Today is Sunday, the day we try to ignore in case it gets its weird fingers on the streets and turns them into silence. So we lock the studio door and concentrate on the music. Today was the second and last day with Craig, and today we were experimenting. Yesterday had been a successful day of playing on songs that Craig already had drums and other guitars recorded, I was the enhancer and the part-searcher but by the end of the day, we had done what we wanted to do. So we came in on Sunday with Kevin engineering, me on bass, Craig on guitar and John playing drums and we jammed. I miss jamming, I wish there was more opportunity to do it, there’s always something good that comes out of it. Craig will go away with half an hour’s worth of ideas, and we’ll see what comes of it.

Later, we wrote a piece for Craig to sing over, with me playing some chordal bass parts and John and Craig working out their own parts. It’s something that Craig will be able to take away and write a melody and lyrics for. Then we set about recording one of Craig’s songs from his old band The Reach, except I was going to sing it. John played drums, I played bass, and Craig played guitar. It’s a great song, and it suited my voice in that key. Will let you know when that one hits the bright lights.

It was the last recording day in the studio today and it’s kinda sad. We’ll be in tomorrow for a listening sesh of Brian’s Valley of Salt project with our pens and pads making notes on these first mixes that Andreas has sent over from Sweden. They sound amazing, but there are always tweaks. At some point, you have to stop tweaking and release the record. The Beatles might still be mixing Sgt. Pepper’s with their massive budget and fame. Despite their wealth and success, they lived in the same world as everyone else when it came to the creative act, albeit with more resources than most, but they still had the schedule of the bands of the day, make it, release it as soon as possible, make another one. When you consider their catalogue released between 1963 and 1970, seven years, then think about the quality and the evolution, it’s impressive.

Chemistry is everything in a band. You don’t really know what it is, but it’s there and when you witness it working, it’s a revelation, magic occurs. You don’t know where it comes from, but the music seems to be more than the sum of its parts. In the ex-band, we used to say, “Gusto is here”. Is it just complimentary overtones between the instruments, or is it invisible magic between the people that they aren’t consciously aware of? It’s doubtless both these things, the stars align, and you hope others feel it.

Music today was The Turtles‘ third album Happy Together (1967) as it came up in the studio and was the first full-price record I ever bought. The title track was co-written with Alan Gordon and Gary Bonner, who also wrote She’d Rather Be With Me. Elenore, released in 1968 and written by lead singer Howard Kaylan, was a cynical response to the massive success of the album’s title track.

Music Of The Daze