singlefriends
“Ah, singles. When I was young I’d buy one every week. They used to spin round 45 times every minute. That’s loads of times in a day. Then a few days later, next Saturday, I’d buy another one. Beatles, Beach Boys, and later, Blondie, Buzzcocks. Lots of singles. When I grew up they’d got bigger too. Now it was my turn to make some singles. We’ve made six of them, and these days you can’t always watch them going round any more. This is probably all the singles we’ll do, brought together for one last spin. But I can’t promise.” – William Jones, 2008
You’ll Never See That Summertime Again Released 24 July 2006 – CD single
You’ll Never See That Summertime Again This Is The Start Into The Sun Beautiful To Me (acoustic version) I’d always regretted that You’ll Never See That Summertime Again had missed out on being a single. Ever since it was written it’s closed our live set, been our most broadcast track, found its way onto sampler albums and generally been people’s favourite Friends song. But I’d never been entirely happy with the original recording – the singing, the clarity of the instruments and the speed, which I felt was fractionally too fast. In those days too (1989) we were generally not releasing singles from albums, so it never happened. To give it one more chance of radio play and international acclaim we re-recorded the song at Fairview and kept very closely to the original arrangement. The process was almost an act of historical reconstruction. We added Kath’s voice to the choruses and sharpened up the electric guitar sound a bit, but otherwise the arrangement remained the same. Even the cowbell at the end. We chose the other three songs to give an idea of our range of styles, from full-on pop, to semi-acoustic, to ultra-minimal. We reckoned that if the title track wasn’t ‘pop’ enough, then This Is The Start was pop supreme. Into The Sun showcased the string quartet arrangements we’ve occasionally used since Sundrowned, and Beautiful To Me was a solo version of my favourite Friends song. I recorded it in one take during an epic night in a recording studio when eight songs went down in one rather traumatic session. You don’t need to know.
Special You Released 29 July 2002 – CD single
Special You Village In My Mind Downstream Every Summer (acoustic version) It had been seven years since Folk Songs when we went back to the studio to make Beautiful You. It was a good session. We were happy with the songs, and the music flowed. We recorded and mixed the album in our usual two weeks. The idea of a single from the album was a fairly late decision, and we went for Special You as the most direct and immediate pop song of the set. It was one of the eight I had originally recorded acoustically in a one-night session as a special birthday present for a friend. Village In My Mind was one of my favourite songs from the album. It mixes unclear memories of places and scenes from my childhood and sets them in the time around the First World War, an era which fascinates me. The village in the song seems to have become a mirage or a trick of the memory and you’re not quite sure if it ever existed. I once acted in an amateur production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and wrote incidental music for it. Downstream was created for the opening of the play – the Duke is listening on headphones, it stops abruptly and the first words of the play are: “If music be the food of love, play on…” In spare moments in the studio I’d occasionally play one-take versions of our songs, and for a while we had an acoustic set with just guitar, percussion and voices. Every Summer featured in that set because we felt it worked very well acoustically, and it’s always fun to play. But I don’t recommend trying it at home.
Foreign Money Released 28 November 1994 – 7” single
Foreign Money You Can Do Foreign Money was the opening song from Sundrowned and we felt it would make one big belter of a single. It did indeed belt, but unfortunately not up the charts. The brass arrangement was something I worked on with Rick Taylor who was still playing with us and, when we didn’t need him, with people like Elton John and George Michael. It was a nice thick chordal arrangement for two trumpets and trombone which really drove the song along. The album was our second with John Spence at Fairview and our first very long recording, with 16 songs offered as great value for money. I was very happy with the whole song. The initial riff came out of the blue early one morning and I just had to keep playing it as I was getting dressed, to make sure I didn’t forget it. Fortunately it lodged itself in my mind long enough to complete the song, and then had to be forcibly removed. The lyrics weren’t so much about earning foreign currency as trying to dispose of it dishonestly in your change, and using this to point out the probable benefits of honesty in a relationship. By the time we recorded Foreign Money, Martin Parker had joined the band and become half of the partnership that has remained ever since. You Can Do was a throwaway item, an acoustic number that I developed with Martin, and which we recorded together with Hesitant Smile (later to appear on Folk Songs) one evening at Fairview. I still like the whimsical, optimistic quality of the song, although I no longer entirely share its sentiments.
The First Day Of Spring Released 16 April 1990 – CD single (originally released as 12” single, now unavailable)
The First Day Of Spring As Years Go By I’ll Never See You Wanting We recorded The First Day Of Spring a few months after the second album Roads Leading Everywhere. It was the same line-up and the same studio, and in many ways it felt like an extension of the album. The performances, though, had moved on, and I felt they had a solidity and maturity that our previous recordings perhaps did not. It was Stewart Moffat’s last recording with Friends, and foreshadowed a period when I didn’t know if the band would survive. The title track was a piece of ecstatic nature-worship, which we used to describe as a cross between pastoral pop and rustic rock. As Years Go By was our first anthemic, doom-laden rocker and we still play it live today. The two cowbell hits which open I’ll Never See You are a conscious nick from, and tribute to, Fairport Convention’s classic folk-rock album Liege And Lief, which I still love. Wanting was a very special and memorable recording. By that time we had released two singles, and the prospect of the first album coming up a couple of months later was worrying me, mainly as to whether my singing would be strong enough to carry a whole LP. We recorded Wanting on one beautiful spring evening in Darlington and finished before the sun went down. There was the most blissful feeling of satisfaction and of all being well with the world, and the wonderful clarity of the recording takes me straight back to those couple of hours in a small room every time I hear it. Part of the pleasure was from coming out of the studio knowing that the album would be fine.
“…Wanting to be wanted, needing to be needed And it’s harder as the time goes by Wanting to be wanted, needing to be needed And it’s easy, and it’s easier If I don’t try…”
“…We’ve come far from where we started Seems like only yesterday Feels as though we’d never parted Only waiting till you say okay…”
Far And Away Released 14 September 1987 – CD single and 12” single
Far And Away Burning Bridges Over And Over The End Of The Affair The genesis of Far And Away, in a taxi on the way from Billingham to Stockton-onTees, is hardly the stuff of romantic songsmithery, but my frantic scribbling on scraps of paper came from a determination to strike while the muse was hot. I’m not sure whether our recording the song five times means that we’re just very fond of it, or that we never thought we got it right. In retrospect I feel that the single version was as right as it could be. We’d tried it out first in a studio demo, later re-recorded it for Let’s Get Away From It All, and subsequently did two acoustic versions. Burning Bridges and Over And Over were examples of the Gothic element we had to our music at that time, apparently quite at odds with the pop side, but somehow in keeping with the band’s sound. We borrowed Fairview Studios’ Norman Baron, who was granted day release from his tape-copying duties to play the trumpet because we hadn’t found anyone else who could cope with the tricky time changes on Burning Bridges. The solos in Over And Over were originally improvised by Rick Taylor for an earlier demo of the song, and I liked them so much I transcribed them and asked Norman to play them. The End Of The Affair required a trumpeter with better ‘chops’ and a bit more stamina than Norman, who was already retired, so we hauled our session trumpeter Martyn Clarke down from Newcastle. The song contains a blatant lyrical quote from The Teardrop Explodes which I thought was rather clever at the time.
It’s Getting Louder Released 13 October 1986 – CD single (originally released as 7” single, now unavailable)
It’s Getting Louder Island We got our biggest mistakes in early. Having paid our dues, as we thought, recording good-quality demos (although not good enough, obviously, to land that multi-million pound recording contract), we headed for a ‘real’ studio to record a ‘real’ single. We took some well-intentioned advice to go to the best that we could find, and booked into Strawberry Studios in Stockport, which at that time was pretty much top of the range. We, on the other hand, were not. The songs were the best we had in our ten-song collection, and It’s Getting Louder was a plausible ‘alternative’ single, although maybe a little too mainstream to make even an indie impact. We spent three days at Strawberry with a producer who had worked with us on demos, but the whole situation felt different. In particular, my singing didn’t really rise to the occasion, and our drummer, the late Chris Wood, didn’t enjoy hearing his real drums replaced with Go West samples. I left the studio and drove the van back to Stockton feeling profoundly depressed about the recording we had just made, wondering whether we should even release the record at all, and thinking about finishing the band immediately. Six singles, nine albums and 22 years later we somehow never quite got round to packing it in.
“…It’s getting louder I feel it ringing in my head…”
1 You’ll Never See That Summertime Again . . . . . . 2 This Is The Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Into The Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Beautiful To Me (acoustic version) . . . . . 5 Special You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Village In My Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Downstream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Every Summer (acoustic version) . . 9 Foreign Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 You Can Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The First Day Of Spring . . . . . . 12 As Years Go By . . . . . . . . . . 13 I’ll Never See You . . . . . . . . 14 Wanting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Far And Away . . . . . . . . . . 16 Burning Bridges . . . . . . . . 17 Over And Over . . . . . . . . . 18 The End Of The Affair . . . . 19 It’s Getting Louder . . . . . . 20 Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.58 3.53 3.00 5.01 3.22 4.21 2.47 3.30 3.20 2.45 2.38 4.23 3.25 5.30 3.43 3.58 3.53 3.47 3.23 4.15