Words and Music by Ian Tanner
I mentioned in a previous posting that this song happened accidentally, during a break from soundcheck, while playing a great, older guitar Andy was borrowing from a friend!!
There's not much to tell about this song other than the fact that the guitar voicings were considered a bit "off" when Andy first learned them. I was typically snobby and insisted that Andy play the chords the way I played them, and that he NOT find "better" ways to voice those chords. The open strings were SUPPOSED to create tension and lack of gender in the chords!
I freely admit that those chords were the way they were because I didn't know what the hell I was doing as a guitar player back then! These days, I would probably never write anything like this because I know too many things about the guitar fretboard to get all curious and experimental again. That's why this song is special to me in retrospect.
Unlike the total lack of bass on "Don't Wait For Me," this song got a nice, full sound out of the bass for the final mix. Sadly though, and I hate to be so negative all the time (!!), but it's a real shame that the core acoustic guitar track sounds so "plugged in" and synthetic!! Andy, at that time was playing a Takamine acoustic/electric guitar, and I suspect it was recorded DIRECT and not acoustically. The guitar probably had a lousy acoustic sound and worked best when used plugged in, but wow... what a thin, crummy sounding acoustic guitar! I'd love to hear this song recorded on a really nice guitar, through a beautiful, expensive ribbon microphone! Oh well, it's for the ages I guess!!
From a songwriting perspective, I remember running into a slight snag creatively. The melody at the end of the verse didn't seem familiar to me when I wrote it, but by the time we started recording it, it suddenly occurred to me that it was a note for note copy of a song that MADONNA had used in one of her hits at the time!! I was mortified!! From that point on, I tried to change the way it was sung. What's worse is, I think the words were even exactly the same! "It burns inside of me." I forget the name of the Madonna song, but it was one of the first Madonna songs I remember hearing and thinking, "wow, this is actually a really, really great song!" It was from a movie she did perhaps with Sean Penn. Anybody remember?!
Anyway... so I changed the melody slightly on "it burns inside of me" to prevent myself from accidentally stealing from the lovely Madonna!
Lyrically, I was still trying to cram a lot of cutesy intelligence into the words, and sometimes it worked, like on the lines "Memories crying, ocean sighed" and "and now my eyes are weak, my tears begin to speak." The "no drowning souls in lakes of fire" may have been a little over-the-top, but we were oh so serious back in the 80's!!
I also love the vibe of the middle section. I'm pretty sure some of those dreamy keyboards in this section were played by Glenn Koehler, our manager during these days. This was done when I had had enough of being at the studio and invited Glenn to come in and do my job for me! It's one of the few times where there is some actual space in the recording.
Ian - June 14/09
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