar work that I did, and it changed at the end.
Speaker: The second verse picked up anyway, naturally, from the very beginning.
Speaker: I mean, from the time I heard the demo, the second verse picked up, which is why I do the walking bass line throughout that second verse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it really picks up on the bass, and I thought, you know, if I'm going to do...
Speaker: um the beatles and if i'm going to do um xtc i might just as well stick some stranglers in as well so that's what that's basically what i did on the second verse
Speaker: No, I remember listening to the, when you sent the bass stems over the original ones, I was quite surprised actually, because it seemed pretty, what can I say, you played within yourself.
Speaker: You know, you have this simple bass line that's chugging along in the verse.
Speaker: And then when we get to the pre-chorus and the chorus, then you start doing your sort of typical, what I call typical John Bicknell melodic bass runs.
Speaker: But when I first heard the bass tone, when I first heard the bass track, and it was just like one note sort of
Speaker: I don't want to call it plodding because I'd never want to call your guitar playing plodding, even though, you know, it's... Yeah, well, that's the way I always start.
Speaker: I mean, I always do a provisional, uh, baseline version one and then I always improve on it, you know, so, uh,
Speaker: I hopefully improve on it.
Speaker: It was perfect.
Speaker: And I was really happy it all came together when you add all the other elements like the guitar and the keyboards.
Speaker: And I remember actually we got to the middle eight because I have this... Ah, another thing I remember was we came out of the middle eight and I...
Speaker: I think I created a bit of tension because I can't explain this very well, but as it comes out the middle eight, there's almost like this bit of tension before it builds and goes into the last chorus.
Speaker: And I'm playing, I don't know what the technical term is, but it's slightly off key.
Speaker: It's almost like a tension note.
Speaker: And I went to that note.
Speaker: And then I remember when you sent the bass recording back, you were just playing the chorus.
Speaker: And I remember, I think I had to go back and say, John, this doesn't sound right.
Speaker: You know, we're coming out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm playing this one note where it slightly goes off key.
Speaker: And then you're bending the note.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're playing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bending.
Speaker: No, you're playing the original note.
Speaker: I think you had to re-record that anyway.
Speaker: Didn't you?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I did.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I was told off and I had to do what I was told by the producer on that one.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It all turned out for the best.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To be honest, to the untrained ear, anyone, you know, any punter that's bought our stuff and has tuned in and heard Born to be Free will be thinking to themselves, firstly, be thinking, I didn't know Dave Gilmour was playing for That's for Marta at Fair now.
Speaker: And secondly, they'll listen to it.
Speaker: And I think you've got to be tone deaf not to realise that the swirling strings at the end, the do-dee-do-dee-do-dee,
Speaker: sort of strings at the end of the song sound like the sea.
Speaker: That was, for me, the best part of the whole thing was suddenly I thought, oh, he's got the sea in there.
Speaker: He's got the sea in there.
Speaker: This is fantastic.
Speaker: He's got the seagulls.
Speaker: He's got the sea.
Speaker: He's got the born to be free.
Speaker: I don't know how much influence I had in that, but I think I came back to you, Tony, saying, as you said earlier, let's orchestralise this.
Speaker: Let's make it more orchestral at the end.
Speaker: And I can hear it.
Speaker: I can just hear it.
Speaker: And you just went, oh, okay, yeah, I'll do that.
Speaker: Yeah, boom.
Speaker: I must admit, like I do most things, because you get quite precious when you sort of write your own stuff, don't you, in production.
Speaker: The first thing I did when I thought, no, God, I've got to make another change.
Speaker: So just for a split second, I just thought, more work.
Speaker: I thought we'd finish that track.
Speaker: I thought that was in the can.
Speaker: And then I realized that we had to.
Speaker: But thank God we did, because it was the right thing to do.
Speaker: And I think that's how we all kind of work together is that, you know, we all have our own ideas, but bouncing them off each other.
Speaker: I think the end song is obviously the winner at the end of the day.
Speaker: But yeah, I remember actually writing the orchestral pieces and one of them just playing a simple octave.
Speaker: I'm just playing a simple octave riff.
Speaker: I think it's called ostinata or something.
Speaker: I don't know what it's called in classical terms, but I thought, yeah, okay, we're going to do that.
Speaker: I'll have this going left and that going right.
Speaker: And again, there's this like call and response between the two synth parts.
Speaker: So maybe that gives the impression of movement, because if you're listening to the left and right of the stereo field, you've got this kind of different type of synth sounds coming in and out.
Speaker: And it gives this kind of bit of movement between the whole piece.
Speaker: I mean, I remember we did that video with Smudge and we were asked to, you know, say what our favorite songs was.
Speaker: I mean, this probably is very, you know, I know I said I can see your face and I don't want to get into that argument again.
Speaker: But I mean, this is probably right up there with one of my favorite songs on the album.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: I love the vocal performance.
Speaker: I love the urgency in the vocal.
Speaker: I think it was my favorite, wasn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Because after Pandora, it kind of swapped places.
Speaker: Pandora was my favorite, and now Born to be Free is my favorite.
Speaker: I love the range of this song.
Speaker: Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker: The strange thing about this song is that the best reference I can give it is my brother who back in the day used to do lighting for us at some of the gigs because he always needed somebody to light your stuff rather than let the house guys do it.
Speaker: So he was very familiar with our music and our stuff.
Speaker: And his favorite song back in those days was always Born to be Free.
Speaker: And he was always saying to me, why don't you play it more?
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: This time around, when we redid it, I said to him, oh, Alex, I've done, we're doing Born to be Free.
Speaker: I've rearranged it, rewritten it.
Speaker: I've rewritten some of the words and we're doing it again.
Speaker: He said, oh, yeah, looking forward to that.
Speaker: When I played it, he just came back to me with a simple comment, which was just brilliant.
Speaker: You've done it justice.
Speaker: Finally, you've done it justice.
Speaker: Now, that says it all for me.
Speaker: That's kind of, even, you know, he's a good critic and he just came back and said, this is where it always was.
Speaker: It always should have been here.
Speaker: I met Alex just once.
Speaker: Did you?
Speaker: I met Alex once when me, you and Tony went up to your parents' garage to get some amp or something.
Speaker: And he was there taking the piss out of you, basically.
Speaker: Hi, Alex.
Speaker: I don't know whether he listens to these, but... Anyway, so that's it.
Speaker: That's really...
Speaker: sums it up and summarises what an achievement we made with this song in terms of doing it justice because the original version just didn't.
Speaker: So that's great.
Speaker: No, I just wanted to say I like the, I think it encompasses all our music.
Speaker: It has everything in there.
Speaker: It's got a bit of guitar.
Speaker: It's got fantastic vocals.
Speaker: It's got average bass playing.
Speaker: No, I'm joking.
Speaker: It's got really good bass playing.
Speaker: It's got really good bass playing.
Speaker: The song is solid.
Speaker: It's got an instrumental section that I like.
Speaker: It's got a fantastic ending.
Speaker: And the lyrics, obviously, well, all our lyrics, we never write lyrics about boy meets girl and sort of let's grow a beard and form a heavy rock band, is it?
Speaker: I mean, it's all meaningful stuff.
Speaker: One or two occasions.
Speaker: Yeah, changing the subject.
Speaker: I saw a post, John, you put on Facebook about you used to playing a ZZ Top tribute band.
Speaker: I'd love to hear some stuff.
Speaker: We'll see a video if that's around.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I know that it was videoed and it was taped, but thankfully no one's come forward with it yet.
Speaker: Did you come to just see you rocking out to?
Speaker: Can you just see me?
Speaker: I mean, it was bad enough.
Speaker: I mean, there was that picture of me on stage with this beard, but I needed to sing backing vocals, so I had the beard over my nose.
Speaker: It was like sticking out horizontally from my nose.
Speaker: But no, that was just a charity gig.
Speaker: We did that for a laugh.
Speaker: I think we only did.
Speaker: Everything about that song hits all the spots for me.
Speaker: It was quite tricky for me to mix all the guitars because I'm always fussy about guitar tones and do they sound crap.
Speaker: And I remember I spent ages just trying to get the right guitar tones.
Speaker: I ended up recording sections because I recorded it and I tried to mix it and I just thought, no, that doesn't sound good.
Speaker: I'm just going to have to record it again.
Speaker: It was just my crap playing that was making it sound bad, not anything to do with the effects.
Speaker: It was just, you know, technically I just wasn't doing it.
Speaker: So I did actually record a few parts over and again and again.
Speaker: And even when I was mixing it for the last time, I still wasn't convinced that I was getting the right tone.
Speaker: But, you know, I eventually got it in the end.
Speaker: In that chorus, in the chorus of Born To Be Free, are you using a kind of Leslie effect?
Speaker: on uh on the keyboards because it does sound that it's got that kind of swirling thing when i listen to it on headphones it's got the kind of swirly circular thing um so whether that's just a trick of your uh your mixing i think it's just i do i do i do i do a mix breakdown i think somewhere in one song i can stewart said um asked me to try out a leslie cabinet on some kind of organ there is some on the track i did
Speaker: And I think Stuart said, oh, that would sound great if you actually whacked it through some sort of Leslie cabinet.
Speaker: I might have dug out an emulation because I do have them.
Speaker: It doesn't sound like that to me.
Speaker: You can hear, especially on the closing choruses, you can hear the keyboards.
Speaker: It was Pandora.
Speaker: Around your head.
Speaker: It was Pandora that we originally had a Hammond organ on it.
Speaker: And I said to you, yeah, why don't we try it?
Speaker: chucking some Leslie on the Hammond organ in Pandora, and I think you did.
Speaker: And then you may have used it again for Born to Be Free, but it certainly worked.
Speaker: I'll have to check it out.
Speaker: I'm going to have to check it out.
Speaker: Of course, the only thing about I'm Born to be Free was my moment of, you know, I just basically my slash moment.
Speaker: There's that link, isn't there, between the two verses at the beginning.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I just do that typical.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: You say slash, actually, that reminds me more of, yes, owner of a lonely heart.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Where you get that thing in between verses.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: older of a lonely heart you know and it gives it all that left right stuff you know that's actually true that's actually i did i did actually record two guitars and i panned them left and right so i played the same thing twice but an old trick um everyone knows is that with the second recording you play the same thing but you use a slightly different amp with a slightly different tone so you know you'll have sort of like a you know like a marshall stack and
Speaker: You know, you'll have all your bass and treble and presence and then maybe you'll take another amp like a Vox AC30 and then you'll play the same thing and then you blend the two together.
Speaker: You obviously still get the same notes being played, but it gives it a distinctive kind of tone.
Speaker: And that's what I did.
Speaker: Actually, I think one of them, I got a preset.
Speaker: I use a piece of software called Amplitude 5 by IK Multimedia.
Speaker: And I bought something called the Slash Collection, which has two marshals, which are based on presets.
Speaker: And obviously Slash has designed in cooperation with IK Multimedia.
Speaker: And one of them I think just said Slash Riff or something.
Speaker: So I just used that and basically didn't even touch it.
Speaker: I just thought, yeah, that sounds good out of the box.
Speaker: Yeah, that was quite good.
Speaker: That's when I thought, yeah, I can, maybe I can do this guitar stuff, you know, maybe I can, I can bring it off.
Speaker: And because I recorded it early on and that gave me the encouragement to go on and record some of the other guitar bits.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, there was the, um,
Speaker: I know I'm completely thinking when I mentioned about this solo, um, in the original song, I think there was a solo, wasn't there, but I just replaced it with this kind of middle eight instrumental bit, which, um, I remember getting the demo and I just thought the guitar solo actually was very good.
Speaker: And I thought, well, I'm, I'm not going to bring, be able to bring this off.
Speaker: I mean, what's the point of me learning it note for note?
Speaker: I think your guitarist from pillow fights back played it, didn't he?
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: He was a, he was a pretty close to virtuoso musician.
Speaker: He played,
Speaker: I don't want to talk about him particularly, but he was an excellent guitarist.
Speaker: He played piano very well, and his bass playing was like Mark King.
Speaker: He was off the scale.
Speaker: I mean, he was something else.
Speaker: He was a very talented musician, but a bit of a dick as a human, really, but there we are.
Speaker: I was going to talk about some of the vocals on Born to be Free, to be honest, because it's one of the only songs on the album where I over-recorded vocals.
Speaker: I actually came up with stuff, started adding lines in the final choruses, and then on listening to them all, we took them out because I just didn't like them.
Speaker: And I don't often do that, but in the last choruses, there was this refrain going over all the rest of the vocals and all the harmonies or whatever in there, double ups I'd done.
Speaker: I had this
Speaker: um line in the background going to be free um blah blah blah i'm not going to sing too much here because it'll put all the punters and listeners off but anyway um yeah so i had all that stuff in i started doing harmonies on it started doubling up and then then i listened back to and thought oh god it's just too much it's too it doesn't sound it's just over egging the pudding completely and i'm doing what i've
Speaker: I always told myself not to do, make it simple, less is more, and I'd gone the other way.
Speaker: So they never made the final mix, as you know.
Speaker: I can remember.
Speaker: That came late in the day, actually, I think.
Speaker: Because, I mean, most of your sort of vocal revisions do actually come sort of quite late on when we're almost ready.
Speaker: I invariably get a bit of a message saying, oh, can you drop that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was a bit like recently, quick plug for the new single.
Speaker: June the 5th, new single, don't come easily, coming out from that Somato effect.
Speaker: Download it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a case in point because I'd almost sent it off mastering.
Speaker: In fact, I had sent it off mastering and then came the message and he was saying, yeah, can you take the echo off the vocals?
Speaker: The most infuriating person to work with, I know I am.
Speaker: But like anyone, when you've written a song and you've got someone else producing it in such a good way, it inspires me on to the next level of thinking, well,
Speaker: God, he's just done such a job on this that I want... And I listen back to it and listen to what I've done and think, is there any vocal clashing with anything else?
Speaker: And in that case, there was.
Speaker: And I'm just like, that's got to go.
Speaker: I don't... You know, I want the song to be absolutely bang on right musically as well as lyrically and vocally.
Speaker: And that's simply what it was.
Speaker: I just heard clashes and I thought, no, that's got to go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, sorry, Tony.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: I found it quite an education working with you blokes on this album because, you know, I grew up with playing in live bands, playing in punk bands, playing in power pop.
Speaker: I mean, timing didn't matter that much, nor did precision.
Speaker: What timing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not too much timing.
Speaker: I mean, I've always had good timing.
Speaker: Yeah, I should have got that.
Speaker: But, yeah, that's what comedy is all about, isn't it?
Speaker: Timing.
Speaker: Can you get him off, Tony?
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I actually do have a button.
Speaker: I can actually kick him off.
Speaker: He's such a great chap.
Speaker: I thought we were going to keep him on.
Speaker: But no, I learned... I mean, I was talking to Tony earlier about it.
Speaker: I've learned a lot of discipline from doing the album, you know, because I...
Speaker: I've been playing bass for 40 years in bands where you're either playing live or you're recording basically live.
Speaker: And the way we produce this album, every single note, every single nuance, every single sustain on any particular fret
Speaker: Tony would pick up if it was wrong, you know, and he'd get on to me and say this.
Speaker: This doesn't sound right.
Speaker: And I've learned through recording this album with you guys that in this kind of music that we're playing, precision is everything, you know, and it's, you know, people say perfection is not good, but almost perfection is good.
Speaker: Well, I mean, that's one of the problems because when I get the audio, I do try and do a bit of what's called audio bending or audio editing.
Speaker: So, of course, in a live performance, it doesn't have to be exact, almost sort of robotic-like, but I do have to shift some of your bass notes, John, to make sure they're actually hitting the down.
Speaker: Yeah, but we actually all know, Tony, that that is actually mainly because I'm so lazy...
Speaker: that I record my bass parts in Audacity and do it in about three different takes.
Speaker: You know, when I, well, I try to get them together and then Tony tidies them up.
Speaker: Yeah, but it goes back to this idea of perfection.
Speaker: It's like, I mean, you can overdo it.
Speaker: And it was interesting what Stuart said about throwing lots of ideas at the vocals and then just leaving them out.
Speaker: And that's one thing I love with the production thing is that what I tend to do now is throw the kitchen sink at it.
Speaker: And sure as eggs are eggs, you know, before the end of the song, I'm going to be actually sort of muting a lot of things.
Speaker: In fact, things that I've written and recorded just get dropped out because they all need to serve the song at the end of the day.
Speaker: Um, and I remember actually when we recorded born to be free and some of the other tracks we've talked about in other podcasts is, you know, keep it simple and, um, it doesn't work.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, yeah, I think that's a perfect case in point.
Speaker: I know on this song is that I did actually have to, um, I think I had more of a going on in the verses.
Speaker: I recorded some more keyboard parts, but they, they never made it because it just clouded things up.
Speaker: It just filled the entire spectrum and you can't really hear any of the individual instruments.
Speaker: Talking of perfection and keeping it short and simple, do you remember that song, Stuart, that you wrote when we used to play in 1981?
Speaker: It was called... Go for it, I think it was called.
Speaker: No, no, no, no.
Speaker: It was called... Oh, God, yeah.
Speaker: Keep it short.
Speaker: I remember the line with something, keep it simple.
Speaker: Keep it short, simple and effective.
Speaker: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker: The actual...
Speaker: The actual lyrics went, a lot of people may think, a lot of people may find a musical idea, but...
Speaker: I can't remember it now.
Speaker: No, I can't.
Speaker: I'm too damn old.
Speaker: The actual end of the song was keep it short, simple, effective.
Speaker: And that was a one minute song.
Speaker: It's actually really hard.
Speaker: I mean, anyone that knows about these things, apart from the geniuses of the world, like Paul McCartney and
Speaker: you know, those guys.
Speaker: Anyone will tell you that writing a pop song and recording a pop song is harder than anything else.
Speaker: You know, it's, to me, much harder than, you know, a Genesis sort of improvised or, you know, in the 70s bands, Led Zeppelin would improvise songs for 20 minutes and all that rubbish.
Speaker: You know, much, much easier to do than writing a really concise three-minute pop song that gets everything across that you want to say.
Speaker: It's the hardest thing in the world and people don't realise it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And when you make it sound simple, you know you've cracked it.
Speaker: You know you've got it.
Speaker: If you can condense it into less than three minutes or less than four minutes, that is the way to go as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker: I think we got pretty close to cracking it with Born To Be Free, to be honest, in terms of... It's not the most catchy song on the album for me, but it is a good...
Speaker: it's still a three minute pop song pretty much.
Speaker: And it works.
Speaker: And we could, and there's, there's so much richness in it.
Speaker: There's so much diversity in it compared to some of the other songs as a pop song.
Speaker: And it starts the light side of the album, doesn't it?
Speaker: So it's got that, it's a great introduction song for the second side, almost.
Speaker: If you, if you're looking at vinyl, say it, it just works.
Speaker: It's perfect.
Speaker: And it just picks up where side one ended with, you know, with I can see a face, which is melancholy song.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: It's brilliant.
Speaker: Brilliant, brilliant piece of work.
Speaker: I think Born to be Free, especially the chorus, actually musically puts across that Born to be Free, our spirits soar like a bird overseas.
Speaker: I really do feel like I'm soaring above the ocean when I'm listening to that chorus.
Speaker: Especially when Tony puts his fake seagull guitar in.
Speaker: I'm now known as the fake seagull one-note bass player in the band.
Speaker: There's two songs where we've referenced seagulls on this album, guys.
Speaker: You realise that.
Speaker: Jerry Bomb had the seagull at the end.
Speaker: That's a good point, actually.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: There's something about seagulls then.
Speaker: It must be... I love that association.
Speaker: With me and the Jurassic Coast, honestly, that's what it is.
Speaker: I think it is.
Speaker: It must be that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I remember when putting together the artwork is I it was a really easy I'm sorry if you heard my watch go off and it just beeped but um yeah I grab pictures of seagulls and lighthouses and people on beaches I mean it just that was the imagery that immediately ended my mind it entered my mind um I think also sonically the the song
Speaker: did a hundred percent.
Speaker: Well, I would have hoped it would.
Speaker: It just takes you into that world.
Speaker: It's funny how they've been talking about, about nature.
Speaker: I went off to the sea.
Speaker: Um, we could have gone in any directions.
Speaker: We could have actually sort of, you know, basically had, you know, monkeys and apes jumping through deforested, um, swathes of jungle.
Speaker: That's my next song.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But, um, I remember Stu, you said recently on a podcast about you've always had this connection with the sea.
Speaker: Yeah, I have, I have, I always have.
Speaker: I love being near water and, um,
Speaker: you know, it just connects me.
Speaker: And I think the most important thing I can say about Born to be Free as a song on the album is probably the only song, excuse me, where the message of the song, the eco, the green message of the song is completely and utterly supported by the music.
Speaker: you know, and Laura, the song we're going to do next, talk about next in the next podcast, is a great pop song.
Speaker: But it could be any subject matter, if you get my drift, the lyric could be any subject matter over that music because it's a lovely poppy song.
Speaker: Born to be Free is slightly different.
Speaker: It's got that
Speaker: the music sounds like the message of the song.
Speaker: And that was the caveat.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: And there's very, very, very rare to find that in any song by anybody.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Where you listen to it and you think,
Speaker: you know, the music puts you actually in that place that they're singing about.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think... And that situation that they're singing about.
Speaker: And all credit has to go to Tony for the production on it because most of those ideas, although I came up with all the ideas, Tony made them happen.
Speaker: So I'm going to call him out on this one.
Speaker: It's a brilliant piece of work.
Speaker: I enjoyed doing it and I was quite proud of it when we finished it and what I love about all our songs is that you get a blank sheet of paper when I get the demos and you never know how it's going to end up and it's a collaboration effort Everyone throwing their paint on the canvas We're all bringing our own special talents to the game and it's fantastic We're almost about 45 minutes up I don't think anyone wants to listen to us rabbit on anymore
Speaker: We mentioned Pandora, which we'll talk about next.
Speaker: And then we'll actually get on to the songs that were actually written in this decade, probably, rather than sort of like 20 decades ago.
Speaker: The last three songs on the album were actually written even probably in the 20s, as we call them.
Speaker: Do we call them the 20s?
Speaker: We don't call them the noughties, do we?
Speaker: Cherry Bomb was only written four years ago.
Speaker: That's probably the most recent one we've got on the album.
Speaker: I was just trying to build up on it.
Speaker: Girl from Devon.
Speaker: Girl from Devon.
Speaker: Of course I've got.
Speaker: I must remember the girl from Devon, of course.
Speaker: I noticed Claire's stopped walking behind you.
Speaker: She's sunbathing, actually, at the moment.
Speaker: Outside, can you believe.
Speaker: She's probably brought all of it into us.
Speaker: Right, guys, so that's it for the podcast.
Speaker: Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker: I'll do the professional sort of like reel out now.
Speaker: Don't forget, we do have a single coming out on June the 5th called Don't Become Easily, written by our very own John Bicknell.
Speaker: He wrote the words and the music for this.
Speaker: With collaboration lyrically with Mr. Stuart Glanville.
Speaker: Only a little bit of help.
Speaker: Who once again tidied it up, made sense of it, rephrased it and made it into the song it is.
Speaker: So thank you.
Speaker: And you, Tony, of course.
Speaker: That's exactly what you do.
Speaker: And that's exactly what Tony does.
Speaker: Interprets our stuff.
Speaker: Well, I'm just going to hit the music and we'll roll out.
Speaker: So anyone, anyone, everybody, thanks for listening to the podcast.
Speaker: We'll be back maybe in a week's time, maybe a bit longer because we're all taking holidays.
Speaker: And then we're going to talk about the next track that appears on the album, which if I remember rightly is Pandora.
Speaker: So everybody, thanks for watching.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: Goodbye, John.
Speaker: Cheerios.
Speaker: Cheerio, chaps.
Speaker: And we'll see you in the next podcast.
Speaker: Cheers.
Speaker: See you soon, guys.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
