Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Tony here, and welcome to another edition of the TSE Podcast.
Speaker: Right, so hello everybody, here we are for another TSE podcast and with me as usual is John Bicknell, bass guitarist and Stuart who's our lead vocalist.
Speaker: So today we're going to talk about the making of the song Mr. Heartache and just before we went live on air, I must confess I have a real hard time remembering anything about this song so this is going to be fun, we're just going to make it up as we go along.
Speaker: So anyway, nice to see you again guys.
Speaker: Mr. Heartache, what's the story behind the song, Stu?
Speaker: Okay, well, this is another older song from my dim and distant past, well, written in 1989 originally and never recorded in a studio.
Speaker: So this is the first time I've ever had this song recorded and the...
Speaker: original idea behind the song came about when I was sitting on a boiling hot day on Ealing Common in London, where I lived in West London.
Speaker: I was born in West London, actually, but I lived there for some time and I met my first wife, Helen, there.
Speaker: And I can't remember why we were there, but anyway, sitting on Ealing Common and I think we're just having a picnic or something.
Speaker: And I came up with this idea about Mr. Heartache, the lyrics of which were loosely written about the early days of my relationship with Helen.
Speaker: And she was a waitress in a cocktail bar.
Speaker: I'd met her in this bar and we'd started going out and she was quite an attractive lady and got a lot of male attention.
Speaker: And I couldn't believe my luck that I managed to sort of get a date with her and we started going steady.
Speaker: But I was always very insecure about things because I'm pretty insecure anyway, being a singer.
Speaker: Singers always are.
Speaker: And yeah, I was always concerned that someone was going to snatch her away from me at the time.
Speaker: I was very young, you know.
Speaker: And I started writing this song about that very fact.
Speaker: And that's what Miss Tartig is all about, really.
Speaker: It's about the fact that, you know, it's just around the corner and, you know, you never know quite how long you're going to have with somebody.
Speaker: And that was the initial idea.
Speaker: So that's where it all came from.
Speaker: I came up with this kind of few melody ideas and my songwriting partner at the time provided more chords and did a lot of the music stuff.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: We recorded a four-track demo on a Fostex machine we used to have, if anybody ever remembers those.
Speaker: Honestly, they were brilliant for the time.
Speaker: That's all you could get back then.
Speaker: We recorded a four-track demo of it and...
Speaker: Gave it to the band at the time and rehearsed it a bit, but we never, ever recorded it properly and also never did it justice.
Speaker: I always felt at the time we recorded this heartache that it was going to be, it was the best, most commercial thing I'd ever done.
Speaker: And I thought it was absolutely the single.
Speaker: And we took it to our publishing company at the time, Warner Brothers, and said, look, this has got to be the one.
Speaker: And they just didn't agree at all.
Speaker: Anyway, so Mr. Heartache slowly drifted off into the distance and remained there for 30 odd years and you guys and I got back together and I suggested it.
Speaker: So, the potential in it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I've always loved the song and I always felt that it was really commercial song and had a great hook and everything.
Speaker: What I hadn't really taken into account was in the intervening years since I first sang it and recorded it, to now, as you age, your voice gets deeper.
Speaker: And when we came to do it again, I realized, oh, this is quite tricky.
Speaker: It's quite high.
Speaker: Yeah, you are definitely close to your upper limit there on the vocals.
Speaker: Sounded great.
Speaker: It's a really tricky one.
Speaker: So anyway, in answer to that, that's a very long answer to that question, isn't it?
Speaker: But that is essentially the story behind Mr. Heartache.
Speaker: Yeah, I remember it.
Speaker: It sounds very 80s.
Speaker: This is one of the songs I remember you played to me when I came over and visited you in 2019.
Speaker: And I think actually it was, we'd been out one night.
Speaker: I think we'd been in Alton somewhere having a curry.
Speaker: We came back to your house where you were living at the time and you played a whole host of songs and I hadn't heard them before, but that one really stood out.
Speaker: Born to be Free and Mr. Heartache were the two songs that I...
Speaker: went home still having the melody stuck in my head.
Speaker: And so when you put it forward for us to record on our album, I thought it was a natural song for us to do.
Speaker: But there was the big problem because your keyboard player is or was, probably still is, an excellent keyboard player.
Speaker: way better than I am.
Speaker: Well, he was a classically trained pianist, you know.
Speaker: He really was the proper pianist, so he knew what he was doing.
Speaker: Sorry, Tony, yeah, carry on.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: I had to spend time just working out the chords, even just getting the structure, because there were some very nice inversions.
Speaker: If we all know what inversions are, I don't even know what they are, but it sounds like a posh word you had to throw around.
Speaker: But there were inversions of standard chords and of course they were progressing and you could tell that your keyboard player had a jazz background because I mean, it had all these jazz inversions all over the place.
Speaker: So literally it took me about two weeks to learn the song.
Speaker: And I remember when I recorded it, actually I probably did it bit by bit.
Speaker: So I would start off with the first verse.
Speaker: and then I record the first few chords and I did the second chorus or the second verse or whatever and I was really struggling to get it down so literally I literally took two or three takes and when I got a take that was it was in the can so literally I pieced the whole performance together so if anyone's listening to it and think I played it right from start to finish that's obviously not the truth
Speaker: And that's how I put it together.
Speaker: It was quite a challenge because I didn't want to recreate exactly the recording that you did.
Speaker: I wanted to make it a little bit more different.
Speaker: For example, I decided to put quite a few organs into the song, especially at the beginning.
Speaker: Um, uh, and I kind of built the song from, uh, from the ground up trying to make it sound a little bit different.
Speaker: I mean, for example, I think there was a guitar solo.
Speaker: Um, I decided to do a saxophone solo by then I'd gone so far down the rabbit hole into the eighties nostalgia that I thought, well, Hill street blues, I mean, you know, why not get a saxophone on there?
Speaker: Cause it started to have that kind of eighties vibe, you know, and it was a real classic eighties pop song.
Speaker: um and of course i didn't have a saxophone player hiding in the cupboard i mean i just used a uh a sampling machine um that i found on the software i haven't actually i think it was an alto sax but anyway it sounded really good and i just played it on the keyboard so um i did actually change the structure of the song um in some respects with you know the choice of um sounds and elements but um i kept to the structure pretty um pretty um pretty much um how it was recorded when you did it back in the day with pillow pillow fights back
Speaker: Yeah, the original demo of it that we recorded, the two of us back then.
Speaker: I listened to that today, Stuart.
Speaker: It had a drum machine on it.
Speaker: It's never had a drummer on it ever, and this is the first time it's had proper drums on it.
Speaker: It had a really primitive drum machine on it.
Speaker: And it was pretty basic, you know, and when we when we agreed that we might redo it and you started working on it, I remember thinking at the time and I probably said to you, Tony, we need to make this.
Speaker: We need to update this, bring it up to date.
Speaker: And then I remember thinking as the song progressed, like you just said, this is sounding more and more 80s.
Speaker: And I started sort of disliking it.
Speaker: Not what you were doing, just disliking the song.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: You wanted to reject this one, didn't you?
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I wanted to reject it.
Speaker: At one point, I just thought, no, I just don't want Mr. Heartache to sound like it's in the 80s.
Speaker: But then as the thing progressed and as we got further down the line with it and then putting down the vocals on it,
Speaker: It just suddenly, not suddenly, but it slowly dawned on me.
Speaker: Actually, I can't take this song out of the 80s.
Speaker: It is an 80s song.
Speaker: It's just, you know, and it kind of is the most regressive 80s song on the album.
Speaker: The rest of the album is, you know, we've done Pandora and we've done Born to be Free, which were, again, sort of late 80s songs that were completely re-reported.
Speaker: reimagined and particularly Pandora sounds fantastic now it's completely different and I loved that and I guess I wanted Miss Tartake to to be in the modern day but it was just never going to be that way because of the structure of it and and the way that it turned out and the way you did it uh I started thinking god now I can't I don't want this song on the album and then we kind of
Speaker: I threw a wobbly about it, I remember.
Speaker: I was saying to you, sorry guys, I don't want it included.
Speaker: Now, you must have been tearing your hair out and thinking, who is this arsehole that we got into seeing these songs and write some of them?
Speaker: He's clearly a complete idiot because you probably felt that the song was great, and I know you did.
Speaker: Well, not only did we think that, John and I actually typed that to each other on Messenger in written form.
Speaker: We squaw about you a lot about that.
Speaker: Yeah, I bet you did.
Speaker: I'd like to say we're a democratic band and we always have conversations.
Speaker: I mean, we built the album on Messenger, actually, funny enough, the Facebook app.
Speaker: We were always talking about things we should do.
Speaker: I think it was one of the occasions where I think John and I went offline and went AWOL and then we discussed it behind your back, unfortunately.
Speaker: And John was a major instigator.
Speaker: I think John actually, I think John said something along the lines of, no, we got to keep it.
Speaker: I'm going to have a word with him.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't know what he's doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you were right.
Speaker: And then it came to me.
Speaker: I suddenly thought, okay, what can I add to this song to make it different to the original, to bring it up a little bit further into the present day?
Speaker: And I came up with the idea of the mister at the beginnings, the whispered mister, mister, mister.
Speaker: And then the fade out at the end into a drum machine and sort of boom, boom, boom.
Speaker: And the misters over the end.
Speaker: And I just felt that was a little bit, a little bit of a nod towards some sort of kind of primitive rap-y idea.
Speaker: And I just thought, yeah.
Speaker: And when I did that, I thought, okay, I can, yeah, this is all right now.
Speaker: I'm quite happy.
Speaker: I'm a bit happier.
Speaker: I'm remembering your rap at the end of that, actually.
Speaker: Yeah, there were two things I wanted to say about that, because first of all, the original had lots of typical sort of 80s synth brass stabs in it.
Speaker: And of course, I recorded them faithfully, and then immediately you just put a complete ban on that.
Speaker: So we're not having that.
Speaker: And we dropped it out and I thought, oh, but I really liked them.
Speaker: And it took me at least two weeks to work them out.
Speaker: So I thought, I've got to find a way to sneak them back in.
Speaker: So I changed the synth stabs to organ.
Speaker: I thought maybe, you know, I know Stuart likes a bit of organ and we've reintroduced that into other songs like Pandora and whatever.
Speaker: And I thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna keep, obviously I don't have to lose everything.
Speaker: I'll just actually change the 80 synth brass stabs and turn them into organ stabs.
Speaker: And I don't think you had that for a while, but I remember in the final minutes, mix, I managed to sneak them back in and put them at a lower volume.
Speaker: And I don't think you, I think this was actually the phase where you said, no, I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker: And then you said, okay, I'm gonna do it.
Speaker: And then I think you just kept quiet and I snuck them in at the beginning of the second chorus.
Speaker: I remember you telling me I'm gonna sneak them in on the same chorus.
Speaker: he won't even notice.
Speaker: Well, I was so bloody annoyed because I'd spent so long trying to work them out and they were quite clever actually because your keyboard player, he never played the same thing twice.
Speaker: So I couldn't just learn to play it once.
Speaker: I mean, he would actually have another variation somewhere during the second chorus.
Speaker: So I learned them all and then I recorded them and I thought, damned if I'm going to throw all that work away.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, I would have, you know, honestly, I've
Speaker: You know, I would have said, okay, we'd have had to release it on a remix, John, or something.
Speaker: But I snuck them in.
Speaker: The second thing actually was your boombox thing.
Speaker: And this was absolutely hysterical because I remember you sent it over as a demo and I tried to build it into the production.
Speaker: And I literally thought you were going to do a boombox.
Speaker: Yeah, I was trying to put compression, you know, an EQ because there was lots of plosives, of course.
Speaker: I thought, oh, God.
Speaker: Anyway, I think I did a demo and I sent about it and said, I've done the best job I can, but, you know, the audio quality is great and whatever.
Speaker: And then I think you said something, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: It was only supposed to be a guide.
Speaker: I'm on drums, actually, on the end of it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: And that was my 80s moment because I've always wanted to do it.
Speaker: And I thought, yeah, I want that Phil Collins 80s gated drum sound.
Speaker: I never worked out how to do it.
Speaker: So once you decided that we were going to have real drums at the end, I thought, that's how we're going to close out the song.
Speaker: I'm going to get that typical Phil Collins in the air tonight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I had to go online and find out how to do it.
Speaker: I didn't know how to pull it off.
Speaker: Unfortunately, I managed to work it out.
Speaker: Um, and it all turned out well.
Speaker: So we, anyway, John, um, the baseline completely different to the demo version that Pillow Fights Back did.
Speaker: So what was your point of reference for the, for the baseline?
Speaker: uh i i didn't um i thought the verses were fine the bass i do in the verses are very very close to what was in the demo but then when it went into the um pre-chorus bit i i thought that would sound great more flowing
Speaker: So I kind of had the, I wanted the disco type bassline influence on the actual verses because like it was kind of very low notes sliding down and making it sound a little bit sinister, which I thought went well with Stu's vocals, what he was doing on those verses.
Speaker: But then it goes full on into the melodics that I normally do for the pre-chorus.
Speaker: And then, obviously, the chorus is, again, it's back to just the stomping bass line.
Speaker: You know, it's a typical dance floor song.
Speaker: I remember at the end of the first phase of the chorus where you do this kind of wandering thing up the bass and you end on a double note.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that's one of the... I say, yeah, that's the pre-chorus.
Speaker: So I thought I'd keep it nice and flowing.
Speaker: So I basically thought, like, I'm going to work out a walking bass line that goes through the whole of that section.
Speaker: And then I do the double note on the last bit.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: to bass harmony on the very last note.
Speaker: And it really works with those choruses.
Speaker: I can only admire that as a one-finger bass player and a guitarist.
Speaker: That's the difference between guitarists.
Speaker: That's the difference between guitarists and bass players because a guitarist would never, ever come up with a bass line like that.
Speaker: We'd probably just follow the root chord, you know.
Speaker: But a real bass player obviously will just do all that kind of fancy stuff.
Speaker: I've always been into melodic bass lines and I've always been into bass harmonies.
Speaker: If you remember, one of the very first tracks we ever recorded in Chestnut Studios was The Intellectual Candle Burns Out, which I did a harmony bass line.
Speaker: And that kind of, that's why, and I did the same thing in Where Are The Angels as well, but it's not as prominent.
Speaker: Um, you know, on that particular song, I just double tracked the bass harmonies because they were too difficult to play, you know, at the same time, you know, it's like the old Lou Reed song, Walk on the Wild Side.
Speaker: If you listen to that, Herbie Flowers plays the bass on that.
Speaker: And everyone's over the years have been trying to copy it, said, you know, it's physically impossible.
Speaker: And when it comes down to it, when he was interviewed about it, he did it in two sections, you know.
Speaker: It's an interesting one for me with the bass, because obviously I'm the only one that's heard it.
Speaker: Well, I say heard it.
Speaker: I've experienced the song with two different bass players and the original bass player in our band back then.
Speaker: didn't play bass on this song.
Speaker: It was just a demo that, as I say, was all synths and stuff.
Speaker: But when we rehearsed it, he did obviously play bass.
Speaker: And his take on bass is incredibly different to John's.
Speaker: And the basic difference, as far as I can remember, is obviously it's a long time ago.
Speaker: But Mark, he was a great technical, great bass player, but he didn't have John's ability to listen to the vocals and follow the vocals.
Speaker: And that was the essential difference.
Speaker: Not that that's always a good thing, but John has this innate ability to do that.
Speaker: And the difference in your bass line, which actually, in my way of thinking now,
Speaker: One of the great joys of Mr. Heartache in terms of, for me as a song, because I still see it as being very 80s, was that the bass line was so much better than the original bass line.
Speaker: You gave it something new, which is one of the things I really loved about why I ended up kind of saying, yeah, let's do it, because
Speaker: You know, it just... The original bass line was pretty straightforward and Mark played it quite well, did all his stuff, but it was nothing like what you did and what you brought to it.
Speaker: It was like, oh, yeah, bloody hell, never heard that before, never thought of that.
Speaker: So it's like... It's basically like playing... You know, I do try... This is why I love to know what vocals are going on a song before I do the final bass line because I like... You know, some people would like to follow the root notes on bass or, you know...
Speaker: And that's fine, some music suits that.
Speaker: But with our music, I have to listen to the vocals and see what melody you're singing because you listen to our album, you know, on most of the songs,
Speaker: Some of the more fiddly bass lines I'm playing are actually harmonies to what you're singing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's what I do.
Speaker: It's a big part of what you do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that's quite an original part of us as a band is you're one of the very few bass players that do that in my view.
Speaker: I've not.
Speaker: I've not seen that a lot in the past and I hadn't had great experience, but I've never really experienced that.
Speaker: It probably helps because I write songs as well.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I kind of discipline myself.
Speaker: So if I'm writing a song, I'll be singing the vocal and then I'll be playing the bass line along to the vocal simply because it's easier to play while I'm singing it.
Speaker: That's the kind of philosophy I've got with all songs.
Speaker: I've always put an alternative bass line on anything I've ever played on.
Speaker: There's always fiddly bits There's always little bits that You're not expecting to hear And that's what I love doing It's melody, Paul McCartney started it Yeah, he's one of the greats I wish I was as rich and famous enough to carry it on I know this guy called Keith Chadwick Who has his own radio show I've been posting stuff on Facebook about him Oh, he's funny
Speaker: Yeah, I've been uploading our songs and he's actually been playing them almost on a weekly basis.
Speaker: And it's always interesting to look back.
Speaker: I don't watch his shows live because they're at one o'clock in the morning, but he's got a show on Thursday at seven o'clock, your time, our time.
Speaker: So I'm going to tune in because he's bound to play some of our tunes and he's bound to actually play some drums and wires tunes as well.
Speaker: Drums and wires songs as well.
Speaker: So, but anyway, that's beside the point.
Speaker: I remember the first time that actually he played Mr. Heartache.
Speaker: I uploaded it.
Speaker: And he was just, he was, oh, this is fantastic, great production work.
Speaker: But interesting, you said it reminded him of Crowded House.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: It could be the monobic bass playing because it's something that the guy in Crowded House is also very famous for.
Speaker: It's, you know, putting an interesting bass line to a simple song.
Speaker: You know, another person who can do it is Bruce Thomas, who used to play with Elvis Costello.
Speaker: He's a fantastic bass player.
Speaker: I very nearly, you know, when I originally wrote it, I very nearly, the chorus very nearly went, everywhere you go, you always take Mr. Heartache with you, everywhere you go.
Speaker: Ah, there's a song about that.
Speaker: Something about the weather.
Speaker: Yeah, the weather.
Speaker: Do you know?
Speaker: I don't know who that is.
Speaker: The Crowded House.
Speaker: Oh, is it?
Speaker: Oh, there you go.
Speaker: You should listen to Crowded House, Tony.
Speaker: There's a song I recommend you listen to, which is fantastic.
Speaker: It's called It's Only Natural.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely brilliant song.
Speaker: Can't I just go and listen to Close to the Edge by Yes or something, please?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Crowded House, only natural.
Speaker: It's a lovely, lovely, beautiful... Fall at your feet.
Speaker: And Fall at your feet is even better, actually.
Speaker: That is my favourite Crowded House song, Fall at your feet.
Speaker: So anyway, the takeaway was that it sounded a bit like Crowded House, which I think firmly confirms that we were in the 80s with that song.
Speaker: But it is a good song.
Speaker: I think a lot of people are making out we've got hundreds of fans, but I think one fan.
Speaker: We have.
Speaker: As soon as we released the album, I think made a comment on our website saying it's the best song on the album.
Speaker: Straight away said, yep, best song on the album.
Speaker: More than one person said it, Tony.
Speaker: Because honestly, as we released it, people were going, oh, this is brilliant.
Speaker: I'm going, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, I felt a bit embarrassed about it.
Speaker: You get that.
Speaker: You get that with songs, Stu.
Speaker: I get the same thing with my songs, you know.
Speaker: Some you don't like and everyone says, what?
Speaker: You know, but there's always a deep down personal reason, even if you can't realise what it is yourself.
Speaker: There was a song that John did and I said that I loved it and you hated it.
Speaker: What one was that?
Speaker: It was Come On Now.
Speaker: No, it was called Come On Now or something.
Speaker: It sounded a bit like a REM type of thing.
Speaker: and it was on your last, your other band's CD.
Speaker: Yeah, I hated it.
Speaker: You hated it, and I listened to it, and I thought, well, this is a really strong song.
Speaker: It's really good, and I really liked it.
Speaker: It's the worst song on the album, for me, anyway.
Speaker: Do you know, I just saw this as we were talking, is that, you know, I introduced the classic horns, didn't I, into the last part of the song.
Speaker: You've got all these sort of, you know, earth, wind and fire and horn section going on.
Speaker: I thought, actually, Squire was in the back of my mind.
Speaker: If Squire were to ever play this song,
Speaker: and introduce some it would be like a translation sort of like the jam to style council wouldn't it i mean you know taking our song from tse and if squire did it and sort of gave it the sort of you know the mod treatment and put um a horn section in that would probably be a similar transition wouldn't it i could see squire playing this song i could see squire playing mr high yeah because um i don't want to talk about squire too much but you know we did we released an album in the 80s um and it was like full of horns
Speaker: It's full of horns and cables and stuff.
Speaker: Anthony would never sanction playing somebody else's song, would he?
Speaker: He's not that sort, is he?
Speaker: Quite rightly, he likes to play his own stuff, and who wouldn't as a singer-songwriter?
Speaker: Yeah, so Mr. Heartache, what a song.
Speaker: I mean, I actually, I remember that I threw at the kitchen sink of this song because I think it was the last thing we recorded before we all actually went off to get the full benefits of the NHS, you know, sort of various surgeries and God knows whatever.
Speaker: So I think it was the last one in the can actually on the album.
Speaker: Yeah, the last thing was the vocal.
Speaker: And as I said, before we all wandered off to the NHS and begged for their help.
Speaker: And yeah, I wanted to come back earlier on when you said it was really difficult to sing because I thought, oh, wow, yeah, perhaps...
Speaker: Perhaps I'll ask Stuart to do another take of that vocal, but I don't think that was ever on the cards, was it?
Speaker: No, this was the only song on the album that I recorded the vocals post-surgery.
Speaker: All the others of before.
Speaker: No, it was.
Speaker: This is the only one.
Speaker: And I remember when I stood up in my little studio to do the vocals and I laid them down.
Speaker: And I was doing multiple takes on... Sorry, you know...
Speaker: dual takes on the lead and that sort of thing, as I always do.
Speaker: Well, not always, but generally.
Speaker: I remember thinking as I was doing it, I thought, the first thing I thought was, oh God, this is going to take forever.
Speaker: I'm never going to get this right.
Speaker: So I laid my, but it didn't.
Speaker: I kind of just did it and it happened.
Speaker: And I, just one evening and I was,
Speaker: Then I finished it.
Speaker: Literally, it took about two hours.
Speaker: The whole vocal, every vocal on that song was done in one night.
Speaker: And I just did it all and sat back and listened to it and thought, before I submitted it over to the maestro Ross Studios producer.
Speaker: But I sat there and listened to it and I thought, you know, God, this is really high for me.
Speaker: This is quite the top of my range.
Speaker: And I remember saying to you, Tony,
Speaker: you might need to equalize out a few notes here.
Speaker: There might be some bums here and there, you know, it might be odd notes that are wrong, I don't know.
Speaker: But I mean, you came back and said, actually, it's not too bad, it's pretty good.
Speaker: And then ended up being okay.
Speaker: And actually, I listened back to it now.
Speaker: It is high for me, but I've just written, the song I've just written is also extremely high for me as well, which we'll record soon.
Speaker: But yeah,
Speaker: I remember there wasn't much post-production.
Speaker: You were right.
Speaker: I heard it.
Speaker: And I think actually what you benefit from is you knew the song.
Speaker: You've actually sung it before and you sung it live and you probably could, even after 400 whiskies, you probably could still do a decent version of it.
Speaker: It's different to some of the other songs where you actually written new melodies for the album, like Girl from Devon or some other songs.
Speaker: But this was actually a song you knew very, very well.
Speaker: So I remember getting the recording and it really didn't need too much.
Speaker: polishing to be quite honest um or you know it was actually pretty good in the can yeah it it there's a i mean going back to the lyrics itself before we you know i just want to mention a couple of things about the lyric because um at the time that i wrote it um as i said i wrote it on a boiling hot summer's day and um the second verse is all about it makes me shiver like a river in winter
Speaker: Yeah, and I really quite like the lyric in it.
Speaker: I was quite proud of it at the time.
Speaker: I thought, you know, it makes me shiver like a river in winter.
Speaker: I like visual things like that.
Speaker: The way Tony's drum part and my bass part, what we're doing over that phrase, like a river in winter, it does sound really staccato and really sticks out.
Speaker: It's my favourite line in the whole song.
Speaker: Yeah, because the vocal was very rhythmic.
Speaker: And I remember when I was sort of, as you know, we don't have a real drummer, I'd use computer software, but I was designing patterns and you can obviously, you know, decide where you want the snare or where you want the kick.
Speaker: I thought I'm going to change the pattern for the rhythm here because I really wanted to follow the rhythmic quality to the voice.
Speaker: As you say, I'm like a river in winter.
Speaker: And it was brilliantly sung, if you don't mind saying.
Speaker: Oh, thank you.
Speaker: And I just, as John said, I wanted to follow that sort of rhythmic feel because I think that's the second verse, isn't it?
Speaker: It picks up and yeah, the song really wants to sort of start some moving along a bit.
Speaker: You've had the introduction, you've had the first chorus and then you really want the song to start driving forward.
Speaker: So John was absolutely right.
Speaker: the bridge lyrics really explain what Mr. Heartache is.
Speaker: Because I think for anyone out there that views this and listens to this podcast and is vaguely interested in lyrics at all, and particularly in this song, most people think Mr. Heartache sounds like it's about someone that's had their heart broken, someone that's blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be, someone that's, you know,
Speaker: in love and it doesn't work out.
Speaker: Well, that's not what Mr. Heartache is and the bridge is the chorus to this because Mr. Heartache in the bridge, it goes, the second bridge goes, I waste my Sundays, I wake up Mondays with Mr. Heartache walking by my side.
Speaker: Mr. Heartache is a state of mind about that I was in at the time about paranoid that I was going to lose this new love that I'd got because
Speaker: You know, she was pretty, I was punching above my weight.
Speaker: She was a pretty good looking girl at the time and, you know, all the rest of it.
Speaker: And I thought, why is she with me?
Speaker: Blimey, I'm, you know, I'm nothing special.
Speaker: I'm five foot nothing and got a big nose and, you know, all the rest of it.
Speaker: Well, I'm just trying to help my tongue here.
Speaker: Rachel is lovely.
Speaker: She is gorgeous, my Telecaster.
Speaker: Anyway, but that's Mr. Hartage is a state of mind.
Speaker: And I think if that's what you take away from this, and if that helps any of you out there to understand what this song's about, then great, because
Speaker: I was quite proud of that at the time and I still am.
Speaker: I think it puts the message across to me that don't get too secure because life can throw some really curveballs at you.
Speaker: That's it, John.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: Well, I know I threw the production kitchen sink at it.
Speaker: I really, because by then we'd been recording this album for two years and this was right at the end.
Speaker: So I like to think I was learning things along the way.
Speaker: And I was graduated from being completely useless to actually not so useless.
Speaker: But I was really pleased with the 80s gated drum thing at the end.
Speaker: which I'd never done before, I always wanted to do.
Speaker: So there were a lot of milestones.
Speaker: I'm fond of the song because I like the melody and I like the song, but also because along the way, you know, just in terms of mixing it and producing it, I think if I'd come of age.
Speaker: I'm going to add to that, Tony.
Speaker: I really, there were some really tasty guitar parts in Mr. Heartache that you played, actually.
Speaker: which weren't in the original at all some of the the sort of verse stuff where you sort of did this almost sliding sort of wow wow wow i can't exactly remember i can't i can't sing them but uh if you listen to the song now and you you'll hear these sliding guitar bits in in in the song which i think was it was brilliant it really added a lot a hell of a lot to it and there was
Speaker: I will do a mix break then.
Speaker: The funny thing is I did a couple of links.
Speaker: I can't remember the song, but I think there was a link from a pre-chorus into a chorus.
Speaker: And I've got some double harmony guitars going on.
Speaker: And I used a piece of software called Guitar Amp.
Speaker: or guitar rig, I can't remember what it was.
Speaker: Amplitude, it's called Amplitude.
Speaker: Amplitude.
Speaker: Amplitude, can't remember.
Speaker: Anyway, it's a guitar sim and they emulate famous people's guitar sim.
Speaker: I bought the Brian May guitar pack and I used a preset called Killer Queen 2.
Speaker: Oh, I think it was Killer Queen 3.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So, and there's this, as it leads into it, it's sort of this guitar thing.
Speaker: So I've laid it with some other guitars as well, but I couldn't resist it.
Speaker: I just thought, oh, and actually when we're doing the entire album, I've always wanted to use this preset, but there hasn't been, there hadn't been a song where I couldn't get away with it, you know, that I could use this typical sort of killer queen guitar riff.
Speaker: And I thought, I'm going to stick it in here.
Speaker: There's so much else going on.
Speaker: Perhaps nobody will notice it.
Speaker: So I stuck it in.
Speaker: I think it sounds quite good.
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of the things that really added to the song and for me took it out of the original 80s, really 80s mode that it was in before because it really didn't have much guitar on it before.
Speaker: It had a solo, as you said, and that was about it.
Speaker: And yeah, it really made it.
Speaker: I know where it happens, it's coming out of the second verse and it actually goes into, there's a few guitar bits, it's coming out of the second verse before it goes into the next round of choruses.
Speaker: And it's just the kind of empty space and I just link it with this guitar thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I'm not a great guitar player, but that I was quite pleased with.
Speaker: And of course, as I said, two years into it, I mean, you know, I tracked the guitars for Angels, you know, like two years previously.
Speaker: And then by then I like to think that I was actually sort of like learning how to rig it all, learning how to record guitars properly, you know, panning them correctly.
Speaker: And, um, that's why I was really happy with the song because I think it turned out great.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Yeah, great song.
Speaker: So anyway, next episode is what?
Speaker: The Girl From Devon.
Speaker: After this edited podcast goes out.
Speaker: And then we can start to talk about maybe the next podcast, The Girl From Devon, we can talk a little bit about some of the new songs that we were working on for the Difficult Second album.
Speaker: The Difficult Second, though, the We're Not Dead Yet tour.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I'm, yeah, I'm currently working on, I haven't had a lot of time this week, but I've got time before my tour to work on these new songs.
Speaker: So I'll be getting onto the fire particularly.
Speaker: Right, guys, so that wraps it up.
Speaker: So that was another episode of the TSE podcast.
Speaker: John, Stuart, thanks very much.
Speaker: As we have just said, we'll be back with the next episode talking about the girl from Devon.
Speaker: So thank you for listening to the podcast.
Speaker: We hope you're enjoying this series where we look at all the songs that we released on our debut album, Where Are the Angels?
Speaker: And hopefully we've given you some insight into the music and the lyrics and the meaning behind all the songs.
Speaker: So we do hope you join us for the next TSE podcast.
Speaker: Until then, cheerio.
