Erasure • Features • Conventions
EIS'04 Andy & Vince Intros
The links to each video clip are under each song title below.
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Vince: We decided last year, or was it the year before? That we'd like to record an acoustic record, and so we chose songs from all our previous albums - songs that we felt perhaps could have been singles. And got together with an acoustic guitar player called Steve Walsh to make this record.
Andy: Well the first song's Home from the acoustic album, and can't remember what instruments are on there (laughs), but there's loads of lovely kind of medieval sounding drums and stuff.
And (car horn sounds - laughs) See? That's the London traffic - it's very peaceful round here!
To me, Home was always a kind of a song like, you know that "Billy don't be hero" old song?. Kind of like going off to war or something, and being lost and never being able to find your way back. And it's quite sort of heart-wrenching for me to sing that song. Don't know why, some songs just do that, and that's one of them. Because I do love going home really... That's it!
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Andy: Second song is Spiralling. This one I think has got a cello, it's kind of very sad cellos on there and strings. This was on the Circus album, I think it was one of the last songs on the album.
I remember being one time in Los Angeles, with my friend Victor, he's really sweet, and we were driving off to the beach, and we had this little spliff. You know what little spliffs are like in LA, they just smoke the grass on its own with no tobacco. And he put The Circus on and Spiralling came on, and I was like, swirling, and I just thought, I didn't even recognise it was me, singing the song! cause there us kind of a tremolo in the voice, and it sounds quite Marilyn'ish I think.
We seem to use the word Spiralling quite a lot, I don't know why. Maybe it's to do with the... I'm reading that book, the Da Vinci Code. Maybe it's to do with the Fibonacci sequence! I don't know.
Vince: For Spiralling we used Ben Butler, he plays on string guitar.
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Vince: On Piano Song there's Steve (Walsh) on acoustic guitar, Gordon Titcomb on dobro, Richard Hammond on acoustic bass and Ben Whitman playing percussion.
Andy: Piano Song, Think I've got completely the wrong key. There's Concorde going over, even though it's out of commission now!
Piano Song, what instruments were on there?
"Never get angry at the stupid people..." It's with guitars, maybe a twelve string, and real bass. And this is the song about tolerance.
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Vince: The idea in the beginning was that I was gonna use Andy's original recordings of the vocals. Then Andy felt that he had to do them again and re-interpret them. A lot of vocals are of the first takes. He was very very good!
Andy: Tenderest Moment was a song I think Vince had completely forgotten about it. And it's one of those b-sides that I really love. I think there's a few b-sides that were too good to be b-sides. And Tenderest Moments is one of these songs that we've originally done in a very high register, so when we redid this version, and the lead was the low harmony, and then we put high vocals on afterwards. Again I kind of think it was with guitars, but I might be wrong. And it's a very tender love song, and to do with flying.
Vince: Tenderest Moments has yours truly on guitar, together with Steve.
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Andy: Nightbird...
Vince: Originally, we were going to call the record "Snail", and the record company didn't like that title for some reason. I think it's brilliant, but there you go! And so Andy come with the title Nightbird, and it's called Nightbird because... I have no idea!
Andy: Let's Take One More Rocket To The Moon! Is one of those really long winded titles. It was gonna be called "Rocket", and we are gonna do, well, I hope we're gonna do "Brother and Sister", from Wild! (for the tour).
I don't know... That song just... The line just came out straight away "let's take one more rocket to the moon" as an intro to the song, so it was a song about trying to sleep and having your lover beside you, and the comfort in having your boyfriend or girlfriend beside you and when it's much easier to sleep when they're there.
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Vince: We started writing the new album Nightbird, I think the year before last. We wrote a few songs while we were making the acoustic record. So we did a couple of songs then. And then Andy stayed again with me for a while and we kind of wrote the songs while we were recording.
Andy: Here I Go Impossible Again...
The original chorus was "Here I go impossible again, should I cause a scene to keep the night from ending?" and Vince said let's change it to "should I hold you close to keep the night from ending?"
'cause "should I cause a scene" is very Abba, which kind of haunts us in a way.
How's it go?, (sings) "Here I go impossible again ... I guess I've put you on a pedestal in my eyes, in my eyes...." which is something that I tend to do with all my friends. I'm a bit of a hero worshipper, on the quiet. And so far I haven't been disappointed, really, but it's nice to have people though, not to look up to them, to have them on an equal footing as you. So it's something I'm learning.
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Vince: The songs were written with acoustic guitar. And once we had the melody ideas recorded I started programming. And I was actually working with a guy called Jon Collyer, JC, and he was in London, and we were exchanging ideas via the Internet. So I would come with some melody lines, or some drum programmes. He'd come back with some percussion lines, or sequences, and then we kind of work that way.
Andy: "All This Time Still Falling Out Of Love" is a track that was mixed by Mark Saunders and Vince in New York, and I was a bit iffy about it at first because I did like Tom Elmhirst mix, which is more brutal but the mix has grown on me, and I think it fits really nicely with the other tracks on the album.
And this was, just a song about, how I'm such a flirt when I go out, and I love copping off with people!
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Vince: The record was produced by everybody. Everybody who had an opinion!(laughs)
Andy: The song Breathe was either the last, or the penultimate song that we wrote for Nightbird.
It's kind of, it's a little bit like, it's quite soul-y, I suppose, the beginning of it. And it's one of those walking down the street songs, and it remains me a bit of the Massive Attack (sings) "all the things that I have spoken, hey, hey!" if you can recognise that song. And the chorus is one of those breathe in, breathe out, is it that way round?.. Breathe in, out with the old...No, in with the new, out with the old.