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ALL MY OWN WORK |
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Please be aware that all mp3's on this site have been produced to the maximum possible quality with the equipment at my disposal. I'm constantly striving to improve the reproduction of these, but the bottom line is that there's always going to be a limit to how good an mp3 will sound. If you experience any major problems with the mp3's playing back, however, please feel free to use the feedback page to let me know, and I'll endeavour to resolve problems where I can. Please also be aware that all of the material on this page is © Mark Dellow 2004. |
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STATUS OF SONG : From when it was first written in the mid-1970's, everyone who's ever sung Battle Hymn has said that it's a hard song to sing, not in terms of range or complexity, but simply by virtue of the fact that the choruses have a lot of words in not a lot of space. For the sake of getting a version of it on to the website, I did the vocals myself, and on the strength of that experience ( and speaking as I do as a non-singer ) I'd have to agree. Ideally what I'd be looking for on this song is a male vocalist in the style of Greg Lake, and even better, in the style of Greg Lake circa mid-seventies, as opposed to Greg Lake now ( i.e. after thirty-odd years of smoking ! ). Failing that, Fish ( Marillion ) would come a pretty close second, or if Peter Gabriel is reading this, he too should feel free to respond. The song was never written with a female vocalist in mind, but if that's you and you fancy having a go, and if you've got the kind of voice that shakes tall buildings, then by all means let me know. |
I never knew either of my grandfathers; they both died before I was born ( I believe there may have been a school of thought at one time that they saw me coming ). However, I remember my mother telling me that her father, by all accounts quite a learned man, and someone who was unusually well-versed in early electronics, often quoted the adage "science will eventually destroy itself". Since then, many writers and film producers have made quite a healthy living exploring that very premise, although I'm happy to report that as at the time of writing, the prophecy has yet to be fulfilled ( although if this trails off in the middle of a sentence, you'll know that grandfather was right all along - either that or I've had a heart attack ). "Battle Hymn" was one of the first songs I wrote. Although I suspect that my grandfather may not have necessarily approved of the style of the song, I believe he would have endorsed it's lyrics; certainly his words were very much in my mind when I wrote it. It first saw the light of day back in 1974, and although the lyrics were the product of an even younger Angry Young Man than those of "Promise Me", "Battle Hymn" was, from the very beginning, primarily an instrumental extravaganza, an excuse for the guitarist ( Bob Oldfield, in the case of Cannon, and later Lee Brown in Dellow ) and myself to let off steam - royally. Back in the day, I had only the trusty Hammond to let rip with, and the keyboard solo at the end of the song became progressively longer and longer - and more self-indulgent ! - as time went on. As I recall, the record was nine minutes at one gig. In more recent times, armed with the synthesisers, the song went full circle and became what it was always essentially intended to be : a means of venting my spleen to music. It has always been my habit to drop the odd nod-and-wink to other pieces of music into the solo - see how many you can count ! For the record, despite it's connotations, "Battle Hymn" was not in fact named after the famed "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; it was actually named after a racehorse. Also for the record, the only time I ever bet on it, the bloody thing lost.
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STATUS OF SONG : Ready to go! |
What do you say about a piece of music when things like : "If God had needed a piece of music to accompany the creation of Heaven and Earth, this would have been it", have already been said? Elsewhere on this page, I've extolled the virtues of "Lost In You" as being the song which, more than any other, represented what I perceive to be the pinnacle of my writing abilities to date. If I had to choose an instrumental piece of which I would say the same, Fanfare would be it.
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STATUS OF SONG : Ready to go! |
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When Tracy joined the band, we had to look at the material and see if any of it was gender-sensitive and needed a change of lyrics in order for it to make sense. She had a job of work to do already inasmuch as there was a set of something like twenty songs for her to learn, without worrying about any new material. However, as she got to the point where she'd learned most of the set, the time came to think about writing stuff that was specifically geared for a female singer, and this was my attempt at doing that.
"I Don't Know You Any More" is a song sung by a bitter woman, one who's on the tail end of a marriage that's obviously well past it's sell-by date. This is someone who's desperately tried to make it work, but has found herself fighting a losing battle with her husband's desire to be somewhere else, and, she suspects, with someone else. Ultimately, she realises that all the wishing in the world for things to be the way they used to be will not make it so, and the sad fact that she finds herself having to face is that she no longer recognises her husband from the man she married. |
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Mark Dellow |
: Keyboards / Vocals |
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Richard Dellow |
: Drums |
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Eve Robertson |
: Vocals |
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STATUS OF SONG : Ready to go! |
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When you first start to write music, you listen to your favourite artists and dream of one day being able to write something that's as good as the stuff they write, but unless you're unbelievably arrogant, there's always a part of you that wonders whether you'll ever be that good. You can't make it happen to order - God knows, if it was that easy to sit down and write a masterpiece, we'd all do it! - but when and if it does happen, you just know in your heart of hearts, this is the one.
For me, "Lost In You" is the one. I started out writing a love song, and ended up writing what for me is the ultimate love song. Of course, we all have different perceptions of what we hear - that's one of the great beauties of music - and we each express ourselves in different ways : that's why there are so many different ways of saying "I Love You". All I know is, for me, this song expresses that feeling better than any other words I've ever found, anywhere. It says, "I love you completely and unconditionally, absolutely and without doubt or question, always and forever, beyond all material things and beyond this earthly life. My soul has been yours since the beginning of time and always shall be; we were together before we were ever born and we will be together for the rest of eternity."
Even the synthesisers at the end of this song were written to tell a particular story, but I'll leave the listener to ponder what that story might be. |
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Helen Ramsay |
: Vocals |
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Richard Dellow |
: Drums |
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Mark Dellow |
: Keyboards |
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STATUS OF SONG : When it came to recording "Promise Me", Tracy Gilmore ( the then singer with the band ) made a stirling effort. However, she was never truly comfortable with the song, and like the rest of the material ( with the exception of 'I Don't Know You Any More' ), it had never been written with a female vocalist in mind in any case. If you are a female vocalist, you'll have to have a pretty strong voice to make a better job of it than Tracy; but, if you think you can, by all means let me know. Ideally, though, I'm looking for a male vocalist for this one, and since the song was originally conceived, like 'Battle Hymn' ) in the heady days of E L P's domination of the known universe, the style I'm after would be much the same as above - i.e. a Greg Lake / Fish / Peter Gabriel soundalike. Seriously, y'know, Greg, if you are reading this ... |
"Promise Me" first started out around 1977, at which time I was still officially an Angry Young Man. The point of the song is that nothing is ever what it seems, and that promises that say one thing almost always mean the opposite. It has always been my practise to write songs beyond my ability to play them - keeps you on your toes and stops you being complacent! - and back in the days of Cannon, it would have been beyond the capability of the band to have performed the song as it was intended. I say this not as a criticism of the abilities of any of the musicians, but more because I myself only had very limited equipment in those days, and to have played the song as I envisioned it would have been impossible given any amount of expertise, on the equipment that was available at the time. For that reason the song remained little more than a set of fairly scrappy lyrics until 1998, when the new band ( then Flash ) formed, and I now had an array of keyboards to play with. "Promise Me" could now be done as I had always imagined it, synthesisers and all, and so the lyrics were taken out of mothballs and re-worked into their present form. Given that the song had been written beyond my abilities, when I introduced it in early 1999, it was still very much taking shape, and we only ever played it live once. The band was already in what was to become the last year of it's life by the time I started to record it, hence the fact that it was done somewhat piecemeal, but I nevertheless owe thanks to Gary, Lee and Tracy for their assistance in getting the job done. |
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Mark Dellow |
: Keyboards / Drums |
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Tracy Gilmore |
: Vocals |
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Lee Brown |
: Guitars |
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Gary Bennett |
: Bass |
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STATUS OF SONG : After going through many female singers in the recording of the vocal track for this song, I was finally lucky enough to find Abigail Deacon, who lent a silky, romantic quality to the track. Since I was very happy with the result, there would obviously be no point in my repeating the process unless the incumbent vocalist had a voice that was significantly different to Abigail's. At risk of repeating myself, this song was ( you won't be at all surprised to read, by now ) written with a male vocalist in mind in the style of Greg Lake, and if I was going to re-record the vocal track now, it would have to either be a male voice in that ilk, or a powerful female voice that impressed me as much as Eve Robertson ( "I Don't Know You Any More" ) or Helen Ramsay ( "Lost In You" ). |
When I first started writing "Where You Are", it was intended to be used as a showcase for the piano, hence the fact that the song opens with a piano solo that lasts something in the region of three minutes. In theory, the idea was that the rest of the band would go offstage while the solo was going on, and then come on when the song itself kicked in. However, as is so often the way, the reality and the theory were two different things, and in fact we never did play this song live. In recording it, the dilemma was whether or not to have the piano solo on the beginning, given that this had always been intended for it's live effect, but after giving it some thought, I decided, well, hey, CD players have fast-forward buttons, don't they? Lyrically, "Where You Are" is a love song, one of the first I wrote after the band formed in 1998. As with "Lost In You", this is my soppy side coming out, although this song pre-dates "Lost In You" by at least two years. Recording this was a nightmare : it was done over a period of several months during which the computer crashed at least once. How we didn't end up losing the whole thing, I have no idea. After considerable repair work and with the kind assistance of the band and Abigail ( the final touches were put to this song after the band had broken up ) the job finally got finished. Hopefully you can't see the joins. |
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Mark Dellow |
: Keyboards / Vocals |
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Richard Dellow |
: Drums |
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Abigail Deacon |
: Vocals |
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Lee Brown |
: Guitars |
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Gary Bennett |
: Bass |
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