Into Thy Hands Song 2: Don't Wait For Me

Song #2: Don't Wait For Me

Words: Ian Tanner, Andrew Horrocks, Jeff Moseley, Al Powell and Rick Hutt

Music: Andrew Horrocks, Al Powell, Rick Hutt, Mike Powell and Ian Tanner

First of all, sorry for the somewhat lengthy delay between posting info on "Remember Me" and doing this one. What can I say? Paying work! Priorities!!

Don't Wait For Me had its origins under a different song title, that being "The First Step." We wrote it during the summer of 1987 and recorded a demo of the song at a live concert near the end of that year. The song was credited to every member of the band. It should be, because everybody contributed to this one. It started out with ideas from Andy and then just grew from there.

The song had its moments, but had a very weak chorus. At some point, I'll find a way to post the early live recording. It's pretty hilarious! (unintentionally!)

It had the verses intact, even lyrically, but the chorus was quite dreadful. The words in the chorus simply repeated the phrases "I've been waiting for, waiting for your love. I've been waiting for your love...." Pretty uninspiring! There was also an embarrassing keyboard solo later on, which was made worse by the use of the DX7 horn sound I was using! Yikes!

So we knew that the song needed work. Rick Hutt, our record producer strongly suggested a re-write, so we decided to work it all out in the studio while we were set up for bed tracks. This of course took place during that awful time period I spoke about earlier when the band was in very bad shape emotionally. So as a result, this re-write was done without a certain member of the band being present.

All that ugliness aside, what we came up with, especially with the assistance of Rick Hutt, was quite great. It's a song that featured everybody at one point or another. Al's bass parts were really inventive and melodic; Mike got to play some Copeland-esque moody stuff; Andy got to do a ripping solo; and I had quite a few moments where the vocals could really shine.

Off the top of the song, there was percussion provided by the "talking drum" we borrowed early on. I ended up playing it for this song, but it certainly isn't a huge, important part - just a few random hits before verse 1.

Verse 1 starts with Al playing harmonics on the bass, while Andy plays his original guitar figure that helped inspire the writing of the whole song.

Then we hit the chorus, which was all brand new. I remember when it call came together, I had this excitement level, as if this were the greatest song ever written! It was a lot of fun to see a terrible chorus get such a great make-over. There are many layers to this chorus - the moving bass line, the grungy guitar stabs, a cleaner sounding guitar section, plus some silky sampled guitars on the downbeats - a real pastiche if I use the word correctly!

At the end of the first chorus, I again utilized lots of tracks for a quick vocal effect. On the word "Love" I sang a descending scale down from the first note, but I wanted each note to be on its own track. In the end, I think each note actually got doubled or tripled, so by the end of the phrase, there would have been over 16 tracks of vocals all for one little "candy." Of course, these tracks would have been mixed down to a stereo pair for obvious tape-saving reasons! (in the classic Beatle days, this process was known as "Reduction mixing" where you would take 3 tracks and dump them down to 1 track, thus freeing up 3 tracks for more overdubs.)

Before the big guitar solo, we get this building section that has hints of the big guitar solo to come, but sharing space with a brooding keyboard part, care of the Roland D-50. The solo Andy played was very indicative of the 1980's (ie. whammy bar dive bombs and some shredding licks!), but was very well played, and I'm sure it didn't come quickly or easily in the studio! All of this builds to a frenzy before dropping off into the bottomless pit of Al's falling solo bass note!

One of my favorite aspects of this song was the meandering ending. We used to love putting a bunch of seemingly random events during a fade-out. If you listen closely, you can hear some of Andy's clean guitar part from the choruses playing over top of this ending section. It has nothing to do with it, but it's there anyway.

Now, to end on a depressing note... the big problem with this song on the album, was the horrible mix job we did on it. From the first big hit of the song, all you hear is skull crushing top end with nothing below to support it. Al played all of these great bass parts, and you can't hear a thing!! In my recent tweaking of the original CD mixes, I've been able to boost bass, and even for the fun of it, played a new bass part along with Al's part. I don't think I'll officially put that out because it's kind of blasphemy to start adding anything to an existing album, (certainly without the consent of the others!!), but it's fun for me to finally hear this song not sounding like a total disaster!!

My hope is, that you folks out there who enjoyed this album, will also one day soon get to hear the album sounding a lot better than it did back in 1988!!

Ian - June 14/09