The oldest song on the album written sometime in 1992, this was orignally the finale for my G.C.S.E. music coursework

Credit where it's due, the opening line came from my old school friend Craig. We'd been on holiday and met this girl of a similar age, both being around aged 14 from an all boys school... actually meeting a real in the flesh woman made quite an impression on us! So when we got back Craig wrote the very first line "When I first saw you".

Now the girl in question lived quite a distance away, where exactly escapes me but I vaguely recall it being more than a couple of hours drive. Around this stage I was dabbling with song writing and have clear memories of just playing Craig's riff in my parents dining room one day... and much like a lot of my songs I had a sudden inspiration on where to take the chords next.

The lyrics then fell out very easily, as I naively described it back then; each verse describes something nice about a woman (you, eyes, lips, face). The song itself is left somewhat deliberately ambiguous, why could this love never be? Hopefully it will fit many different situations for people, but to me it implies a long distance relationship.

So it was dusted off and submitted for my G.C.S.E. music coursework, the tape is still lying around somewhere but I do cringe slightly at my singing. The melody doesn't fall naturally for me, in a way I never really 'got' it; a side effect of starting with Craig's melody. Also the tune was written on guitar... somehow it didn't feel right to me.

When I got to recording the Just Me album, this particular track had a huge question mark over it. Would it be good enough to - ironically - make the grade? From the old demo, I was skeptical... my gut feel was that it should be played on the piano not guitar. Now I am not a pianist by any stretch of the imagination (my brain struggles to multi-task even more than the average male!) which is a required skill on piano where each hand must work independently. So sadly I knew I couldn't make this song fly, but Dan (who is a pianist) could.

So I demo'ed the tune to Dan on guitar, put the chords down in front of him and.... he just nailed it; he instantly understood the feel. Next I started freely chatting about the songs history, curiously enough Chris had mentioned that the middle 8 ("Oh how I loved you...") was very strong and suggested it be used again partly because it introduces more variety. 

A couple of days later Dan sent me an email. Not only had he recorded a strong live midi piano backing track, but he had also written a bass solo over a repeat of the middle  8's chord sequence. Wow! Suffice to say I was blown away. Several people have commented that the solo sounds like a nylon guitar. It's actually Dan's six string bass tuned slightly high and double tracked. Lovely and unique sound but there is a drawback... Dan has subsequently switched to a heavier guage string, everytime he tries to repeat the tuning his string snaps! So this solo has never been played live... but it is gorgeous.

The lead vocal was sheer hell for me! It was re-take after re-take followed by endless pitch correction... ow! Still it was worth it. Dan had the idea for a vocal harmony and wrote out the parts, I sheepishly admitted I couldn't sing it so he had the inspiration to suggest he perform a take and then I copied him. To quote Meatloaf; I can do that! So this track contains the first recording of me singing a vocal harmony, with a technquie which we re-used for songs that appear earlier on the album. There is one line though ("A love never to be", just after the middle 8) which is still Dan to add a slightly different tone and because I wanted him there.

OK so what about the rest of the track? Well the normal bass line is me, enjoying myself too because the song called for a very straight forward low bass line very much my style. Dan suggested some nice strings playing chords which has an awesome effect when they come in on the middle 8. It must be said that Chris gave up a lot of his time helping me with the pitch correction and suggested a violin counter melody for the final couple of verses. I fired it up and just let him loose... the result was a soaring line and a highlight for me.

All in all this is a surprising gem of a song, I'm really glad Dan managed to salvage it and if the album had ended on this track it would have gone on a high.

But... we still have two tracks to go. As Chris would say, "go for broke"!