I’m Driving in my Car…

Lyrics... one minute they are just words lying flat of a piece of paper and the next minute they have a whole life ahead of them, living, breathing.. Its why we do this band, that’s the blood and the being and the best feeling, the moment we create the new song.

We’re off to the USA again and I know there are a lot of interviews coming and a lot of questions waiting for us.  And one question so many people ask is  – how do we write the songs.

Well – we both write in different ways, but one things for sure these days is that it starts with the idea – the “What’s it about?”  Sometimes the idea comes and in an instant the words flow out, other times the idea lays on your brain’s desktop, tossing and turning, demanding attention, waiting for the trigger to make that idea burst into life…

Mick has said famously in many interviews that he gets his ideas travelling on the bus or the train.. that the churning progress of clumsy London transport beats out a primitive rhythm to him, inspiring the words… Oilwell, one of Micks finest intricate lyrics must have taken a few Big Red Bus journeys to craft…

Me, I like to drive fast through the darkness in my car with a pad of paper on my lap, dicing with death to nose bleed loud techno..

See, over the last 5 years of this bands existence, I’ve spent a lot of time driving in my car, often at night. Our studio is in Acton, West London just off the M40 and on a Friday evening I find myself setting out on the 2 to 3 hour journey on my way home to our house near Glastonbury (yes that Glastonbury). That’s a lot petrol miles. It takes me on motorways out of London choked with people from work world and then out across the countryside heading west, past Stonehenge, through hills into the blackness, and by that time of night it’s just the occasional headlight coming towards me.

I listen to the radio switching between Radio 4 with its news programs and drive fast techno dance music, often Radio 1 or obscure Pirate stations – I find that monotonous furious 140 bpm beat works brilliantly as a blank canvas to write songs to…

“The News” came like that… I’d been inspired by a random phrase picked out from friendly discussion that triggered a passion I’ve had for a while now – wouldn’t it be great if they actually broadcast “Good News” instead of continually keeping us in line with a diet of fear and anxiety.

The words just flowed in that magical way they can do at times, as if you are blessed and every rhyme comes out perfectly and seamlessly…  and I think I pulled over into every lay by on the A303 that night, scribbling furiously …and, as the headlights picked up our house, appearing as it always does at the end of the wooded drive and stroking my heart – the lyric was complete….

And as I opened that massive, familiar sixteenth century door which welcomes you into our house, I knew I had something….

Meanwhile my head was completely mashed of course and I was unable to sleep for hours.

Good evening here’s the News.….. and all of it is good…I’m looking forward to those questions.. first stop Austin Texas SXSW.