by William Topley
Could this be the advice of a son to a recently confirmed father? The gospel element in the music is echoed in the line "Don't feel shame when you bend down to pray". Then Luke and Jim take an instrumental break that reminds me of Carnival and John Canoe music from the cane fields of St Philip, Barbados to the cricket pitch on St George, Bermuda .
I was once taking some master tapes to Nashville to mix (the first four songs on Mixed Blessing). I flew via Detroit and when I arrived from London there was a blizzard and all flights were cancelled. I knew from having toured recently that there was an hotel in the airport building and so off I went carrying four reels of 2-inch master tape. I was greeted at the desk by a scene from Rabelais. Grown men fighting and crying and bribing and air mile-ing to try and get a room. No chance, all full, no taxis, sleep on the floor. I called Claudia Mize from Mercury records at home, "gimme five minutes".
She rang me back to say her friends in the limo company in Nashville had some buddies at the private jet airport in Detroit that always held rooms at the Hilton and that BJ would pick me up in ten minutes. The envy on the faces of the gold Amex mob as I jumped in to the enormous car was a joy to witness. I then tried to top this stroke of good fortune by ringing some friends in Detroit to tell them I had this very James Bondian night out of the blue in their town. "That's great William but we have plans tonight". Oh well. 1009 is the number in 'Shine A Light' on Exile on Main Street .
When we got to the studio in Nashville 2 days later to mix 'Wake Up' the engineer John Kelton turned to me and said "we got a 1 db volume loss on those tapes". Maybe the ten or so trips through the x-ray machines didn't help.
This is trying to echo the nature of bus conversations. Quite late in the Mercury / Lost Highway years we began to play in the South West. Taos , Albuquerque and Santa Fe . Some radio stations there had been kind enough to play the music and it felt like we had spread the message a little out from Colorado . Talking to James Eller on the bus about an offer from someone to put me up in New York whilst adding some vocals to a song or two, I cant remember which struck me as the more off putting, the Chelsea Hotel or the tracks! There is, I hope, some of the elation I used to feel sitting drenched in sweat in the back lounge of a tour bus outside some roadhouse gig in the Colorado countryside. Deming NM was the first place I ever stayed in a motel on the highway in the USA en route from LA to Houston 1982.
West Wittering has always been a part of my life as I had an aunt who lived there. I have been in and out of touch with the place for years. A while ago I started going again and realised that the sea there was as appealing in its own way as it was in Jamaica or Nassau . Perhaps it was just that my budget suited it rather better but I loved it. As soon as I read the poem Sea Fever by John Masefield in the front of The Lonely Sea And Sky by Sir Francis Chichester I knew I could sing it, and later it occurred to me that I could ask Mark to play on it as, not being my lyric, it was far removed from some of the themes I might make mine more often (kitchen sink betrayals, shop floor jealousies etc). He did indeed play on it and on his Les Paul, which played Brothers In Arms, and so I'm a very lucky laddie.
It was a thrill to use the word 'canyon' in a song and feel honest about it. I love Luke's harmonica playing on this track it takes me back to the Glen Campbell tapes I heard as a child. The freight trains really do cry besides Highway 100 in Nashville and I look forward to the opening of the re-modelled Loveless Café.
Perhaps one of those occasions when a Tsunami of a hangover can lead to brief flashes of direct and incisive perception. I call them acid casualty hangovers. Anyway working in the (where else) bar at Huntsham Court Hotel in Devon from 11:30 , I sautéed myself lightly for 20 years of semi-professional idiocy in the west London area in a sauce vin triste.
When I listen to the line "drunk and abusing my friends" in the 2nd verse it takes me till the breakdown to complete the list of people I could reasonably include. There is a bit of uplift thing in the chorus and a lot of that comes from the vocal arrangements, which were in place from the first performance.
Well, here we are back in Detroit . Arriving in the bus on the first Black River tour and we saw signs in restaurants saying 'no sleeping'. There was a freezing wind and strange squatter messages in the windows of huge abandoned buildings. Later we had one of our best shows of the tour at the Magic Bag (Tragic Hag). On another occasion in Detroit more recently I did indeed get in to a cab chauffeured by a Zulu witch doctoress. It makes you think "I should get out less". On the way back we gave our CD to the stewardess to show the captain. An hour later we were invited to the cockpit and had a very nice chat about the aircraft, the Archers and various Jamaican hotels. The captain said he would have us woken up to join him for the landing at Heathrow. He was true to his word and so 18 mini wines later I was in the jump seat looking at the skid marks of runway two. Fantastic stuff that will never be allowed again and probably shouldn't have been then!
Colin and I went to Spain to finish this song and 'Walk Like I do'. We hung out, he signed LP's in the local bars and I played guitar in my friend's restaurant for hours after an extended Sunday lunch. I got back to London to find I had been charged ten times as much on my card as the food had actually cost, a true musicians discount. Also I seem to recall spilling my gin and tonic over Colin on the plane in the manner of those Joan Collins / Leonard Rossiter ads for Martini. Happy days.
The background to 5 days a week was also in Huntsham but uniquely it's genesis has been committed to film by Paul Spenser and Claptrap productions in their short offering "Going for a Song". I hope one day this film will be seen, but until then imagine Giant Haystacks telling Mary Martin and a sulky teenager what to sing and you'll have the visuals about right!
This song I am pleased to say has aroused the good old "who is it about' vibe, and the even better "I know it's about xxxxxxxx" one. Alas, as the only writer and the soul of discretion I cannot say. The bridge section is nicked from an old Just William song called "Gypsy Water". Always steal from the classics I say.
Inca / Mayan lines in the desert. I loved all the 'Chariots of the Gods' bollocks when I was a child. I was less keen on the Bermuda triangle until I realised Bermuda wasn't actually in it. I remember seeing Dogwoods flowering in the southern states during winter tours, bright white flashes in the grey leafless forests. And if indeed the pageant has gone a little lukewarm call PCM soon as some dates are still available! Dominic had been to Morocco and I had just re-read John Pearson's superb "Gone To Timbuctoo" and I may have been mistaken but I swear I heard the Tuaregs sing of a land where salt is more valuable than gold.
