Well we've made it to the first real 'biggie' on the album, an epic make or break track. For many this is a polarising song; people who enjoy long musically complex songs with huge instrumentals, often rate this as a highlight. However people who prefer shorter songs more suitable for singles often find this less enjoyable. Whatever your own preference there is no getting around the fact that at over seven minutes it is the longest track on the album but also the one which goes through the most changes. This is going to be an epic write up...

What is it about? Originally it started with just the title (a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that at age 18 I never seemed to have a gf...) but unusually for me I took the basic brain stormed idea and gave it a non relationship oriented story. When I was younger I was heavily impressed with the film Highlander, for those who haven't seen it the film is about a man (Connor Mcleod) who discovers that for some unknown reason that he cannot die. However he is in love with a normal woman, whom he met before discovering his immortality. A central scene of the movie shows him not changing whilst his girlfriend grows older and older until she eventually passes away in his arms. It's set to the beautiful, haunting and soulful Queen song Who Wants To Live Forever written by Brian May; I've always been touched by the combination of that music and that poignant scene.

The exact details of how I wrote the song have been lost... but I remember it feeling very natural and easy, particularly the lyrics if anything the above theme and basic story line came together without having to think about it. There is of course one crucial difference between Highlander and my story; The Watcher isolates himself and refuses to love. The music also fell out naturally and I'm quite proud of the chords, the writing felt musically more mature and my compositional style of simple chords but unusual choices is in full flow. A creative high water mark and a melting point of many musical ideas... some of which will be revisted in different styles on album two. The Watcher went through the typical early demo's on both my tape deck and then subsequently the computer in mid 2000, I felt this track and Who We Are were the strongest of those demos. 

I always felt that The Watcher should sound like a Genesis track (i.e. Progressive Rock) performed on modern instruments. What would Tony Banks and Steve Hackett do with this one? The demo felt like the song had more scope... like it should break out into a huge instrumental at the end.

Finally around 2007 after a lot of hard work on other tracks for Just Me I decided to bite the bullet and restart the recording of The Watcher. The skeleton of the song was laid down fairly easily and I particularly enjoyed playing bass and a nice Steve Hackett style lead guitar line... but it felt like more could be done; I needed a fresh perspective. Unusually for me, I didn't call on Dan (probably because he was so heavily involved in the finale numbers) but instead pulled in DJ Flywheel for a fresh perspective. I didn't know it at the time, but this was an inspired choice because he was into progressive rock more than I was! 

DJ Flywheel suggested an arrangement change, first the time signature of verse one changed and secondly the lyrics were spoken not sung. Effectively it gave the tune an introduction, a spooky feel like a scary organ grinder fairground man telling a ghost story. DJ Flywheel suggested I write some more lyrics for a spoken outro... giving me just the right nudge to go off and actually do it. 

We worked slavishly on improving the keyboard sound and I learnt and incredible amount at this stage. Dan was still around and offered the odd bit've advice, for example I wanted a very quirky drum pattern - a la early 1980's Phil Collins - and had specially bought some up to date samples of the drum sounds I was thinking of. We ended up using effectively two drums, one the obscure sound (where Dan wrote the key signature pattern) and a more normal straight drum kit to keep the beat moving (mostly DJ Flywheel and myself wrote that part with a little refinement from Dan).  

Working with DJ Flywheel also pushed me to write something for an instrumental, just prior to catching up one day I had this odd (and very tough!) chord sequence jotted down. We laid down a drum pattern underneath it but was still lacking a melody so I asked Chris for some help. He suggested using a Tony Banks early 1980's keyboard sound (the Odyssey), so I fired it up... and he wrote the melody in the time it took to play the backing track; genius! 

I played bass on the track up to the instrumental, but it's horrendously complex timing worried me. So half way through the song the bass play switches to Dan, his 6 string deep woofy bass and virtuoso playing perfectly suited this section. Listen closely and you can hear a three part harmony at the loudest part of the instrumental... it's Chris' melody, plus Dan harmonising it on another keyboard plus Dan playing the third harmony on his bass! It was Dan's idea to have part of the instrumental go very LOUD and in your face... it always makes me smile.

Amazingly all the recording sessions were me and one other person, be it DJ Flywheel, Dan or Chris. We never all sat down together to work on the song, yet there were no ego's and no pulling up of the other person's ideas.The tune feels very much like mine & DJ Flywheel's baby, but each person complimented and refined the other... an extremely enjoyable and creative time. 

Another arrangement idea was to open with some church bell chiming ominously, my girlfriend of the time suggested starting with 3 chimes and ending with 4. Why? In some cultures the witching hour is actually 3am and not midnight, in Christianity this is because Jesus died at 3pm and because of the holy trinity is 3... so evil forces chose 3am in mockery. This was mentioned in the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose (if memory serves I bought a copy of it for my girlfriend) and also remember that 3am is the time when most people are asleep probably in deep sleep. The Watcher is a scary or ghost story, 4 strikes for 4am signfies the end of the witching hour and the end of the song.

So... my progressive rock inclinations have now reached their zenith; what next?