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What It Is
"What It Is has got a Stratocaster on it which makes people think of the Straits but its a Scottish style of a lick. I was just coming into Scotland late one night, coming into Edinburgh rather late one night, Saturday night. Edinburgh is one of those places where its a magic city, beautiful, and I always make a point of going there whenever I'm in Scotland ...and its so steeped in history that I'm always conscious of being ...in the presence of, even though I don't necessarily believe in ghosts as such, I'm always conscious of the presence of the past there. So, I like all that and its all presided over by this castle with a garrison and the sounds of Scotland, and these huge old buildings and this ancient old town park, you know, and its another road song in the sense that you're missing... you're on your own and you're missing home and its one of those kind of tunes."
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Sailing To Philadelphia "'Philadelphia airport for me had become a place where I just changed planes and its full of shops and just millions of people going in every direction, different terminals and you can't help thinking what it must have been like, you know, at the time of the Mason-Dixon, you know they would sail on a packet from a port on the west coast of England and you would sail and it would take weeks and weeks and weeks and if you were lucky you made it. And, as far as Dixon was concerned, in order to get down there from the North he would have taken a coal boat down to that port and then changed down there, Bristol or somewhere like that maybe or one of the ports on the west coast and then sail, I can't remember which, and then sail to Philadelphia and nowadays we sail in on a great big airliner, I don't really think much about it, but you can still see the boats out there when you're sailing down over there through the clouds. You know, the book's so great because it makes you think about the present, it doesn't just put you in the past, it makes you think about what America really is and what we're becoming, you know. So, there you are."
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Whose Your Baby Now ?
"'Whose Your baby Now ? is just a quick written thing, it just depicts a situation and it can apply to different people and different things. And its the sort of thing that if I was a little kid and I heard the strumming acoustics I want to strum an acoustic guitar myself. That's just a tradition I wouldn't like to see die out, I'd want kids to always want to pick up a guitar and thrash it like that."
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Baloney Again
"'Baloney Again is seen from the point of view of a black gospel group touring in the southern states of America in the early 50s, in the song 53 to be precise, and I got the idea from the sleeve notes for a Fairfield Four record, the Fairfield Four being actually a Nashville based black gospel group. The guy who wrote the sleeve notes said something about how it often had to be a baloney sandwich rather than a restaurant steak or whatever it was and that's all it might take for me to get started on writing a song. I am very happy to report that there is no formula for writing songs as far as I'm concerned."
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The Last Laugh
"'The Last Laugh, I suppose a lot of these songs when they happen to me....a lot of the songs seem to be partly about perseverance. What that says about me I really don't know but just a few songs seem to be about that. I feel so fortunate in my life, although The Last Laugh is not necessarily about me, absolutely not, its just ...its great when you see perseverance rewarded. And I did think it was appropriate for Van because he has stuck with his music and is enjoying a very powerful renaissance I think and a lot of the songs seem to be just really a little bit about that....I don't know why I wrote Speedway At Nazareth, for instance, I hadn't got a clue...I started writing that years ago and I don't know why I started writing it...there's something about the perseverance in pursuit of a rather strange holy grail, pursuit of a rather strange prize and there's something in that human endeavour that always attracts me, it breaks my heart, there's something really wonderful about it."
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Silvertown Blues
"Silvertown Blues...I wanted to have The Squeeze boys on, Glenn and Chris' voices, because I just associate them with that time in...as we came up in
Deptford we were playing music together at the same time, in fact the very first gig that we did was on the back of Farrar House in
Deptford with Squeeze. We shared gigs at places like the Albany Empire and stuff like that....Again the Dome was....I started writing the song I think about the same time as it was getting off the ground and I was aware that, although I had left the area for a long time, I was aware that this poisonous bit of wasteland was being used in this great PR exercise and this huge inflation was going to go on, you know, this great thing was going to arise...and the funny thing is I actually think that the building itself is fine, its just the use of it still fills me with a kind of amazement."
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El Macho "'The name 'Jerry' came up just because I wanted it to be male or female when you're listening to it and it can be what you want, I don't want to spoil it for anybody, its just one of those situations. Its kind of funny, I got the idea of El Macho itself simply from a picture, from a Spanish painting that I saw, and I liked it and it sort of just stuck with me."
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Prairie Wedding
"Prairie Wedding...I got the idea from a play about postal brides and I do remember seeing something one night with no sound, I was watching a channel with no sound, or I was watching it in some hotel, maybe on the continent, I don't know but it was a film about a similar situation. So, its really the two things, a play and a film. So, I really did it myself after that, it was my own take on what that must have felt like, to meet someone who you'd never met, who you'd never seen, and marry them: take them out into the middle of nowhere, try and make a life. Again, you know, a few of these things are about how relatively easy life is now compared with the way it was for millions of people not so long ago."
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Wanderlust
"'I wrote Wanderlust a long time back when I must have been feeling a bit bleaker than I am now. I suppose its one of those things except that the urge to move is always pretty strong with a lot of musicians, I don't quite know why that is. Maybe its just because I've done so many millions of miles touring, you know every now and again you get the urge to burn some rubber."
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Speedway
At Nazareth
"'I don't know why
I wrote Speedway At Nazareth, for instance, I hadn't got a clue...I
started writing that years ago and I don't know why I started writing
it...there's something about the perseverance in pursuit of a rather
strange holy grail, pursuit of a rather strange prize and there's
something in that human endeavour that always attracts me, it breaks my
heart, there's something really wonderful about it."
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Junkie Doll
"'Junkie Doll I got from.....the actual term was used by Edward Snorburn in a book, he had written a trilogy and there was a book...in which she actually fictionally but really actually depicts drug addiction and heroin addiction in the most graphic way, it really, really affected me very strongly."
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Sands of Nevada
"' I can't remember where Sands of Nevada came from, its like a folk style tune but then with a lot of other stuff thrown on top of it. Its a combination of things. I was interested, I think, in the idea of gambling ...in the idea of being an addictive gambler, so in a sense, like Junkie Doll, its another addictive song. I was just trying to understand it, I've never known, I don't think I've ever known, anybody whose a gambling addict except the promoters, of course, who I've had to work with over the years and I'm convinced that they're all gamblers."
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One More Matineé "Oh yeah, I mean the road....I love touring. I'm one of those very lucky people who enjoys the whole shebang as far as music goes, and I love writing and I love rehearsing more than anything. I love recording and I love touring. So, its only going to be a matter of time. I am going to get together with the five guys who I made the record with...I couldn't think of a name for them so I called them the 96ers for this record just because we got together in 96 for Golden Heart and I suppose I'll call them something else on the next record. We're going to get together and do some television specials and things like that. Presumably, when that comes to an end, we'll have some shows
organized and we'll be able to go on tour a little bit."
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