Transcript
Speaker: Hello everybody, Tony here and welcome to the first ever TSE podcast.
Speaker: Hello everybody and thanks for dropping by and taking the time to listen to the podcast.
Speaker: I recently caught up with fellow band members, John Bicknell, who plays bass guitar and Stuart Lambo, who's responsible for vocals and writes all the lyrics for all our music.
Speaker: And we decided we'd have a quick discussion about Where Are The Angels?
Speaker: The title track from our latest album.
Speaker: And we just generally talked about
Speaker: the songs, how we came up with ideas, and we talked about other things.
Speaker: So anyway, I hope you enjoy and see you on the other side of the podcast.
Speaker: Where did the idea for the lyric come from, mate?
Speaker: Well, originally, it was really way back in sort of 2016-17.
Speaker: It was after, strangely enough, it was after the Brexit thing and what was going on at the time in the world was, I can't remember exactly the circumstances, but I just started thinking about how different religions across the world just don't speak to each other and don't get on.
Speaker: It started there, basically.
Speaker: So it was really about the idea that, you know, Catholicism, Anglicans, you know, Muslim faiths and different other faiths are all so different in so many ways.
Speaker: So that's where it started.
Speaker: Yeah, because the original lyric actually included the line, your face is bigger than the BBC.
Speaker: I actually remember a couple of the early demos actually had that on.
Speaker: Why did you decide to change that?
Speaker: Because I think the lyric says effigy instead of BBC.
Speaker: Yeah, I did.
Speaker: I changed it because I wanted something that sounded big, like the NHS, or something that was all-encompassing, that everyone knew the logo of, and your face is bigger than this really popular logo.
Speaker: And I was thinking, what's the most popular logo you can think of, and what's the most popular logo?
Speaker: you know, an easily recognisable thing.
Speaker: And I thought of BBC just rhymed.
Speaker: And then further on down the line, I thought, no, I don't want the BBC in my lyrics.
Speaker: So I came up with Effigy, which works much better.
Speaker: You certainly don't want to give the BBC any more publicity, do we, considering how they're faring at the moment?
Speaker: I won't be uploading this podcast to the BBC probably.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Personal opinion.
Speaker: Please don't take it as read.
Speaker: I remember I played back to quite a few people.
Speaker: Well, not a few people, just a couple of people, I know.
Speaker: And although they heard the BBC line, I think a couple of people said, yeah, that probably ought to be changed.
Speaker: So before I fired off... I loved it.
Speaker: I loved that line.
Speaker: I think it was great.
Speaker: But I think Effigy is just as good, if not better, because Effigy, you know, Effigy kind of...
Speaker: relates us to something big.
Speaker: Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker: I mean, I personally thought it was improved lyric because effigy obviously relates back to religion and you're talking about effigies and ideology and I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker: We actually recorded Angels.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: I think I wrote the music way back in Berlin in 2013 or something like that, took it with me when I moved to Essen.
Speaker: I know that I had many recordings of the song itself, which may or may not see the light of day in demo version somewhere.
Speaker: If you can find them.
Speaker: Yeah, I've still got them actually somewhere on one of my PCs somewhere.
Speaker: But I know it took me lots of sessions before we finally settled on a musical version.
Speaker: But how many sessions did you do eventually for the music?
Speaker: I know it went through a couple of recording sessions before we got the final version.
Speaker: Basically, I remember you sent me a pretty musical version, which was sort of unarranged, but it
Speaker: everything and as I do I listen through and just came you know came up with the melody in my head and then thought words to this and thought what am I gonna how am I gonna frame this how am I gonna you know get a subject for it and all I remember thinking at the time was it sounded very dramatic and I thought I need a big dramatic
Speaker: theme here.
Speaker: And I was just tossing ideas around, as I said earlier, with religious devotion across the world, across the centuries, and how much trouble it's caused the world.
Speaker: I mean, if you've ever been to the Vatican and seen
Speaker: the money in Italy there just devoted to religion if you've ever been to I mean we all know it on the news reports and so it's a big theme for me that was just like I've got a comment on this because you know religion can be nonsense it's about people it's about what what we really believe in and helping each other it's not about organized religion it's just nonsense to me
Speaker: Yeah, I can relate to that.
Speaker: I went to the Vatican, I was lucky in 2019, and you can see the opulence and there's very little to do with religion.
Speaker: It's more to do with sort of, you know, just showing off wealth and power and influence.
Speaker: I completely agree with that.
Speaker: There was another thing about the lyric where you actually included, I remember early versions had this thing where there was like a refrain that said, like, he said and she said.
Speaker: I know you better than you know me.
Speaker: I said, your face is bigger than the BBC.
Speaker: and that was dropped.
Speaker: Can you remember how we actually decided to cut that out?
Speaker: Yeah, the first line, the first verse of the song, I mean, it's confused messages in here in many ways, religious messages, but the first verse of the song is almost about sitting down with God and sort of talking to him.
Speaker: And I thought, why is the popular belief that God is always a he, could be a she?
Speaker: I'm sure many writers have come up with that idea before, but that was the idea.
Speaker: It was sort of a response.
Speaker: So he said, I'll have a coffee and you'll have tea.
Speaker: I know you better than you know me.
Speaker: I said, your face is bigger than your refugee.
Speaker: So it was really that.
Speaker: I think as we went on with it, we kept
Speaker: I just wanted to simplify it a bit, that's all, and just get rid of it.
Speaker: It really did anything.
Speaker: I think that the lyric that you replaced all that with kind of is more ambiguous and it gives people...
Speaker: You know, you don't need to say he said or I said, because it kind of it's obvious, really.
Speaker: You're having a conversation with the big man, you know, and and I don't think it needs the I mean, do you remember when we when we first demoed this song?
Speaker: the three of us got together with Mark James at your place in Farnham at the time Stu and we all decided drunkenly that evening to do a vocal line to
Speaker: angels with me and Tony and Mark singing out those, she said, he said.
Speaker: I don't know if Tony's still got a version of that, but that was old gold.
Speaker: Yeah, I actually do still have a version of the he said, she said.
Speaker: I might dig out some of the original audio and just put clips into the podcast so that people can actually hear what we actually sung.
Speaker: Yeah, I remember that specifically as well.
Speaker: I also remember when I came over to Stuart and see him in Farnham in 2016, bought the original demo.
Speaker: I remember that his family listened to it.
Speaker: And I think the original early vocal versions had this very exaggerated version of, where are...
Speaker: The angels.
Speaker: I think Mark James was quite often posting that on our messenger chat at the time.
Speaker: Where are the angels in capitals, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, it kind of started out that way.
Speaker: And I think the reason for that was that having heard the music and more arranged versions, as we went on, we started to get demos of this together.
Speaker: I remember saying to you, Tony, when I was over with you in Germany, this song needs to frighten children.
Speaker: that but we did it in a really 80s fashion and it ended up sounding like Simple Minds sort of meets you know some horror movie it was it was it was brilliant but it wasn't really what we wanted to do so but it was a good start.
Speaker: Yeah and John I remember actually how did you how did you settle on the bass tone you were looking for for the song because I think that also went through a couple of couple of changes.
Speaker: It's weird because I've been listening back to some old versions fairly recently.
Speaker: And the original bass line that I played on that song, which I played on the Ibanez bass, which has active pickups, we kept that all the way through.
Speaker: I think I may have redone it, but I did redo it on the Ibanez because I had to detune the
Speaker: all of the bass strings, one semitone, to actually get that really grungy, low register bass line rather than having to play it up the neck, you know, seven frets up the neck.
Speaker: And I've never changed that and I never asked you to change it.
Speaker: The original bass line, which is about four years ago when we first, you know, attempted the song,
Speaker: hasn't changed that much.
Speaker: I think I redid it once and that is the only song on the album, Angels, where I'm using the lower, I think I tune the E string down to the A or something and all the other strings.
Speaker: And I don't think that would have worked as well on the Fender Precision.
Speaker: Simply because it's not active pickups, you know, I mean, I think the Ibanez pickups picked up all those grumbly low tones because if you're playing a four string bass and you're tuning down a tone It's gonna make a difference, you know It's gonna make the strings loose and there's gonna be a lot of fret buzz But with with the Ibanez I got away with it, which is why I was reluctant to redo it all along and
Speaker: Yeah, but how much, John, did I know that actually we work together quite a few songs now, is that you predominantly pick up on the vocal or the vocal line or the melody to which you can weave and base your bass magic around.
Speaker: I mean, how much of this song, Stuart's melody, did you actually take into influencing your overall bass melody?
Speaker: Well, this one, I think all the other six songs on the album, I followed Stuart really closely with the vocal melody.
Speaker: This one, in the verses, it's kind of, you know, very chop and choppy, and it's not really following the vocals, but it does do that on the choruses, and then we've got that little...
Speaker: break in between the chorus and the next verse, where it's do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, which is just a totally off-the-wall thing.
Speaker: But no, as far as following Stuart's vocals, that is Angels is probably the only one I didn't follow it very closely.
Speaker: And that's the only song on the album you used the Ibanez.
Speaker: That's right, yeah.
Speaker: The rest I used the Precision.
Speaker: Can you remember the model of Ibanez it was and where you first bought it, how you got it?
Speaker: God, I've got it here somewhere.
Speaker: Hang on.
Speaker: Because I'm sure that will interest our listeners.
Speaker: As everyone probably knows, I'm a left-handed bass player anyway.
Speaker: So I have to pay, I think it's 15% extra every time I get a bass.
Speaker: It's up in my bedroom.
Speaker: Do you want to give me 30 seconds and I'll go and get it?
Speaker: Or should we just forget that?
Speaker: We'll just forget it.
Speaker: It was just an interesting question.
Speaker: Anyway, it's one of the lower end budget bases.
Speaker: I mean, I got it in a left-handed version three, four years ago, and it was still less than 300 quid.
Speaker: If I remember rightly, this is one of the only songs on the album as well, Angels, where you actually play at the beginning and I think the introduction to some of the choruses, this sort of harmony register, sort of like a block of two bass notes that are played as chords.
Speaker: It's in the introduction and it's actually somewhere else in the song too.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very evident in the intro.
Speaker: You can hear it quite well.
Speaker: But when it comes to the actual choruses where Stuart's singing, where are the angels?
Speaker: That's where the bass harmonies are.
Speaker: And they're more kind of...
Speaker: They're there, but you're not hearing them as prominent as you were in the intro.
Speaker: But they're all the way through, Tony, unless on those where are the angels sections, they're on there all the way through unless you forgot to put them in.
Speaker: No, I didn't.
Speaker: I didn't.
Speaker: It was a bit of a challenge trying to mix it because they were just obviously you have two distinct bass tones.
Speaker: The block chord bass tone and then the melody over the top of it.
Speaker: So trying to actually get those block chords to actually be heard was a bit of a challenge, but I think I managed to do it.
Speaker: I mean, there's been so many different versions of this particular song.
Speaker: I wonder actually whether the mood of it's ever changed because it went through so many changes.
Speaker: Can anyone, I mean, I got a question that I wrote down and said, was there a feel or a mood that we wanted to convey to the listener when we actually recorded the song?
Speaker: We recorded it in individual parts at different times.
Speaker: But I wonder if anyone had any thoughts on that.
Speaker: Yeah, I do.
Speaker: As I said earlier on, it definitely was...
Speaker: in my mind, it was always meant to sound like a menacing song.
Speaker: And I remember when you did the rearrangements to it with the sort of rising synth sound in the sort of bridges in the section where I sort of sing it.
Speaker: Your face is bigger than your effigy and those sections just before the choruses.
Speaker: I started to think this is sounding quite big now.
Speaker: This is sounding like a real anthemic song.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: But we needed to bring it back out of the 80s, which you did do that.
Speaker: And I think when we finally got to that, when was it?
Speaker: 2020 or whenever we recorded it, I think it was.
Speaker: By that time, it was sounding really, really crisp and up to date.
Speaker: And, you know, it was just a case of, right, let's lay down the vocals.
Speaker: Get the genius here to get a brilliant bass line down.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: A lot of the original versions didn't have an electric guitar.
Speaker: And I usually have an aversion to recording electric guitar because, one, I'm not a very good guitarist and I always obsess over guitar tones.
Speaker: And I remember lots of early versions had no guitar whatsoever.
Speaker: But I think eventually the last year.
Speaker: I decided to write some guitar parts.
Speaker: And then I looked at the overall arrangement and there was also an awful lot of keyboards and melodies going on.
Speaker: And I remember consciously trying to cut a lot of stuff out.
Speaker: So, you know, I would remove a few things, a few keyboard melodies, a few runs from the first part of the song and sort of save all the ear candy for the end of the song to try and build it up.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: I just wonder what you guys, I mean, what's your favourite part of the song?
Speaker: Which section probably you think, yeah, that really starts to get me headbanging?
Speaker: Just to interrupt you and wind back a bit, Tony.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stuart was mentioning that the song has always had that menacing vibe about it.
Speaker: And that is, you know, that is the main reason that I decided to detune the bass to do the bassline for it.
Speaker: Because Stuart's vocals were menacing.
Speaker: Your keyboard parts were menacing.
Speaker: The drum parts were menacing as well.
Speaker: And I had to tune the bass to that.
Speaker: And the only way I could do it was by detuning so that I could, when it gets to, I think the song was written in something like,
Speaker: f or something wasn't it and i had to detune down to f from e or something or up to i had to detune anyway but uh the only way i could get that really growly menacing feel on the bass line all the way through the song was to play it all down at the bottom of the neck
Speaker: yeah so so that that you know added to it and then when you put when you put your guitar parts on tony that's when it really started to come together for me because like you know when we're going and you're doing your face is bigger than
Speaker: You know, all those.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: The stabs and all that, you know.
Speaker: I'm glad you mentioned that because that was a complete noodle.
Speaker: I remember sitting and trying to think, right, I want to write some guitar parts.
Speaker: And I was just noodling around.
Speaker: I think a lot of great ideas come from just noodling, doesn't it?
Speaker: And I just started to hear this riff, which is the, which is at the beginning.
Speaker: It's the first guitar part that you hear.
Speaker: And I immediately thought, I knew I was ripping somebody off, but then I thought, yeah, that just sounds like Robert Fripp from Scary Monsters.
Speaker: That's it, yeah.
Speaker: I think Scary Monsters and Super Creep has this really sort of, you know, this really sort of whining, sort of like a bending guitar sound.
Speaker: And the moment I played it, it's just a little simple three-note refrain.
Speaker: And I thought, yeah, that fitted absolutely perfectly.
Speaker: And that's where I got the inspiration.
Speaker: And then all the other guitar parts kind of came round that.
Speaker: I knew I didn't want to do a guitar solo, but I knew that I think some of the verses, and especially when we come out of the middle eight section, there's just a quiet, silent pause before we go into the ending of the song.
Speaker: I knew that I wanted some rhythmic guitar there and basically just needed to be bass drums and rhythm guitar.
Speaker: And then the keyboards come back in and then it ends with Stuart's
Speaker: superb vocals at the end, I must say, the Where Are The Angels, which I really enjoyed mixing and producing that because when I produced and mixed Stuart's vocals, I don't think Stuart's a massive fan of long delays and echoes.
Speaker: But I thought I'm really, really going to, you know, this really needs a Where Are The Angels sort of like screaming from above.
Speaker: And I really saturated in a bit of echo and reverb and it actually worked.
Speaker: And that actually was going back to my other question, is probably my favourite part of the song.
Speaker: And also I remember is that original versions of the middle eight section didn't have a lot of this talking in the background.
Speaker: I think there was a vocal lyric over the top.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: When did that come into the equation?
Speaker: Well, I was going to say it leads us on nicely because my favourite part of the song is the middle eight.
Speaker: As you just said, when we got Middle Eight together, there was much more structure to it, sorry, much more instrumentation in it.
Speaker: The great thing about this song for me is it's the only song on the album that's got real light and shade about it, which I really love.
Speaker: And at that point of doing the middle eight, I was singing along to it and I remember doing it, you know, doing the takes.
Speaker: And it suddenly dawned on me that it'd be great to have a spoken voice in the background.
Speaker: And I'm going to admit to it freely that my hero, David Bowie, my mute, not my news, my hero, did a song called...
Speaker: Ashes to Ashes many years ago, which the older ones among us will remember.
Speaker: And he came up with that idea in Ashes to Ashes, I've never done good things, I've never done good things, I've never done bad things, I've never done bad things.
Speaker: And it just hit me like, you know, like, I can do that.
Speaker: This song is perfect for that, because that's got a whole new area of kind of menace about it.
Speaker: The way Boley did it, it was such a moving song, but also really serious, that part of the song.
Speaker: And I just thought, this part's perfect for that.
Speaker: So I ripped off my hero.
Speaker: And I'm not embarrassed.
Speaker: I think it was a great tribute to Bowie myself.
Speaker: I mean, that Angels is, to me, it's pure Bowie.
Speaker: It was also quite tricky too, because another thing is my journey as a sound engineer, mix engineer, really actually the album is the story of my journey trying to perfect my craft or learn what the hell I'm doing.
Speaker: And I remember when you dropped those particular tracks with the vocal, I thought, well, that's just made my job much more difficult.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: because, again, that was a bit of a challenge.
Speaker: You know, they couldn't get buried in the main vocal, but obviously they couldn't be so prominent that they completely overpowered everything else.
Speaker: And also there's a lot of instrumentation going on in that middle-eight section.
Speaker: I think I've got like two independent keyboard melodies going.
Speaker: I think there's a bit of, there's some pads in the background, which are also crowding up the frequency spectrum.
Speaker: And I thought I'm really going to have to, my work cut out to get this actually sounding intelligible.
Speaker: But I think I pulled it off.
Speaker: You certainly did.
Speaker: I think you did.
Speaker: Yeah, that was good.
Speaker: I think the ending's still my favourite.
Speaker: The melody that I wrote on the keyboard has been in every single version of the song, no matter how it's actually ended up.
Speaker: It has this rather haunting keyboard melody and a pad melody.
Speaker: Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: I think actually for the strings, I have these string stabs as well, like staccato strings.
Speaker: I probably wish I'd probably chosen a different type of sound for that, but it did the job.
Speaker: But I always liked the melody at the end.
Speaker: I'm not going to attempt to hum it, but there's this nice little melody and there's this sort of...
Speaker: earthly sounding pad that accompanies the whole section.
Speaker: I must admit, Tony, I'm still hearing new stuff, even on new listens.
Speaker: I'm still hearing stuff that I never heard before as far as the keyboard tracks are concerned because she did so many tracks, you know.
Speaker: But this is a kind of album that has got an instant attraction because it's pop.
Speaker: and it's rock and it's melodic, but it also has all those hooks and all those little bits and it takes multiple lessons to actually hear it.
Speaker: Angels is a very good example of that.
Speaker: It's like a story, isn't it?
Speaker: And I think that's why I had the piano sequence at the beginning.
Speaker: At the end, because it's a bookend, it's like a book.
Speaker: So you have the piano introducing the story and then the music goes through its various phrases and phases and whatever.
Speaker: And then you have the same piano refrain at the end.
Speaker: And then that's almost like puts the whole song like a book.
Speaker: Start, finish.
Speaker: And also the end, of course, I think is we had the demonic voice, which was another song.
Speaker: part that came in came in much later i don't think that was on original versions was it stew i've got the yeah the original lyrics um it's funny you should mention that because there's a couple of things to say here the original lyrics at the beginning i had religion is dangerous belief is not which which stayed in because when i when i first started jotting these things down the the song was at that point was more about
Speaker: It was more about the Christian God saying to the world, there will be a second coming one day, and there never will be.
Speaker: It was complete nonsense.
Speaker: So the original idea of the song was where are the angels, but then where is the second coming?
Speaker: And so at the end, I had a line right at the end of the song as it fades out, as it stops, with
Speaker: which I dropped and I never used because A, it's too depressing and B, it's not what the song's about.
Speaker: So I went on to change the meaning of the song really into, as I said earlier, into more about religious war and religious, what toll religion has taken on the world, basically.
Speaker: So, but the demonic voice at the beginning was really important for me.
Speaker: Religion is dangerous.
Speaker: Belief is not war.
Speaker: I think when we recorded it, I think I said to you, Tony, can you make me sound really demonic, really awful, and you just detuned me?
Speaker: I think the original version had him sounding like one of the Smurfs.
Speaker: And then you dropped it down.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that's the one.
Speaker: That was Cherry Bomb, wasn't it?
Speaker: No, the original version on this, when I did the first take, I kind of did it like this.
Speaker: So I'll try and do it.
Speaker: I went, I did a little laugh.
Speaker: is dangerous belief is not and if we drop that and so it just was religion it didn't quite work i did a little laugh at the beginning to make it sound like you know like the joker right out of um batman or some mental nut no phil collins in mama yes yes yeah that's a good one yeah exactly like that but it just didn't work really
Speaker: Yeah, I had to raid in the plug-in the special effects larder, so to speak.
Speaker: I tried out so many different effects, and I don't know how I achieved it in the end, to be quite honest.
Speaker: I'm going to do a mixed breakdown video one day, and that will see the light of day in our YouTube channel, and I'll remember how I did it.
Speaker: But yeah, I remember that wasn't in the original version.
Speaker: Again, I think actually when we started to work on the song again, it was something that you added.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was it was it was really cool.
Speaker: I think I might have run out of questions.
Speaker: So that's it.
Speaker: Well, I think that's probably it.
Speaker: But I think I've got probably one or two more.
Speaker: There was something actually we were talking a couple of seconds ago and I had a question in my mind, but I didn't want to interrupt and I didn't know what it was.
Speaker: We were talking about the bookends of the song, weren't we?
Speaker: The beginning and the end.
Speaker: And then we mentioned that.
Speaker: at the beginning of the song and the playground noises as well.
Speaker: And we brought those back to the end of the song as well.
Speaker: Yes, I'll tell you where I got the inspiration from that.
Speaker: You remember, I think it was the start of Terminator 2?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: That's what I thought.
Speaker: I think at the very beginning, it's this very... I can't say the word.
Speaker: It's a nuclear war.
Speaker: Yeah, and basically she dreams about it.
Speaker: And then I think the actor or actress, I can't remember her name, actually, Linda Hamilton,
Speaker: Linda Hamilton, she grabs the fence and she shakes it.
Speaker: And there's these children playing in the background.
Speaker: And then, of course, then there's a nuclear holocaust and everyone just gets vaporised in a second.
Speaker: And I remember actually when I came up or you came up with the idea of children playing, that's exactly what I had in the back of my mind.
Speaker: And I thought it was apocalyptic.
Speaker: And I remember I had to search online to find a royalty-free sound effect because me running around here, children's playgrounds with a microphone.
Speaker: wearing a mac might have actually caused some concern i think it really on a serious note it really does add to the sinister nature of the song in its in its um in its kind of delivery it's just just to have children's voices and then that demonic voice saying religion is dangerous for
Speaker: that it works so well it's kind of like roger waters doing the children's voices on yeah brick in the wall isn't it um yeah funnily enough i do know one other song that has children's voices in a playground at the start and has children's voices in a playground at the end you'll never guess the band i'll give you one guess each xtc no okay
Speaker: Tony?
Speaker: Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall.
Speaker: No, it's The Stranglers.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: They had a track on their second album called No More Heroes that was called School Man.
Speaker: Yeah, I remember it.
Speaker: I remember the track School Man.
Speaker: Yeah, School Man.
Speaker: School Man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's kind of reminiscent, and it's exactly the same kind of feel.
Speaker: You know, it gives you that...
Speaker: menacing, it's a kind of menacing feel.
Speaker: And I think we've nailed it, you know, 10 times better than the Strangler's ever nailed it.
Speaker: Yeah, because I think Scornman... Because I'm a much better bass player.
Speaker: Well, we're 10 times better than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, if only we had their money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And their talent.
Speaker: There are quite a few versions.
Speaker: I mean, God knows how many versions.
Speaker: One question I had was, you know, how many versions do we actually have?
Speaker: I reckon must have had about seven or eight.
Speaker: At least seven or eight variations.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know that Stuart uploaded one to Facebook 2016.
Speaker: I think early when Stuart did post something to Facebook.
Speaker: I do actually have the sessions.
Speaker: Because I'm using Studio One now, and back then I used Logic Pro X. But the other day I did load up the old sessions, and some of them actually are still there intact.
Speaker: I've even got the original instrumental that I wrote when I think I was back in Berlin, which was massively guitar heavy, really heavy guitars.
Speaker: I even played a couple of guitar solos as well.
Speaker: So one day I might just drag all those together.
Speaker: I don't think they're candidates to release for money, but we could certainly upload them onto our website or to SoundCloud and offer them for free or anybody who's interested, you know, our fan base.
Speaker: Three people and a small dog.
Speaker: Just as an aside, guys, while you were nattering away, I checked my computer file.
Speaker: And Stuart was saying that, oh, there must be about seven or eight versions.
Speaker: I've got about 380 saved files of different versions of Angels.
Speaker: Yeah, every time Tony tweaked it, I downloaded it.
Speaker: Every time we put an extra instrument on, I downloaded it.
Speaker: I've got a huge amount of versions.
Speaker: I was just going to ask Stuart, basically, if anyone actually influenced you writing the lyric.
Speaker: I mean, were there any sort of lyrical references or influences when you composed the lyric for the song?
Speaker: Yeah, well, as I've already mentioned earlier, I mean, there was some influence in terms of the arrangement of it from my hero, David Bowie.
Speaker: But no, not really.
Speaker: The second verse, a common theme in all my songwriting is
Speaker: I like to bring nature into it because to me, nature and a man's closeness and affinity with nature is what the world's all about.
Speaker: And so it's a constantly recurring theme for me.
Speaker: And so for me, that second verse where I've got the lines, the sun will set, the moon will rise, the shifting sands, the changing tides,
Speaker: A lifetime passes in the blink of an eye as nature leaves its mark across the sky.
Speaker: One of the best lyrics I've written in ages.
Speaker: And I don't know where or why that came to me, but again, it was just...
Speaker: I wanted to just comment on how important and how much people believe in these religious artifacts and follow these religions.
Speaker: And it's nowhere near as powerful as the effect of nature on our being and on our time on this earth.
Speaker: So it sounds like a grand, it is quite a grand subject, but influences again for me were from the artists that I lyrically have always been influenced by, and those are David Bowie and to a lesser degree, Mike Scott and Neil Hannan of the Divine Comedy, Mike Scott of the Waterboys.
Speaker: But in this case, it was very Bowie, and I'd say a lot of the nature stuff is a common recurring theme for me that comes from my Waterboy's fixation as well.
Speaker: I think Stuart has got a subconscious...
Speaker: kind of influence that he won't acknowledge.
Speaker: But I could hear those lyrics being written by the mid-Stranglers period.
Speaker: After the Stranglers did all their thrash stuff with the distorted bass and all that, they went on to record a few albums of acoustic music.
Speaker: stuff that was you know different to everything else and and the lyrics got very deep you know i mean look songs like skin deep and um do you know what the the album that i've got and i still listen to of the strangest because i'm not a big fan was oral sculpture and that's the one yeah that album you're dead right actually that album did influence me quite a bit lyrically it's
Speaker: There's a song, there's a couple of, there's one song on that called Laughing, which is fantastic.
Speaker: I don't know, I think Hugh Cornwall must have written a lyric.
Speaker: And it's beautiful.
Speaker: And yeah, there is definitely some influence there.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Yeah, there is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Listen to Midnight Summer Dream by The Strandlers.
Speaker: That one has got a really deep lyric.
Speaker: And it's kind of reminds me of you.
Speaker: Anyway, Tony.
Speaker: No, I was going to say, musically, in my mind, I remember actually when I was writing the music and I think right early on from when it was conceived, I really sort of had the soundscape I was looking for was from Simple Minds.
Speaker: But they did an album called Once Upon a Time and they had songs like Speed Your Love to Me and Ghost Dancing.
Speaker: And then they released this live album, which had this, which is a great live album.
Speaker: I can't remember what it's called.
Speaker: But it had this really distinct live sound.
Speaker: And I remember when I was writing Angels in the back of my mind, I always had this kind of sort of dramatic, you know, big sort of Simple Minds production in my head.
Speaker: It wasn't like New Gold Dream, which was pretty much what people called like an album you put on your coffee table.
Speaker: And it was very much easy listening.
Speaker: In fact, I think Once Upon a Time was the album that Simple Minds released directly after New Gold Dream, and it had a much sort of harder edge to it.
Speaker: There was really sort of dynamic pianos and these really sort of really huge sounding drums.
Speaker: And I always remember that that was in the back of my mind.
Speaker: And I remember, Stuart, you said to me once, is that Angels is our anthem.
Speaker: And I just wonder whether you guys would agree with that statement still.
Speaker: I'll tell you, it's funny you mention it because I remember very early on when I was over in Germany, we were sort of laying down an early version of it and you were mixing it.
Speaker: We talked about it sounded like Simple Minds and I said, this song needs to sound like Waterfront.
Speaker: It needs to be that powerful.
Speaker: The sort of song that makes radios explode.
Speaker: But we don't have the technology anymore.
Speaker: get that song to sound so aggressive is unbelievably powerful but we nearly got there
Speaker: So thank you for listening to this week's podcast.
Speaker: We're going to try and get another one out as soon as we possibly can.
Speaker: We hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker: And I think we're going to start a mini series of songs that appear on the album and the rest of the guys in the band will be discussing why we came up with the ideas, how we came up with the ideas.
Speaker: And we hope very much that you can join us for the next podcast.
