Catch the Wind

Hopefully you have read the notes for Funeral already. Up to this point, the woman has been as though in a kind of dream. But now she becomes fully awake and aware of where she is. She is also aware of her loved one, his loss and his sorrow.

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is In My Dreams.

Wings of Desire is a song about love. Physical love. I don't think I need to say more...

Sometimes I get an idea that just won't go away, and the moment the phrase 'carpenter's daughter' popped into my mind, I knew there was going to have to be a finished song.

Some people have found this song offensive. Well to be honest, I don't consider that my problem. I've created a work of fiction, based on a story that itself is probably mostly fiction. And I've combined it with a bit of a twist at the end. And if anyone who was in a mood to be offended listened carefully to the lyrics all the way through, they would see that the song isn't about what they thought it was.

I see this song as something of a Christmas carol. A dark Christmas carol...

It's an odd thing about poetry and songwriting that the writer doesn't really explain what his or her work is about and their audience has to devine the meaning in some mysterious way. Well this song is about the Berlin Wall coming down. But there's a personal element too. Not long before my mother died, she had some guests round for the evening. In the way that Northern mothers do, she made sure that an excellent time was had by all and we were very, very well fed. But it was also the night that the Wall came down, or at least was breached, so we were watching the event as it happened on TV. So on all counts it really was a perfect night. It will stay in my memory as an important part of human history, and a wonderful personal experience.

This track came about in quite an unusual way. I have always liked jazz styles, but for me it is often too much like 'music for musos' and simply too many notes. I learned in my days of touring that playing jazz licks at the sound check was frowned upon. Not only that but we were all given strict instructions never to smile on stage, or anywhere we could be seen by the public. Yes, really. So when on tour, I couldn't really be fully myself, so that is a kind of deception, and I thought it linked in an interesting way with Machiavelli's concept of a deceiver. In Machiavelli's world, a certain amount of deception may be necessary simply to keep the peace, so it isn't always a bad thing. The excellent vocals are by Jinny Blom.

We Are doesn't include any of Machiavelli's material. I wanted to offer a positive perspective towards the end of the CD so I turned the idea behind Track 1 (titled The Prince, like the CD) around to say that it's up to us to choose who we want to be. If we choose to be downtrodden, then there are plenty of people who will step up and downtread us (if that's a word). If we choose to shape our destinies in a way that all of us as individuals can flourish, then we can do that too. I know which I would prefer.

There was an interesting stage in the writing of this song where the way the lines of the verses worked seemed too square, too plain and ordinary. So I extended each line to make them overlap. I'm very pleased with the way that worked out. I won't go so far as to say it's a stroke of genius, but getting ideas like that from time to time is one of the joys of making music.

This is simply an instrumental version of The Dream. As I constructed the song, a guitar solo came to me. But the song was already long enough, so I decided to make a completely separate version. If you have the CD, you will find it unlisted, coming after nine minutes of silence after the end of the final track.

Hopefully you have read the notes for Stay already. At this point the woman knows that she must continue her journey to its end; that she must leave the man, and she can never return. But she wants to give him at least some comfort - that she has seen into the beyond and she knows that it is welcoming. Death sings gently. He shows that he is not only the destroyer of lives, he is the deliverer of souls.

The next and final track in The Mysteries of Death is Into The Light.

Hopefully you have read the notes for Why? already. For Funeral, I wanted to create the darkest, most powerful, most grief-stricken piece of music I could. I was inspired by a funeral I attended as a child, which was indeed a very dark event. Although the man is present at the funeral, he is silent. The woman is present too. Only Death speaks, accompanied by his cronies.

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is Awakening.

I was on an aircraft once and we really did think we were going to crash, just a few minutes after takeoff. The guy next to me was panicking like nothing you've ever seen, I was looking down at the ground through the window making plans (see Dark Blue Sky), while the guy in the aisle seat was carefully studying the safety card, which was probably the right thing to do.

Although they called out all the fire appliances to the runway, we made it back with no further problems. However, it did get me thinking... You know how when you're having a bad dream you can escape easily just by waking up? What if you could do that when faced with peril in real life? And what would you wake up to?

Hopefully you have read the notes for No! already. The woman has been taken by Death and the man, who was/is her partner and lover, has been left behind. A simple and often-asked question in such circumstances inspires the title of the song. Why? But there is another question too... Where? And the answer to both questions, given by the woman at the end of the song, is, "I don't know..."

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is Funeral.

I wrote this in around 1993 when there was a lot of horrible stuff going on in the former country of Yugoslavia. All I knew was from news reports, but apparently people who had got along perfectly well living beside each other were now killing each other. The words of this song depict some of the awful things I heard in these broadcasts, from the point of view of someone whose not-quite-dead body had been dumped under a tarpaulin. When he realizes what he had in his life previously, and what he is left with now, he is happy to complete his journey into oblivion.

For this to happen in a faraway country is one thing. It is another thing entirely to consider that we all have this kind of programming inside our head, and it only takes a thin veneer of civilization to be removed for things to turn pretty bad. What happened there could easily happen here, wherever 'here' happens to be for you. I believe it is the responsibility of each of us to do what we can to prevent anything like this happening again.

Sometimes I get the idea for a title, then I work a song around it. In this case the idea came from my accountant! Some information that he needed had been mislaid, and he described it as having been, "...lost in the midst of time". Well I had always thought the expression was 'in the mists of time'. Well the idea that somehow we are in the middle of time quite appealed to me, so I set to work to complete the song. The song isn't really about time, it is about life, and the inevitability of life existing and continuing to exist in the universe. After all, if there wasn't life in the universe, what would be the point?

What's the worst possible thing that could happen to anyone? Really the worst? Well it hasn't happened to me but the thought that it could haunts me. It has happened to others and I can't possibly imagine how they feel. But this song is about accepting the worst, and then bouncing back from it. Not that terrible events can be erased from the past, but that there is always the prospect of a better future. This song is inspired by a real-life story of sadness. A sadness that never went away, but in time was combined with hope.

Hopefully you have read the notes for I Know already. Into The Light combines elements of music previously heard in The Mysteries of Death, including a reprise of Death's solo from Where Am I? By now, the woman has accepted that she must leave all that she knew before and head towards whatever will be the next step in her great adventure. She knows that her death was just a stopping off point on the way. The man still grieves, but he knows that all ultimately will be well. It may be that he doesn't join her when his time comes, but he knows that he too will have that same great adventure into an unknown that is not forbidding, but welcoming.

If you want to hear more of The Mysteries of Death, you should start at The Beginning.

Having included a hidden track on my CD The Days of the Moon, I thought I might do the same on The Prince, and this is it. It doesn't have a title so there isn't much chance of me making any money from radio plays, and there have been some. The vocals are by Jinny Blom and the recording method was interesting. I knew exactly the melodies I wanted so I set the tape rolling and sang each phrase, then Jinny copied me. We worked all the way through the track like this. I later edited out my vocals (which you would thank me for if you heard them).

Hopefully you have read the notes for In My Dreams already. Since the man now realizes that he can talk to his loved one in his dreams, he wants her to stay with him. Even if they cannot be physically together, their emotional connection will be enough, and they both want that to continue. The man pleads for the woman to stay, but she is beckoned onwards. A final screech by Death and his cronies signals that she must continue on her path.

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is I Know.

Hopefully you have read the notes for Where Am I? already. No! is a twisting, entwirling dance between the woman and Death, who has captured her. Clearly it is an unfamiliar experience for the woman, as it will be for us all, and there is an element of seduction in this. Although Death has already taken her out of her body, he does not yet fully possess her. Entranced by his seduction, the woman sings his song.

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is Why?

The Days of the Moon came about when I was touring Germany playing keyboards. For one of the gigs there was no support act, so I suggested I put together a 10-minute piece to 'warm up' the audience. Of course, then I had to write it! Perhaps the moon was shining through the window of the bus as we travelled through the night. I don't remember, but I decided to make the piece about the phases of the moon. That didn't seem like a good title, so 'The Days...' it became. I cajoled two other band members to take part in my mad scheme - Sarah Bradshaw on cello and Stephane Ruiz on flute.

The piece worked out very well, so on my return to London, I recreated it in the studio, again with Sarah on cello. I had to travel to France to capture Stephane's flute, but I think the result was well worth it.

You will notice how the piece is based on musical intervals, starting with unison and going all the way up to a full octave. I think I like the section where the interval is a major sixth best.

The Mysteries of Death tells the story of three characters - a woman, a man, and Death. In this piece, the part of the woman is sung by Jinny Blom, the man by some guy who prefers to remain anonymous, and Death is played by John Kitchen on cello. Death brings three of his cronies along and John plays those parts too.

The Beginning, which is Track 1 of the entire piece, reprises the death chords from The Dream in quite a different context. It is the point of death of the woman, presumed to be a nasty accident; sudden and shocking.

The next track in The Mysteries of Death will be Where Am I?

Hopefully you have read the notes for The Beginning already. Where Am I? includes the moment of realization for the woman that she is dead. At first she wonders, but then she looks down upon her body, broken, with blood flowing.

Death plays a magnificent solo in this song. I play the cello myself, so I felt that I was able to write a solo that could get the best out of the instrument. It took a cellist of the immense skill of John Kitchen to play it the way I wanted to hear it though!

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is No!

Hopefully you have read the notes for Awakening already. Death is something of a journey - a physical and possibly spiritual journey for the departed. But also it is an emotional journey for those left behind, from the initial shock, through denial, to a point where one might occasionally forget that the person is not still alive. In My Dreams depicts that point in the emotional journey of the man. Both the man and the woman sing, and can talk to each other in the man's dream. And Death sings too, but a calmer, more gentle melody than before.

The next track in The Mysteries of Death is Stay.

This piece goes back a long way, to when I was a student. One of my lecturers had set me the task of composing a piece of music in the studio, rather than on paper. He thought that would be difficult, but since the studio seems to be my natural element it was no problem at all.

The piece is very simple in concept - a gentle beginning section followed by a second more energetic section leading to a climax and fulfillment.

Since the lecturer had asked that I give the work a title, I had to think of one. All the other students were giving their pieces really pretentious titles, so I called mine 'Cheese Sandwiches', after my favourite food at the time. Needless to say, this did not go down too well.

Fast forward ten years and I needed a track for my CD, The Days of the Moon. This one seemed perfect, but I had to accept that the title needed changing. The new title I came up with seemed to fit the mood of the piece, and I thought it would arouse curiosity. I am a little embarrassed by it now, but I'm not going to change it again!