Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Tony here, and welcome to another edition of the TSE Podcast.
Speaker: As usual, I got together with my co-conspirators, John Bicknell and Stuart Glanville, to discuss the making of the third track on our debut album, I Can See Your Face.
Speaker: So, without further ado, let's get straight into the podcast, and I'll start off by asking Stuart the first question.
Speaker: So, Stuart, we're going to talk today about I Can See Your Face, a very personal song for you.
Speaker: So my first question right at the very start is that, as I previously said, this is a very, very personal song.
Speaker: But perhaps you can give us some insight into the meaning behind the lyric before we discuss the music.
Speaker: Yeah, I can.
Speaker: I'll try and keep it brief, but there's a story behind this, and I think it's only fair to our listeners to give you some idea of what the story is.
Speaker: I met and later married a girl that I met in 1987 called Helen, and she
Speaker: Yeah, we had 27 years together.
Speaker: Unfortunately, in 2012, Helen was diagnosed with quite an aggressive lung cancer.
Speaker: And she was given six months to live, but she was a tough old bird.
Speaker: And she lasted two years.
Speaker: I retired from work and everything and to look after her for those two years.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: During that time, I'll go into this in more detail, but during that time, some of the lyrics that I wrote this song about were a reflection on my time looking after her.
Speaker: And she eventually died in 2014.
Speaker: I found in the months and probably the first year after her passing that I couldn't
Speaker: remember easily the little foibles about her, i.e.
Speaker: the tone of her voice and her smell of her skin and that sort of thing.
Speaker: But I found then, as the years had gone by, and it's now nearly 10 years since she cast, I found after a while that I began to remember her
Speaker: the little things about her.
Speaker: And, you know, that's basically the premise of the song.
Speaker: So it was an emotional thing, but it struck me as the nature of grief can be many, many folds.
Speaker: You know, there's physical grief, there's mental grief, there's all sorts of grief.
Speaker: And I spoke to a lot of people at the time who were going through similar things.
Speaker: Well, not a lot of people, but a few people at the time that were going through similar things.
Speaker: And they all, you know, it all came back to this
Speaker: grief is really weird and my experience is not unique a lot of people that have lost someone special to them they do go through this you do kind of after a while it all comes back to what someone was like so yeah that's the background to i can see your face
Speaker: Yeah, but how did the lyric idea develop?
Speaker: Did it come to you immediately?
Speaker: Were there any drafts or changes or was it just a flash and then suddenly all the lyrics were there in your head and you wrote them down?
Speaker: And what was the inspiration for the imagery that you describe in the song, I can see your face, I can hear your voice from here?
Speaker: Where did those ideas come from?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it didn't come in a flash.
Speaker: This one was quite hard to write.
Speaker: And I remember coming up with a few bits.
Speaker: The initial idea was I Can See Your Face.
Speaker: And I can't remember where that came from.
Speaker: But I just felt that it was so strong that Squeeze wrote a really fantastic song.
Speaker: Chris Difford wrote called Some Fantastic Place.
Speaker: And we played that at Helen's funeral because the words were so amazing and it was so poignant and so much about, it felt so right.
Speaker: So there was a little inspiration from Chris and his amazing lyrics in that song, in this.
Speaker: But I remember just thinking about
Speaker: You can't see someone's face anymore because they're not with us anymore.
Speaker: They've ascended to the spiritual plane.
Speaker: So that was the initial thing.
Speaker: And then it just sort of followed on and things started falling into place with it.
Speaker: And I'll go into this in more detail, but the first verse was about...
Speaker: When I was looking after her, the second verse is after she's gone.
Speaker: And the choruses, as I said, well, choruses, the I can see your face lines were really, the imagery was pretty straightforward.
Speaker: It's just about the fact that I couldn't picture her in my head properly to start with.
Speaker: And then after in time, I could.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: I think that's kind of a form of PTSD, isn't it, really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You kind of block it out and it comes back to you at a much later date.
Speaker: I mean, never been through that kind of experience apart from with my parents, Stu, but I think Tony will confirm that the first time we heard your vocals to this song, it was...
Speaker: you know i must i must uh confess i shed a tear you know um it was it was it was fantastic imagery in there do you remember i remember recording it with you in with you and ray that time in in the early one of the early iterations of the song i recorded it in hazelmere and ray recorded my vocal and i was really broken up at that time and you're right because i did get
Speaker: diagnosed with PTSD later on.
Speaker: And I went to see a counsellor and I got over it eventually, but it was a hard time.
Speaker: And yeah, recording it that day, I remember at Ray's, I was in bits, even singing it.
Speaker: I really couldn't sing it right.
Speaker: It was too emotional.
Speaker: So it was the right thing to do to come back to this song.
Speaker: And I'm sure Tony will talk about the musical journey of I Can See Your Face as a musical piece because it started life very differently to how it's ended up.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's true.
Speaker: The musical background was I started to write this using acoustic guitar and I wrote the verses and I wrote all the choruses and I wrote it completely on an acoustic guitar.
Speaker: And we were working together at the time.
Speaker: And I sat in my room actually here, Kedwig in Essen.
Speaker: And I fleshed out the entire idea of the song, and my original idea was to record it as an acoustic piece.
Speaker: At that time, it was going to be just completely, purely instrumental piece of music.
Speaker: And I really didn't think about the chords, the structure of the song, verse, chorus.
Speaker: So I focused primarily on just writing the song.
Speaker: Then I thought, hmm, I don't really have a really good studio.
Speaker: It's very hard for me to record acoustic guitar here and make it actually sound very good.
Speaker: Plus, of course, I was writing the song in sections, so I couldn't really play it fluently.
Speaker: And also some of the parts that I'd actually written, quite difficult to play.
Speaker: So I thought the easiest thing to do would be to transpose the whole thing into MIDI and make it a piano piece.
Speaker: That was quite difficult because I'm not musically trained.
Speaker: So what in fact I actually ended up doing was almost note by note working out what I played on guitar and then actually playing it on a MIDI keyboard and recording it into... I was using Logic Pro X at the time as my DAW.
Speaker: So that's how the song came about.
Speaker: And then I kind of fleshed out the arrangement and thought it was going to be a traditional pop song and then added some rhythm and some drums to it.
Speaker: And then the song had formulated as such with the keyboards.
Speaker: And that's when I presented it to you and John, because by this time we'd already started to get together and working on angels.
Speaker: So we were working on angels.
Speaker: And then I thought, oh, I've got this other song.
Speaker: And then I remember I just sent it across to you, Stuart, and to you, John.
Speaker: And I don't know, John, what you thought when you first heard it.
Speaker: Well, I thought it was a fantastic piece of music.
Speaker: And obviously, Stuart putting some vocals to it.
Speaker: I think I may have done the bass part on that before the vocals.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: but the bass line did change a fair after Stuart put his vocals on because another question we'll probably come to is, you know, how I decided what sort of approach to take on the song.
Speaker: But yeah, I just thought it was a great instrumental piece of music.
Speaker: I thought Stuart's lyrics and vocal melody were fantastic.
Speaker: I mean, as I've told you guys, I was listening back to some old demos earlier today and it's always been there, you know, that feel and that emotion has always been there from day one.
Speaker: I think all we did really by turning it into an orchestral piece was improve on it.
Speaker: I do remember then, going back to what you said earlier on, John, is that it was quite emotional.
Speaker: I remember listening to Stuart's lyric for the first time.
Speaker: And we played it upstairs and I played it on my iPhone to Bettino and then we did bring it here to both our eyes because it was just so emotional.
Speaker: And that was the other question that I had is because I sat on my own writing the music.
Speaker: I'm not a lyricist, so I don't really write songs.
Speaker: I write lots of music.
Speaker: I just wondered how the music, Stuart, did it kind of move you or did it inspire you?
Speaker: How did the marriage happen between your idea and the lyric and the music?
Speaker: Did it happen as soon as you heard the music or was it something you'd be, this lyric had been something you'd been working on a long time and the music was a happy accident?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: And I mentioned obviously that what the song's about and in the early days of my musical development in sort of the late 80s when I first met Helen, I was in a band then.
Speaker: And I wrote two or three, maybe half a dozen songs, which were inspired by Helen.
Speaker: And one of them was Mr. Heartache, which we're going to come to later in this series of podcasts, because that's on the album as well.
Speaker: Mr. Heartache was written on a beautiful summer's day, sitting on Ealing Colin with Helen.
Speaker: And I'll talk about that some other time.
Speaker: I Can See Your Face was the very last song I wrote about my late wife.
Speaker: And I will never write another song about her.
Speaker: But it kind of like felt at the time in 2016, I felt like I wanted to write something to just remember her because at that time I was really struggling.
Speaker: And the music that you sent over to me that I got...
Speaker: for Face, really immediately I felt this is a ballad, this is a ballad all day long.
Speaker: And although there were drums, there was quite a bit of rhythm in it at that time and it was a lot more upbeat almost.
Speaker: It just felt, yeah, I need to do something with this.
Speaker: And I had some germ of idea about I Can See Your Face, but it started to develop from there and it really was, again, one of those ones where...
Speaker: What I'm good at is listening to a piece of instrumental music and coming up with a melody for it, coming up with lines that work, that aren't too busy and the timing works.
Speaker: And it just fell into place beautifully with this.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's the story, really.
Speaker: So you didn't write the lyrics until basically during listening to Tony's music.
Speaker: I thought you had the lyrics for quite a while before the music came along.
Speaker: No, I didn't.
Speaker: I had the idea of I Can See Your Face and I had that verse.
Speaker: I jotted down something about the first chorus, It Fell Apart at the Seams and Like So Many Broken Dreams.
Speaker: And I had this idea about the song should start with the idea of...
Speaker: saying that, for example, the first chorus or the first repeat of the actual hook line is, I can't see your face, because I'd been through this hell and I couldn't remember the final chorus, if anyone has noticed it, listening to the song on the album is, I can see your face now.
Speaker: Now I can see your face
Speaker: That was the whole point of it.
Speaker: It was a very simple idea.
Speaker: And I just thought, I've got to put that into words somehow.
Speaker: And the only way of doing it was to use really simple words, because the best ideas are often the most straightforward, aren't they?
Speaker: So, yeah, that was it.
Speaker: Yeah, we did actually have musically.
Speaker: I remember the third verse, if we're going to try and classify the song into verse, chorus, verse, chorus.
Speaker: It did have quite a rhythm section.
Speaker: I can't remember the conversation, perhaps both of you can remember, but we decided to completely drop that.
Speaker: Who came up with that idea?
Speaker: I'm going to take absolute responsibility for this because there was a moment in time.
Speaker: And what it was, I was driving through Bournemouth.
Speaker: We're going down to Canvercliffs Beach with the dog, Claire and I, and I was listening to radio.
Speaker: And this song came on that I hadn't heard for a while.
Speaker: And it's by the very, very brilliant Kate Bush.
Speaker: And the song is called
Speaker: Moments of Pleasure.
Speaker: And it's one of my all-time favourite songs.
Speaker: And it's a beautiful orchestral piece that she, I mean, she's a genius and she can sing so beautifully.
Speaker: And listening to Moments of Pleasure, I remember driving in the car and I remember turning to Karen going, I've got to make face like this.
Speaker: We've got to make face, completely drop everything, make it orchestral.
Speaker: So it was purely inspired by Moments of Pleasure.
Speaker: And I remember saying to you, Tone, at the time, sorry, Tony, I shouldn't call you Tone.
Speaker: I remember saying to you at the time, I remember saying to you at the time, look, this has got to be instrumental and listen to moments of pleasure.
Speaker: And you did listen to it and you said, oh, yeah, I see where you're going with this.
Speaker: But then you said, oh, my God, this is going to be such hard work because I've never done this before.
Speaker: So it really stretched you.
Speaker: I know it did.
Speaker: But oh, my word, what a brilliant result.
Speaker: You just smashed it out of the park with this arrangement.
Speaker: It's unbelievable.
Speaker: Well, thank you very much.
Speaker: I do remember being slightly worried.
Speaker: I was always convinced that the song needed to move on a bit and needed some impetus towards the end.
Speaker: And I was a bit sceptical about the whole idea of dropping a rhythm section.
Speaker: In fact, I think what happened was that you suggested it and I remixed it and I just tried to make them quieter.
Speaker: You did.
Speaker: I think you left a light cymbal in there and there was like a ting, ting, ting in there.
Speaker: And I went, no, no, no, no drums, no drums.
Speaker: And you were going, really?
Speaker: Are you sure?
Speaker: I said, yeah, honestly, trust me.
Speaker: And I remember when John came to put bass on it, he was going, this is really hard to do, guys.
Speaker: When I had, as I said, you know, the original version was...
Speaker: much more percussive.
Speaker: You know, we had the drum part.
Speaker: I mean, I sent it over to you guys earlier.
Speaker: We had the second half of the song is actually to a rhythm, you know, it's to a drum beat.
Speaker: And I was horrified when Stuart decided to let's cut out all the drums.
Speaker: And I said to Tony, I said, yeah, okay, we'll cut out the drums, but leave them in so that I can track the bass to them.
Speaker: Because otherwise I'm going to be trying to follow Stuart's vocal line, which although perfect, varies in certain phrases and timing, an absolute nightmare to try and follow on the bass, which is what I wanted to do.
Speaker: So you sent me over a tracking version with the drums still on, and I recorded a part to that, and it didn't work.
Speaker: It didn't work.
Speaker: So I said, look, guys, let me do this again.
Speaker: I need to do this as going by feel rather than a click track or a rhythm or whatever, you know.
Speaker: I need to listen to what Stuart's singing.
Speaker: I need to listen to the orchestral parts, and I need to...
Speaker: interweave the bass into those and that's what i did it took a long time but uh tony managed to um tidy it up and sort out all the timing areas and bum notes and it came out perfect the greatest compliment i think i can give you john on on the the bass in this song is that
Speaker: Actually, in the final mix and the final mastered version, you don't notice it.
Speaker: It isn't intrusive.
Speaker: But if you suddenly listen and make a point of listening to the bass, you think, oh my goodness, he's got this.
Speaker: It really does.
Speaker: It couldn't have been any better for that song.
Speaker: And that was because every little inflection of your vocal line, I followed as closely as I could.
Speaker: So when at the end you go, now I can see your old friends.
Speaker: I mean, the bass does that as a way it goes.
Speaker: And it took me a long time to get that right.
Speaker: That's really good.
Speaker: But I'm glad I took the time on it, you know, because it worked out.
Speaker: I mean, I can listen to the song.
Speaker: I listened to the song today and I can listen to it.
Speaker: It's probably the only song on the album that I can listen to.
Speaker: and I'm not listening to what I'm playing.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: You know, I mean, it is just a complete piece.
Speaker: And the bass is kind of...
Speaker: It's an accompaniment rather than something that should be noticed.
Speaker: And it all works perfectly with the instrumentation that Tony used on the song with your vocal melody.
Speaker: Everything slotted perfectly into place on that one.
Speaker: For me, anyway.
Speaker: My proudest moment with the bass, I think.
Speaker: It was a lovely bass.
Speaker: I remember actually we tried to talk you into buying a fretless bass, if I remember.
Speaker: Stuart and I were messaging to you and saying, oh, John, buy a fretless bass.
Speaker: Come on, buy a fretless bass, dude.
Speaker: I managed to compensate for it a little bit.
Speaker: I remember that one of the... I'm going to do a mix breakdown of all our songs eventually.
Speaker: I know I keep threatening to, but I will actually do that because it's interesting.
Speaker: Well, it's interesting for us, maybe not for anyone else, but, you know, who knows.
Speaker: And I added a very, very deep chorus effect to the choruses or at least to some of the sections of the song.
Speaker: I tried my best to try and emulate or fill in for a fretless bass.
Speaker: And actually, I think, I think, I think it worked quite well.
Speaker: Sorry, yeah, the flanging effect that you put on the bass kind of emulated a fretless for me.
Speaker: But to buy a fretless bass would have been just for that song.
Speaker: You know, I'm not Sting.
Speaker: You know, so...
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: So, yeah, so what we needed to do, we got that lovely Fender sound and you put some nice chorus effects and some flange or something on it or phasing on it totally.
Speaker: So in the higher register bass notes, it sounds like a fretless.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It sounds really, really good.
Speaker: I remember talking about the orchestral arrangement, how it went from a pop band to an orchestral arrangement.
Speaker: I think it changed the character of the song.
Speaker: I mean, for example, at the beginning, on early versions, I had these choral synthesizer voices, which was supposedly, I think I was trying to emulate the effect like the dawn, you know, like the birds are waking.
Speaker: So I tried to go for a very sort of emotive, earthly sound.
Speaker: Yeah, you had all the tweeting birds on there, didn't you, if I remember rightly?
Speaker: Originally, on some version back there, we did actually have birds, and that was actually an effect from a synthesizer, which I think was called Breaking Dawn something.
Speaker: And then actually when we came to do the production, for some reason my plugin wasn't working and I couldn't find the sound anymore.
Speaker: So I thought, what am I going to do?
Speaker: I thought horns, French horns, you know, I mean, typically the beginning of a day or the beginning of a morning, let's stick some French horns in.
Speaker: And if Stuart hadn't suggested turning it into an orchestral piece, I probably wouldn't have come up with that idea.
Speaker: So, and then I think a lot of demos actually ran with the horns at the beginning.
Speaker: But I really like the synthesizer sound, one of the patches that I use, one of the presets.
Speaker: And I went back and added it almost a week before we'd finished the song on production.
Speaker: So, in effect, we actually have both now.
Speaker: We have the best of both worlds.
Speaker: We have these French horns.
Speaker: I think they're French horns.
Speaker: And we have this original synthesized sound that I like.
Speaker: But that was typical for the song.
Speaker: It kind of developed...
Speaker: I think we actually took a year to write it.
Speaker: It must have been quite a long time.
Speaker: It went through various mix downs and various stages.
Speaker: Went through a lot of phases.
Speaker: And even today, that last third verse where the drums are there, I still listen to it and I still want something to pick the song up a little bit.
Speaker: I tried to introduce some different elements into the song, some different string sounds.
Speaker: And I think the vocal actually, the credit to the song, of course, I think the vocal carries the entire song.
Speaker: And I was worrying and obsessing about, you know, that the song wouldn't carry itself.
Speaker: It was all starting to sound a little bit too much the same.
Speaker: You couldn't distinguish from verse to verse and chorus to chorus.
Speaker: But actually, listening back to it, the vocal just carries the whole thing.
Speaker: And the music is almost kind of incidental in the background because for me, the song is all about the message of the song.
Speaker: And that's where the emotion comes from.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Most people say that in any mix, you know, the song, the lyric is king.
Speaker: But in this song, it never was so true.
Speaker: I mean, literally, the music could just be completely in the background.
Speaker: It's all about the emotion, all about the lyric.
Speaker: I kind of have to disagree in some ways on that, Tony, because I think the musical score, it was very, very carefully and intricately put together.
Speaker: For instance, the heartbeat that you put in on the, when Stuart sings a line, I feel your heartbeat from here, and you put that heartbeat in, and that reoccurs later in the song.
Speaker: And this kind of...
Speaker: a reprise of certain sounds that only, you know, not even a reprise.
Speaker: Sometimes you only hear them once.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then you hear that heartbeat repeat in the last verse and some of the orchestral phrasing as well.
Speaker: I mean, I...
Speaker: it picks up on that last verse and chorus without any kind of rhythm or drum track.
Speaker: It doesn't need it.
Speaker: It's there in the swell of the actual sound of the instrumentation and Stuart's vocals, especially this falsetto that he does at the end, which gets me every time.
Speaker: I'd forgotten about the heartbeat.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: I think I included that in this so-called now famous third verse that I thought needed a bit more pepper, a little bit more push.
Speaker: It appears during that.
Speaker: And I think that was my last effort.
Speaker: My last effort to try and get what I originally wanted was to just tuck in those heartbeat snare hits.
Speaker: Or it could have been a kick.
Speaker: I think it was a kick drum.
Speaker: And I thought, well, you know, we've got to have something rhythmic in the background here.
Speaker: And I'm sure that if I just tuck them in there, you know, Stuart won't notice them and he'll love them.
Speaker: And the bells, of course.
Speaker: You know, the, what's it called?
Speaker: The harpsichord type.
Speaker: Not the harpsichord.
Speaker: You know, just like when I do a drummer, you'd have lots of different bells of different sizes and you'd pull your sticks across it.
Speaker: It would do that glittering effect.
Speaker: I think one with the bells is that the lyric is, the chimes is, you had to go to a better place or something like that.
Speaker: And I thought, well, this is a bit on, you know, right on the nose.
Speaker: I thought, you know, because it sounded a bit like, this is not a funny subject, but I must admit, Bring Out You're Dead, the sketch from Monty Python did come to mind.
Speaker: And as he's bringing out the dead, he goes, bring out your dead.
Speaker: Bong.
Speaker: Here's one.
Speaker: Nine points.
Speaker: Bong.
Speaker: You know.
Speaker: Oh, God, that's sick.
Speaker: That's where I got.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: I never wanted to mention it because it's a serious subject.
Speaker: And obviously, you know, it's obviously tragic.
Speaker: It's an emotional lyric.
Speaker: But it's amazing where you get inspiration from even the darkest of times.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And that's where I got it.
Speaker: And I thought, OK, well, should I do this?
Speaker: I mean, it really is sort of like it's it's a bit of a cliche.
Speaker: And I found this typical sort of, you know, Notre Dame style, you know, sort of bell that obviously symbolizes something ominous and something tragic has happened.
Speaker: I thought, well, I'll stick it in and I'll see if it works.
Speaker: And it worked.
Speaker: And then Stuart didn't say, no, cut that out.
Speaker: That's too grim.
Speaker: I don't want that.
Speaker: So that stuck.
Speaker: And at the end, you mentioned, John, I forgot about these, I don't know what you call them, but these bells that have sort of, you know, this ringing chimes.
Speaker: Chimes, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, Chimes.
Speaker: And that came straight from Neil Peart and Rush.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: I mean, always on songs that they recorded in the early 70s, like Hemispheres and Xanadu.
Speaker: If you look at Neil Peart's... John Peart, his name was, wasn't it?
Speaker: No, Neil Peart.
Speaker: No, Neil Peart.
Speaker: Yeah, Drummer.
Speaker: Neil Peart, if you look at his kit, it's just amazing.
Speaker: I mean, he has like a kick drum and a snare, but all these orchestral instruments he has around him, like big kettle drums and these chimes and wind chimes and bells.
Speaker: That's where I got the inspiration for that, because I thought it was the ending of the song.
Speaker: And I did actually have a couple of tracks like Xanadu and The Trees in My Mind.
Speaker: And always when Rush comes to these quiet moments, Neil Peart would always get up from the stall and sort of do a run along these chimes and things.
Speaker: It's amazing and funny where influences come from, but I do remember that.
Speaker: The early versions, we didn't have the falsetto vocal.
Speaker: I mean, that was a late addition.
Speaker: Where did you get the idea for that?
Speaker: I did a bit of training with an amazing tutor back in the late 80s in London called Tona de Bret.
Speaker: And she taught various singers, including George Michael.
Speaker: And she asked me one of the early questions was...
Speaker: Who do you think you sound like?
Speaker: And I said, well, I've got a similar register to George Michael, but I'm not, obviously he's a fantastic singer and I'd love to be half as good as him.
Speaker: And she said, no, you will be.
Speaker: You will be if you really keep at it.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, Blimey, this is amazing.
Speaker: But she was the one that said to me, you're basically, your normal singing register is all comes from air in your chest.
Speaker: It's thing that's called the head voice because there's no air.
Speaker: You don't use air in your chest.
Speaker: It's all basically in your neck and in your mouth.
Speaker: So your head voice is your falsetto voice.
Speaker: And I've always had a pretty good falsetto.
Speaker: We got to, you know, if you're going to ask me a question later about the development of the, sorry, about the meaning of the words, the verses, I'll come to that.
Speaker: But I got to a point where to finish the song off somehow and I
Speaker: The original ending of the song was Now I Can See Your Face with my elevated falsetto vocal on the line face.
Speaker: Oh, sorry, on the word face.
Speaker: And it ended there.
Speaker: I felt I wanted to have a voice from heaven.
Speaker: I wanted to almost to have Helen's voice, if you like.
Speaker: And she'd hate this if she was still with us today.
Speaker: Because she was really, yeah, she didn't buy any attention at all.
Speaker: She was a very sort of private person.
Speaker: But I wanted to have a voice from heaven going, Now I Can See Your Face.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: It just felt right and I thought, yeah, use my head voice because I know it's good.
Speaker: And it actually is the best part of the song for me vocally.
Speaker: I'm not desperate about the vocal in this song.
Speaker: I felt I could do better, but it's such a hard song to sing, to get emotion into.
Speaker: So it was simply that.
Speaker: I just felt I want that voice from Helen saying, yeah, I could see your face too.
Speaker: And that's simply what it was.
Speaker: Yeah, I disagree.
Speaker: I don't think you could have done any better on this, Stuart, in my opinion.
Speaker: Yeah, but you're always your own worst critic, aren't you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As any musician or writer and singer would say, you know, you're always like, oh God, I could have done that better.
Speaker: I remember hearing it.
Speaker: I thought it was amazing.
Speaker: Actually, I didn't know that you could sing like that.
Speaker: And I listened to it and I just thought, oh, he's just grabbed somebody off the street.
Speaker: He's got a session musician to come in and do this.
Speaker: You know, I mean, how can anyone sing like that?
Speaker: It's easy and it's the easiest register to sing in, to be honest.
Speaker: The falsetto is so easy.
Speaker: to sing.
Speaker: I mean, you remember in the 80s, that guy in Jimmy Sutherfield, do you remember Bronski and the Common Arts?
Speaker: He always sang in his head voice, in his falsetto, and he got an amazing falsetto voice.
Speaker: And I kind of, I always knew from years ago I could do it well, and just, it was a no-brainer for me.
Speaker: I just thought this is
Speaker: you know, this is easy to do and I want to really get some feel into it.
Speaker: And an old friend of mine, a musical friend of mine, said the same thing.
Speaker: He said, you know, that really makes a song.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I just wanted to come back to, it's funny actually, we had a bit of a break, we recorded Angels and we took some time out, didn't we, for a year and a half and I remember a lot of the song ideas I had I decided I wanted to develop instrumentally because we weren't working together at that particular time.
Speaker: But I always remember when I wrote the music for I Can See Your Face was that I did have an idea in the back of my mind and I never spoke to you about it.
Speaker: And this is rather uncanny.
Speaker: Is that my point of view was that I wanted to write if I could write a lyric.
Speaker: I called the piece of music Postcards from Heaven.
Speaker: This was completely unknown about what you were writing.
Speaker: And I remember listening to your idea for the song because I sent the demo off to you without having any idea of what you were going to write and you sent it back to me.
Speaker: And I remember the first conversation we had, I said, that's so uncanny because I actually had this point of view that it was called Postcards from Heaven.
Speaker: And the idea, of course, was pretty similar to yours is that if I had somebody I cared about and that I loved, unfortunately, had gone...
Speaker: or I went, is that this would be me sort of sending them a postcard from heaven, and then I would design the lyric, the idea about that.
Speaker: And it was just funny that I never wrote the lyric, of course, but the music inspired this idea.
Speaker: And then when you came back to me with...
Speaker: you know, the original version of I Could See Your Face, I remember saying to her, I said, that was really spooky.
Speaker: The song was meant to be.
Speaker: I mean, almost my idea for Inspired by the Music, Newer Lyric.
Speaker: It was just like two ships coming together in the middle of the night.
Speaker: I mean, it was just perfect.
Speaker: It really was.
Speaker: And, you know, I've got the lyrics here, so I'm just reminding myself and looking at them.
Speaker: But as a progression in the song, the first verse...
Speaker: It was very much written about my time looking after Helen.
Speaker: She, you know, she declined, sadly, and I watched her decline in front of my face over two years, you know, in front of my eyes, rather, over the two years.
Speaker: The second verse was...
Speaker: In the final version, we had a female voice singing because the second verse is Helen talking to me.
Speaker: And my now wife, my lovely wife, Claire, who I can't talk about enough because she's amazing.
Speaker: I said to her one evening, darling, would you be okay with doing a couple of words?
Speaker: And she went, well, when, how, why?
Speaker: And I said, on a song.
Speaker: She went, you want me to sing?
Speaker: And I said, well, no, just say them.
Speaker: She said, yeah, I can try that.
Speaker: So we went upstairs to the studio and we did it.
Speaker: And I just said, all I need you to do is...
Speaker: In your lovely spoken voice, she says, because this is Helen talking to me, and she did it, and we put it down, and straight away thought, oh my God, that's just perfect.
Speaker: It's only two words, but it just works.
Speaker: So the second verse is Helen saying, I feel your heartbeat from here.
Speaker: I see your hopes and your fears.
Speaker: Care for the ones you love.
Speaker: It's all in you.
Speaker: There is no above.
Speaker: I get slightly emotional even talking about it now, but, you know, you could probably hear that in my voice, but probably one of the best verses I've ever written and so simple, so simple.
Speaker: And, yeah, that was it.
Speaker: I feel your heartbeat from here.
Speaker: I see your hopes and your fears.
Speaker: Care for the ones that you love.
Speaker: It's all in you, there is no above.
Speaker: And the fact that Claire only spoke two words on the album, it was a cameo, kind of cameo thing, and it's just perfect.
Speaker: The only other voice on the album apart from yourself, Stu.
Speaker: Oh, God, yeah, and probably a lot better than my voice, but anyway.
Speaker: Yeah, well, yeah, we're going to get her to do the next album.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: So, yeah, it just developed from there.
Speaker: And the final verses where we go into the sort of chorus lines, you know, it fell apart at the seams and like so many broken dreams.
Speaker: The final verse, the third verse is night falls familiar and cold.
Speaker: The world is turning as dreams unfold.
Speaker: Little things will happen.
Speaker: Now I know just who I am.
Speaker: Was written after a death.
Speaker: Was written about my feelings after she died, after a death.
Speaker: So, I love this lyric because it's a story.
Speaker: It really sums up something terrible that's happened to so many people.
Speaker: It happens to all of us, but really pleased I got something down in words that actually works.
Speaker: And, yeah.
Speaker: It's a very captivating song.
Speaker: As I said, I can listen to it and it doesn't matter that I'm playing on it.
Speaker: It doesn't matter that Tony's done some amazing instrumental stuff on it.
Speaker: You know, you're just listening to the lyrics on this song.
Speaker: My only final thoughts and feelings about when I did this and when I actually recorded it was my motivation was, obviously, I've said before, it's the last song I ever wrote about my late wife.
Speaker: But my motivation was very much I wanted to do something that she would have liked.
Speaker: as well.
Speaker: And I think she would have liked this because she quite liked, she was a great fan of soul, great fan of Stevie Wonder and soul music.
Speaker: She loved Motown.
Speaker: But she also had a great sort of love of ballads and, you know, emotional songs.
Speaker: And I thought if she was here today, I think she could sit down and go, yeah, I quite like that.
Speaker: Pretty good.
Speaker: Pretty good.
Speaker: She'd have said, it's pretty good, you old git.
Speaker: I don't know how she would have said it.
Speaker: Well, it's a fine tribute, Stuart.
Speaker: Fine tribute.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's, as I say, it's a... Sorry, Tony, go on.
Speaker: No, I was going to say more people, unfortunately.
Speaker: I mean, we want to try and get more people to listen to the song because I think that a lot of people, this would resonate with many, many, many people.
Speaker: I remember that recently when I went through my particular health issues with cancer, you always, of course, think about the worst and you do try and imagine, obviously, you know, the end game, if everything doesn't run perfectly, obviously results, unfortunately, either me passing away.
Speaker: And then Bettina being left all on her own.
Speaker: And you can quite easily take the lyrics of your song and anyone can actually put their feet into your shoes and walk the miles that you've walked and completely relate to it.
Speaker: In any situation.
Speaker: But I feel also what I really like about the song, it's not in your face, it's not subtle.
Speaker: It is subtle, sorry, that's what I meant to say.
Speaker: is that you have to listen to the lyrics and listen to them all and listen from the beginning to the end to get the entire story.
Speaker: And I think that's what's actually, you know, a tribute to you in your songwriting, your lyric writing, is that it's such an intelligent and clever lyric in my point of view.
Speaker: And you really have to listen to it.
Speaker: And it's not in your face.
Speaker: In your face.
Speaker: I can see your face.
Speaker: It's not actually in your face.
Speaker: But it's not on the nose, which is another phrase that I used earlier on.
Speaker: I think it's a perfect lyric.
Speaker: It's just one of those happy accidents, a perfect marriage of music and lyrics.
Speaker: And yeah, I just hopefully that more people will stream it and more people will buy the CD.
Speaker: And I think they would wouldn't be something they'll put on having a party and friends around, but something they could listen to and totally relate to.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: And I think we've said it before, you know, it's easy to become really self-indulgent about this lyric and the meaning of this song and how heavy it is and how personal it is.
Speaker: But it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is without that amazing arrangement and your input into the music, the musical arrangement on this, Tony, because it's... I remember at the time...
Speaker: coming back to you on the chat saying, oh, I can't believe you've done this.
Speaker: This is incredible.
Speaker: It really surprised me.
Speaker: I didn't think you had it in you to come up with something so complete as that.
Speaker: And it was just brilliant.
Speaker: I just, you know...
Speaker: This is one of the songs that, you know, I'm getting better at this mixing game and music producing game, but this is one song that if I had a wish, it would be, yeah, I'm going to give this to a pro engineer and a pro...
Speaker: a pro mixing engineer or pro musicians i mean i couldn't score it actually i do have software that can score it i would love this you know if i had money was no object i would get an orchestra and say you play it um and then i would just get someone to record it and you know at abbey road studios and have the whole thing sounding absolutely amazing so i don't think i the arrangement i really enjoyed doing um i i studied orchestral um
Speaker: orchestral music and how orchestras arrange themselves and where they seat.
Speaker: I actually looked at the diagram, how a typical orchestra would actually be arranged on a live stage from the audience perspective.
Speaker: That is your attention to detail.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: That's what makes you good at what you do.
Speaker: I knew the violins were going to be sitting... Obviously, the violins are going to be sitting there on the left-hand side of the pit.
Speaker: The cellos are obviously going to be over on the right-hand side of the pit.
Speaker: And then the trick was finding out where all the instruments should be and then sort of panning them in the stereo field.
Speaker: I mean, again, that's where I wish I was a slightly better mixer is because...
Speaker: I think you'd be able to separate out the instruments in the stereo field and you literally, as a listener, would be able to hear them coming from different areas.
Speaker: I think my mix is a little bit too flat, a little bit too stereo.
Speaker: And although you can hear different elements, the audience perspective of listening to an orchestra, I just don't have the skills yet.
Speaker: But maybe one day I will.
Speaker: Well, you did a good job.
Speaker: You did a good job, mate.
Speaker: I'm going to drop something in here.
Speaker: Sorry, go on, go on.
Speaker: No, I was going to say this would be the first song that I'm probably going to do a spatial audio mix.
Speaker: When I come to remix all these songs using Dolby Atmos, well, I'm not using Dolby Atmos because I don't actually have a Dolby Atmos studio, but using Logic Pro X, you can actually mix using a binaural plugin and you can emulate spatial audio.
Speaker: So my plan is to have sort of like violins above your head and below your head and we literally have...
Speaker: A 360 degree experience, hopefully.
Speaker: But this is going to be the first song that I'm going to attempt to do a mix.
Speaker: I'm going to drop something in here because, you know, going along with what you're describing there, it's almost the perfect song for us to have an orchestral, sorry, the London Symphony Orchestra doing for us.
Speaker: But I'm going to drop something into this that you guys probably don't know.
Speaker: You probably haven't realised this, but...
Speaker: You've got the London Symphony Orchestra to clear it.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: I always felt from the moment I put the first vocal down and sang this song that it needed a girl singing it.
Speaker: It needed a girl's voice and I needed a really good female vocalist to sing this song.
Speaker: I am friends on Facebook, as a number of people are, I guess, with a Mancunian girl, Lass, called Ren Harview, who is an amazing singer.
Speaker: She's brilliant.
Speaker: And I remember a few years back, I messaged her to say, hi, Ren, I'm Stuart, you know,
Speaker: friends on Facebook, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: I've got this amazing song that I've written and it really needs a girl's voice.
Speaker: And I bought her album, which is fantastic.
Speaker: I said, would you be interested?
Speaker: Bless her.
Speaker: She did reply saying, I basically write my own stuff.
Speaker: So no, I'm not going to, you know.
Speaker: Anyway, recently, so that was a no, but I thought, okay, fine.
Speaker: And then I listened again recently to watching a program on telly.
Speaker: I was listening to Jane Elmore Trading singing Love and Affection, and I went straight online.
Speaker: onto her website and send her an email and say, Joan, would you be interested in singing this song?
Speaker: No reply yet, surprisingly.
Speaker: But I still feel one day, if we ever, ever get anywhere with this, I would love a really good female singer to sing this song because I think going back to the original idea of it,
Speaker: you know, moments of pleasure by Kate Bush.
Speaker: Kate Bush, someone like that could absolutely bring this to life.
Speaker: And Joan has got such an amazing soulful voice.
Speaker: Joan lives five minutes away.
Speaker: She lives five minutes from you, John.
Speaker: You need to get round there and say, Joan, you know my mate Stu sent you this message.
Speaker: Get on with it.
Speaker: Get on with it, love.
Speaker: Come on, come on board.
Speaker: I'll start stalking her house.
Speaker: So to wrap it up, Stu, one final question.
Speaker: Such a personal experience, the song for you personally.
Speaker: Did it actually help with the entire healing process, if that's one way of putting it?
Speaker: Was it helpful in any way going through the process of writing the song?
Speaker: That's a good question, sensitive question too.
Speaker: And I'm going to say actually not really.
Speaker: It did in a way to get ideas down.
Speaker: While Helen was ill and declining, I kept a diary and turned it into my own book, which I never ever will release.
Speaker: It's just for family and friends because it's intensely personal.
Speaker: And so that was cathartic.
Speaker: I can see Your Face was written sort of four or five years after, sorry, it was written about two or three years after Helen died.
Speaker: The lyrics were kind of come up with about three years afterwards.
Speaker: It didn't really help me.
Speaker: I was in a difficult place at the time because I'd got into a relationship with an old friend and it wasn't really working.
Speaker: We were just mates and we weren't in love.
Speaker: and I found myself writing this song about someone I did love when I was with someone I didn't and it made me think this is really weird.
Speaker: The biggest thing that's helped me get over everything and really get my life back in order was meeting Claire in 2017 and I've never looked back because
Speaker: um we have that we have an anthem between us and that is the proclaimers song sunshine on leith so go and listen to sunshine on leith because that is all about how i came back from a really dark place to where i am now and it's all down to meeting a great woman so yeah there you go good stuff good stuff
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.
