Words: Ian Tanner, Rick Hutt, Jeff Moseley (and Ted Acorn)
Music: Ian Tanner and Andrew Horrocks
This is a song I mentioned in an earlier blog, that dates back to my very early days as a Christian. I was still in high school when I wrote this song. It was called "Wait For The Lord." As I mentioned, I brought this song to Andy in the early days and for a little while, it was part of our setlist, but eventually got dropped to make way for better songs.
Our preliminary demos, that Reunion Records heard before production of Into Thy Hands, left them feeling that there was no obvious single in any of the songs we had submitted. (We submitted over 20 songs!) Knowing this, we began to look for existing material that might meet the radio-friendly criteria that Reunion was looking to satisfy. I pulled Wait For The Lord out of the dungeon, and when Reunion heard it, they immediately suggested that we re-think the song and give it a make-over.
Andy was instrumental in getting the song away from its original sound, that being a sappy, Rhodes-laced adult ballad. Putting acoustic guitars in place of the Rhodes really brought the song into a new light, so we pressed on and made it happen.
Lyrically, this song was torture. My original words for Wait For The Lord were as amateur as you'd expect from someone writing their first song as a newborn Christian! I recall, that the bulk of the new words were written in the front foyer of Cedartree Studio in the very first days of album production. Jeff Moseley, the A&R rep from Reunion was with us at this time, so we sat in the front area of the studio brainstorming possible lyrics. The words were credited to Jeff, our producer Rick Hutt and to me, but I'm sure that everybody had a say in the matter. I'm pretty sure Andy and Al were suggesting lines too.
One contribution that was not legally accounted for, but DID make the album credits, was the contribution of our dear friend Ted Acorn. Ted was our lighting manager, and also owned the house that Mike, Al and I moved into as room-mates. Ted was older than we were, and on the road, he had to put up with a lot of annoying immaturity, but he was a great guy. (When he got married in 1989, he of course, booted us all out of his house!!) Ted was the one who suggested one crucial line of the lyric, "till Jesus comes." None of us could think of any appropriate line for this exposed part of the song, until Ted offered his input.
Now, if you remember, I recently mentioned what I consider 2 key ingredients to the success of The Awakening's songs, one being the WHOAS, and the other being a 4 note melody.
Lonely Place is where that lovely 4 note melody started, and I will now attempt to showcase the many places where that 4 note melody would pop up its head!! The notes were G, F#, D, A. Those are the notes of the bridge melody, "His truth can be found, in a lonely place..."
While this song was still corny and called "Wait For The Lord," we began accidentally re-using that theme in other songs, and after awhile, it became a bit of a joke, so we'd throw it in just for fun.
Here's an incomplete list of songs using that exact theme (often in the exact same key!)
Fireside - the keyboards on the outro
The Only Way - the 2nd half of Andy's guitar solo
Wrestling In The Jungle - "you cannot do a thing TO HELP YOURSELF!!"
Again - "evening takes me far away, from the heart I HAD TODAY" and on and on!
Again - The end of the big guitar solo/cello line, right before last verse
Knife Of Life - keyboard line in middle of chorus 2
That's all I can recall, but I'm sure we had later material that purposefully or accidentally borrowed that 4 note theme!!
Anyway... onto the production. One distinct memory of I have of this song was the keyboard solo. I remember being very proud of that solo when I did it. It was not easy to perform, as I was using the "never-cheesy (!!)" pitch-bending wheel, and I made constant mistakes every time I tried to nail it! The sound came from the Roland D-50, which really was, in my opinion, the greatest keyboard invention of the 1980's. I don't have one anymore, but on any keyboard work I do these days, I still call upon those lush sounds originally created on the D-50.
But in regards to the choice of sound for THIS solo, well... time has not been so fair!!
Here's how it went down.
We finished the album, waited for it to be manufactured, and then had a big party at Ted's house to debut the album to some of our closest friends. I'll never forget getting to the keyboard solo in this song and hearing one of Mike's friends, who I'll call Steve H. for posterity (!!), make a fairly harsh statement about that keyboard sound. I have no idea what he actually said, but I was really offended by it. How dare he suggest that my hard-working keyboard solo was "lame" sounding or any other negative word he could come up with?!! I thought it was magical, and he thought it was stupid. I was mad about this for a long time, even after he took me aside and apologized for hurting my feelings. (Years later, we've bumped into each other at Starbucks and I'm sure next time we do, I'll bring this memory up and buy him an over-priced Latte to ensure that he knows all is forgiven!!)
As time changes peoples' minds about a lot of things, time has certainly changed my opinion of this 20 second segment of my recorded life. I hear the solo now with the same embarrassment level that Steve must have heard the first time through. But I was still hopelessly lost in the 80's and in the world of Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, so I was far too un-cool to see how silly that sound really was. A guitar solo would have been far better, or no solo at all.
Oh well... 'twas the 80's!!
One beef I had with the record company regarding this song had to do with the slight lyrical modification at the end of the song. They didn't like the constant repetition of the phrase "Lonely Place" at the end of the song. Saying that we "believed in a lonely place" didn't make any sense to your typically brain-dead radio listener (No offense!) They suggested that we re-phrase it "I believe in a silent place" because Lonely Place was considered too negative.
This song basically went through an insane amount of massaging, and the production was done very carefully to ensure massive radio success. In some ways, it didn't really fit in with the rest of the album, but with the inclusion of "Onward" on side 2, it at least came close to being relevant. After all of this effort, it was a real shame when the song did nothing at radio. I have to believe that Reunion had somewhat lost interest in us by the time the promotion of this album began. Perhaps they had taken just a little too much flack from me and the other guys regarding creative decisions, or perhaps it was because we went over budget and almost didn't deliver the album at all. Whatever it was, this song did not end up being the huge single that would have assured us a 3rd album in the year 1989.
It's sad because, for all the criticism I can give towards this song, it's actually a very nice production and has some really special moments in it. I love the ending. In the barely out of training diapers digital age of CD's, the concept of A Side and B Side was still important even though the medium no longer needed such categorization. Lonely Place ending as it did, provided the perfect sense of "End of Part One" that the album needed.
Ian - June 15/09
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