In that period of my life, I was entirely entranced by Billie Holiday, and my favourite song was Solitude. My girlfriend always asked me to sing it to her. I sang it over and over.

Eventually, we broke up, and she moved out and went her own way, but a few months later, she called me out of the blue and said she was afraid and asked if she could come stay with me for a few days.

She was having headaches and problems with her memory. We took her to the doctor, who sent her to the hospital, where they told us she had a brain tumour. It was inoperable, but they might be able to treat it with radiotherapy.

The treatment didn’t work out, and her memory and her headaches got worse, and eventually she slipped into unconsciousness.

Her parents flew over from Malta and came to stay with me in my little apartment, and one by one, her friends and relatives from all over the world came to join us sitting by Rita’s bedside.

We sat by her bed for days and weeks and months, and every now and again, she would drift back into our lives and say a few words before drifting back into the twilight. One day, she slept and didn’t wake up again.

I used to sing to her while she slept her deep sleep – especially when we were alone, just Rita and I. One day, one last time, she spoke to me.

“What’s that song? I know that song.”

“It’s Solitude by Billie Holiday.”

“It’s a beautiful song. My boyfriend used to sing it to me.”

Then she went back to sleep. She didn’t wake up any more.

I promised that I’d never forget you, Rita. I kept my promise.

I have all her albums on CD or vinyl. I’m almost glad that she only makes an album every few years because it gives me something to look forward to. They are all brilliant.

My favourite Sade memory is when we had a cabin at Tahoe and I took my Little Clown every weekend for two or three years. He skied. I snowboarded.

We shared the cabin with 11 other people but one Saturday night we had the cabin to ourselves. We had the wood-burner stove going and all the lights were off, and we were listening to Sade’s Love Deluxe — me on the couch and five-year-old Dylan in an armchair. When Pearls came on he got tears in his eyes and came to snuggle with his dad tighter than any little boy ever snuggled.

I still get tears in my eyes.

PS. If you look closely in the crowd at Live Aid, you can see me in the seats on the right of the stage.

My best Billy Bragg memories include teaching Train Train to Dylan when we lived in New York. He was only a year old and he used to finish the chorus for me “Train! Train!…Hurry bring my baby back again!”.

I was once cornered by an Old Etonian and an Old Harrovian for singing There is Power in a Factory in the showers at BRNC Dartmouth. They’d never met a Labour supporter before.

The night before I was due to see Billy at the Guildhall, Rob and I saw him being arrested on the Nine O’Clock News for breaking into the nuclear base at Greenham Common. Billy was released in time though and he was brilliant. Ted Hawkins was his warm-up act and I bought all of Ted’s albums too.

Levi Stubb’s Tears is one of my favourites and I’ve wanted to learn it since I got my first guitar. This is the first song I’ve recorded in a couple of years and I’m a bit rusty. It was fun to play though.

I decided that the song needed a bit of a video to go with it so I spent a very pleasant couple of hours wandering through Flickr’s Creative Commons gallery looking for images and cramming them together in iMovie (iMovie sucks).

There were three men came out of the west
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die.

They’ve ploughed, they’ve sown, they’ve harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head,
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead.

John Barleycorn is the personification of beer and/or barley and the three men from the west killed him and buried him in the ground.

They let him lie for a very long time
Till the rains from Heaven did fall,
And little Sir John sprung up his head
And so amazed them all.

They’ve let him stand till Midsummer’s day,
Till he looked both pale and wan.
And little Sir John’s grown a long, long beard
And so become a man.

But John Barleycorn springs back to life and grows strong again… until the men cut him down and make sure that he is really dead this time.

They’ve hired men with the scythes so sharp,
To cut him off at the knee,
They’ve rolled him and tied him by the waist,
Serving him most barbarously.

They’ve hired men with the sharp pitchforks,
Who pricked him through the heart
And the loader, he has served him worse than that,
For he’s bound him to the cart.

They’ve wheeled him around and around a field,
Till they came unto a barn,
And there they made a solemn oath
On poor John Barleycorn

They grind up him up to make beer giving John Barleycorn the chance to get his revenge on those three men from the west.

They’ve hired men with the crab-tree sticks,
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller, he has served him worse than that,
For he’s ground him between two stones.

And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl
And his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl
Proved the strongest man at last

The huntsman, he can’t hunt the fox
Nor so loudly to blow his horn,
And the tinker, he can’t mend kettle nor pots
without a little barley corn

The earliest surviving written record is from the sixteenth century but there is evidence that the song and the story is much older – like this twelfth century pub in Hampshire.

I spent a very pleasant day listening to every version I could find – from Martin Carthy to Paul Weller via Billy Bragg and Jethro Tull and The Fairport Convention and many, many more. The best version by far is by Traffic but they each have their own charms.

Turn up the volume and raise a glass to that ancient hero.

Long live John Barleycorn!

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Credits

• Music and lyrics: G. Harrison (1968)
• Vocals: R. Clown & Mrs Clown.
• Lead guitar: R. Clown
• Rhythm guitar: R. Clown
• Piano: R. Clown
• Drums: G. Band
• Album art: Mrs Clown

Recording Notes

Making music is hard.

I started with the drum track this time and it made everything so much easier. The rhythm guitar was fun even though you can’t really hear it over all the other tracks. I finished everything except the guitar solo in one day but it was another week before I could get back to it. Most of the drumming is me but I threw in a drum loop for the first verse just to see how it sounds. If I had picked a slightly faster tempo, I would have had a ton more loops to choose from. Oh well.

I played the piano part on the mac keyboard. I could’ve re-recorded it on a real piano when my midi cable arrived but I was too lazy. I did record the bass on the piano though.

Can you believe I had my piano for 20 years before I got a midi cable? I thought so.

In that extra week, I had got much, much better at the lead and could play it through in one take and it was tempting to go back and re-record it but I was impatient to get to the solo.

Man, was that solo hard! I had to cheat a little. I recorded most of it in one go but had to go back and overdub the last bit because my fingers were too slow.

I got bored following the tab for the final solo so I ad-libbed a bit. I broke a string while bending to get that top A which is why it sounds a bit flat at the end – I was scared I would break it again!

I re-recorded the vocals too and was joined in a duet by guest vocalist, Mrs Clown. She was the photographer for the album art too!

Most fun song yet! On to the next one! It will involve dark, desert highways.

One of the occasional duties of a 10-year-old at my school was Hymn Sheet Monitor. There were two monitors to each hymn sheet contraption and, when the music teacher said ‘Hymn number 127’, one of the monitors would undo the rope from the cleat and lower the contraption from the ceiling. The other monitor would then rummage through the giant (to a 10-year-old) sheets of paper looking for hymn number 127. After lots of searching and then hefting of hundreds of sheets – each bigger than a 10-year-old – the first monitor would heave on the rope to return the contraption to the ceiling and then hang on with all his strength while the other monitor belayed the rope to the cleat.

Then the singing would commence.

The singing was fantastic. I remember one time, we had a visit from the Mayor of Bexley in all his mayoral robes and he pronounced that “he would always remember this as the singing school”.

We sang every one of those hymns. There were the hymns that everyone knows like What a Friend we have in Jesus and All Things Bright and Beautiful and Onward Christian Soldiers but there were also a few pop-songs-turned-hymns like Lord of the Dance, Morning has Broken and Any Dream Will Do from the Rice/Weber blockbuster and plenty of obscure songs that I have never heard before or since.

I was reminded of one of those obscure songs last week – my absolute favourite – when I read the most beautiful passage in the New Testament in Luke while camping at Sunset Beach.

36 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

I loved that song. I wish I remembered all the words. I have the melody down on my harmonica but my memory, and Google, fail me for the lyrics.

Here’s what I remember:

Said Judas to Mary, “O what will you do
With your ointment so rich and so rare?”
“I’ll pour it all over the feet of the Lord
And I’ll wipe it away with my hair.”
She said.
“And I’ll wipe it away with my hair.”

Said Judas to Mary, “O think of the poor.
Think of the riches you can give to the poor
Something something something
If, your ointment, you sell it today.”
He said.
“If your ointment, you sell it today.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll think of the poor.
Tomorrow.” she said. “Not today.
For today I must think of my only true Lord.
For my Lord who is going away.”
She said.
“For my Lord who is going away.”

It’s funny how memory works – for that song to spring back into my mind so nearly complete after 30 years. I wish I remembered the rest.

It’s funny too how our collective memory works. So many of the most vivid, rich scenes spring from throwaway one-liners like

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

and

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

The whole nativity is only 20 verses of Luke, less than that in Matthew and not covered at all in Mark and John. Matthew and Luke made those little bits up but, in 2000 years, we did the rest.

Something – The Ragged Clowns

Liner notes by Wikipedia

“Something” was recorded during the Abbey Road sessions. It took 52 takes in two main periods, the first session involved a demo take on Harrison’s 26th birthday, 25 February 1969, followed by 13 backing track takes on 16 April. The second main session took 39 takes and started on 2 May 1969 when the main parts of the song were laid down in 36 takes, finishing on 15 August 1969 after several days of recording overdubs.

With more than 150 versions, “Something” is the second most covered Beatles song after “Yesterday”. It began accumulating cover versions from other artists almost immediately after its release by the Beatles.

“Something” continues to garner accolades from the musical establishment years after its release, with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website naming it as the 64th-greatest song ever. According to the BBC, “Something” shows more clearly than any other song in The Beatles canon that there were three great songwriters in the band rather than just two.” The Beatles’ official website itself said that “Something” “underlined the ascendancy of George Harrison as a major song writing force”.^[28] In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) named “Something” as the 17th-most performed song of the 20th century, with five million performances in all.

I’ve been meaning to play with Garage Band since we got the Mac. Today was the day.

It turns out that making music is harder than they make it look on the telly. It took me a lot more than 52 takes!

Alison by The Ragged Clown

Thanks to Tom for teaching it to me (I hope he doesn’t mind that I recorded it – there is a story about Bob Dylan recording House of the Rising Sun and Dave Van Ronk never spoke to him again). Thanks to my children for tolerating a song they dislike so much and thanks to Elvis Costello for giving us a song that still gives me the shivers even when _I_ sing it.

Recording Notes:

I recorded the rhythm guitar twice to give it more depth. I recorded the lead parts in micro-takes because my memory is crap and I can’t remember more than one measure at a time but the rest I recorded in a single take or, at most, two.

The drum track is a loop from Garage Band but the fills are me as is the bass which I played on a keyboard.

I flubbed the opening “oh” because the intro is about half a beat late and it was throwing off my timing. I tried to re-record it but it just got worse and worse so I just went with the first take.