On Songwriting…
In the autumn of 1999, you find yourself crossing the Italian countryside by train. Many thousands of miles
from home, young and broken hearted, drifting from Paris to Spain and on again, in a seemingly endless
journey spent drinking coffee in the shade of sidewalk cafes, playing music amongst the grassy
graveyards of Europe, on the narrow body of a Martin backpacker guitar. No purpose but primary sight and
primary breath, and being away. The guitar you later sell for £70 in a tiny London shop, and replace
with a cheap knock-a-bout from Greenwich market. And the large body, which you can wrap your arms
around, lean into, on - it makes you glad. And that is the guitar, which sees you home again, washes up with
you on the beaches of California with old friends. And when you eventually bottom out of a life, which has
had its time, when the streets have gone quiet, and filled with the shadows of people you might still
actually know, the guitar too meets its fate, smashing, accidentally, against a concrete Frisco sidewalk.
But the end of the thing is only the beginning of the next, because on the train that day you made a
decision.
You took up guitar at 16. You were playing The Smiths and laughing. At nineteen you packed up your things.
You moved to that great, fog soaked city by the Bay, and studied sound, and worked in a guitar shop -
spent time in a recording studio, tested microphones in a SOMA warehouse, got nervous doing it all
live. But then the train ride, and you realised, remembered, it was never really the sound of the sound
which gripped you, but of course the songs themselves.
And you are moving back again - across the water. This time to stay.
And now you find yourself once again, singing, "Here is London," but differently this time, and you find that
the road between the two points has been long, and winding and full of heart. And that the songs, which
have been born along the way, have marked the tiny silences of life, in a way that is somehow louder than
their opposites. And you realise that this is the point. And now you savour what has gone before: the first
performance, the band, the break-up, brilliant gigs, terrible gigs, a cramped London flat, life in a
converted factory, a south-west home on the river, sad goodbyes, a new direction, the lost in-between.
Letters penned, and songs, phone calls to America, a long-loved laugh. Trains, busses, planes, miles of
driving in a foreign land, a summer spent dreaming jazz from a 1980's BMW convertible, tired seaside
resorts. Things seen and not seen. Desire, writing, two half-finished novels, short stories, an EP, new
friendships, old friendships, love. Because these are the moments the songs are born of, but of memory
too, knowing that somehow, what starts in the present, always touches the best parts of the past.
And soon, you hope, there will be a collection. You know it is a long time coming, for you the culmination
and not the beginning. And sometimes you can still hear the others, the songs that were never recorded,
some playing for only one night and never again, songs which shifted and combined and reformed, which
somehow survive and carry on regardless. And then of course you must find the money… You must
persuade. And in between the successes and failures, you read Kerouac and realise that we have
been here before, you read Ginsburg and feel alive and connected, like there is something
bigger in your mind's eye to touch. And what comes ultimately, you hope, will be worth the wait.
Because in your head you hear their names, the ones which are great to you. And they say,
Automatic for the People, Achtung Baby, Violater, Graceland, Gold. And you hope to do
something that you will love in the same way. You hope to do something. You hope, and yet you know.
Because you have known highways, and you have known barlights, and you have walked the road in-
between.
Highways & Barlights - the album. In time.