This is a personal favourite and gave me the confidence to complete the album. It was written immediately after Lost Again in the summer of 1996 again with Redset in mind, except it is a little more adventurous...

Where did the first idea come from? Well I’ve always been ahuge fan of the Phil Collins song In the Air Tonight, particularly the live version. During the drum finale Phil Collins would be screaming his guts out and varying the melody. I attempted to cover the song but quickly found that my voice has a different range, so I ended up changing the key from D minor to A minor. However I wasn’t sticking strictly to the original melody but instead making up my own variation and it sounded good!

The summer of 1996 was quite a turbulent time for me (like most 18 year olds!) and during the long summer break I found my sleeping pattern was going up the wall. At 3 am one morning I couldn’t sleep but the creative side of my brain was racing... “if my melody is different to In The Air Tonight, why not use it for one of my own songs?” Lyrics then began tumbling out of my head and I switched the light, grabbed pen and paper desperately scribbled the lyrics down; if they were any good I’d find out in the morning.

The lyrics were good, especially the chorus. I’ve always been fascinated by duality stories like Jekyll and Hyde, Batman’s Two-Face character, the light / dark side of the force in Star Wars... and was musing on my own positive / negative traits; growing pains! The lyrics represent the inner conflict of humanity’s sense of good and evil in a confessional setting without being explicit. The confessional setting is based on my tendency back then to pedestal women, representing good.

My song had started to move away from In the Air Tonight so I needed to write more music to support the different themes. This is some of the work I’m most proud of. I used very standard chords but arranged them in very unusual ways, utilising odd key changes to reflect the lyrical themes. I am particularly proud of the bridge (“I love, I hate you”), it represents sudden shifts from good to evil and the chords inversely mirror this by switching from minor to major. The writing was a pleasure, very easy and completed within an hour the following day.

Right so I now had a mini masterpiece, all it required was a gig to show how great it was... oh boy was I deluded! What I hadn’t anticipated was that this complex tune wouldn’t work on just me and my acoustic. The contrasts didn’t come out, to be blunt it flopped and received muted applause. Curses! Initially it put me off the song, but still... I felt it had a lot of potential so I filed it away. One for the future.

The summer of 2000, I had finished my degree and experiencing my last long break before starting work. I wondered if I could use the computer to record this song and unlock the potential I saw in it. Vocal effects became possible as did jumping from right to left speakers... it worked! I played it to Neil, he sat up in his chair during that section and immediately described it as the best thing I’d done.

So recording on the computer was the answer... my dream of an album was achievable.

The lead vocals were recorded in the summer of 2000, co-incidentally due to a slow relationship breakdown it felt very much as turbulent as 1996. I recaptured the feel and raw emotion of the song especially the chorus where I literally gave it my all; after singing the last note I fell to the floor in a coughing fit! It took several minutes before I had the strength to stand.

However completing the song was an excruciatingly slow process. Once I had an initial draft down I became aware of my own limitations, namely drums. It was for this song I enlisted Dan’s help which spiralled to include the entire album. He has this incredible ability to take my raw ideas then refine and extend them, creating a much better finished product that perfectly matched my vision. The drum patterns Dan created were not something to just ‘keep’ the rhythm going, but were instead a prominent feature like another lead instrument.

Dan provided the bulk of the drums (around 75%), but they were refined by myself, Chris and finally Jim Murphy. Ironically many years ago it was Matthew from Redset who pointed out that the hi-hat was missing, something Jim also noted; we spent days working it into the tune and discussing it with Dan. Listen closely and you can hear the hi-hat's introduction on the second verse, then it increases in frequency to maintain the momentum in the keyboard solo. A lot of the delicate touches on the hi-hat and cymbals were Jim and me bouncing ideas off each other and I always enjoy listening out for them.

On the subject of the keyboard solo, it was introduced after the original song had been written because it felt a little short. In 1997 Genesis released on the internet a short snippet of their upcoming song The Dividing Line. It made me realise just how much I loved Tony Banks’ big keyboard solo’s, and wanted to write something similar for my song. I used a tape deck to record a drum + guitar part constantly repeating the music from the chorus then jammed away on a keyboard. What I wrote was new but the phrasing had clear influences from Fading Lights and Ripples. I wrote two thirds of the final keyboard solo and Dan wrote the closing third paraphrasing me paraphrasing Tony Banks!

The introduction of the keyboard solo was a major problem, too much energy left the song and it felt weak. Jim Murphy and I agonised over this problem, it’s why we increased the frequency of the hi-hat... but still it dragged too much. Not good! I lucked out and got a little inspiration; a very simple repeating phrase on the piano like Genesis’ the Carpet Crawlers; bingo! The cherry on top were some deepand meaningful spoken phrases (that were actually adlibbed!) to pique the listeners interest. I’m actually saying “You know don’t you? You know you’re an angel. It’s just.... who we are” jumping from speaker to speaker. Jim's comment was; “that works now”.

There’s something about this song which just clicks mentally with me, so when it came to the live guitar parts I insisted on playing almost everything... it had to feel like me. There are two notable exceptions firstly Chris plays a subtle guitar harmony on the very last chorus, secondly Dan had another great idea for a riff. Now Dan had introduced me to a heavy metal group called Dream Theatre and wanted to employ some of their techniques. So for just a brief moment in the last chorus after the line "I've gone too far", there is a typical metal motif; hence it gets very erm heavy! The rhythm guitar is me (heavily edited!) with Dan having a brief uncredited guest on bass. I had no chance of playing something that difficult!

As you can tell by the sheer length of this article, I am very proud of this song.

I find it a highlight of the album with lots of moments I'll always treasure.