BENEATH THE BARK

IT'S easy when talking Trees to become rapturous about the effortless yet audacious melodies of the Ewen-McPherson combo. You forget what cracking lyricists they were. Take, for example, the opening stanza of "Go For Goal".

You better not forget it
You better be aware
It's one for one now
On your own or in a pair

Here, in just four lines, is everything you need to know about life on earth in the late 20th century. "The millennium looms like a precipice," McPherson told himself while rehearsing for an interview. "Behind us is existential angst, before us oblivion." Even as late as the 1980s few social commentators had divined this, much less had the courage to articulate it. The exception, of course, were The Trees. Gordon Douglas McPherson was just 16 years, 4 months and three days old when he scribbled these prescient lines on the wrapper of a kimg rib supper. (The wrapper was later auctioned and raised 13p for The British Heart Foundation. McPherson outbid himself for them.)

The refrain "on your own or in a pair" would haunt McPherson during his ill-fated marriage. (Styx used to hang outside McPherson's bedroom window and whistle it after a particularly bad bout of love-making.) However, McPherson claimed later that he had sang "pear" instead of "pair", something it's hard to argue with. If this was the case, "Go For Goal" doesn't become gibberish as you might expect. If anything it becomes even more profound. McPherson is in effect suggesting that if fate left you floundering in a giant soft fruit, passers-by would simply ignore you, just as they famously ignored a murder on the streets of New York. He is predicting mankind will become blasse not just about death, but fruit the size of a house (doubtless a reality by the turn of the century). Roald Dahl also explored the theme of murderous fruit in his book James and the Giant Peach, but as McPherson caustically remarked: "Okay, now let's see him put a tune to it."

Let's turn now to McPherson's second song, "Rosie". At first he seems to be depicting some kind of rural idyll, a recollection of his growing up near the Cults Woodies perhaps.

Steamy haze, a shimmering glaze
Lazy hours stretched out in the sunshine
Tinder dry with a yellow dye
Don't try to think, don't even think of it
You say I've changed, I know I've changed
But some days are all the same

In reality McPherson is talking about collapsing drunk in the gutter on days when less gifted individuals might have played football or gone for a swim in the river. "Tinder dry with a yellow dye". Is he describing the leaves around him - or his own perilous state, out of drink and already jaundiced..? David Lynch would later expose the flip-side of picket-fence life his film Blue Velvet, but most obsevers agree it wasn't half as catchy as Rosie and way too long for a pop song anyway.

Ewen could be equally scathing about his village upbringing and its rotten core:

Cycling through the streets, Murphy's on his way
To the little park where the children play
Good morning ladies!
They shun him as they've always done...

"Reverend Murphy" tackled child molestation in a way that hadn't been done before - as a chirpy piece of pop. Like many Trees tracks, this could have been the theme to any children's TV programme. That said, it was also "Rat" who penned "The Banker", described by Tombola as "a stepping stone out of nursery rhymes". It wasn't simply that the band were now using grown-up electric guitars, the lyrics too revealed a new-found maturity, an empathy with the wider world and its denizens:

A thousand shirts and ties that seem to look the same
The banker man and smile are standing there in the rain

The song tells of an adulterous banker whose affair serves only to make him feel as lonely as the wife who waits for him at home. The real tragedy here is that The Banker/Clubland double A-side would be the last record The Trees ever made.

* excerpt (abridged) from This Time and No Mistakes: The True Story of The Trees by Ian Prior, published by StoneHouse, 15.99 (pounds sterling).

Published by The Tree Corporation Last modified: Friday, 31-Jan-97 10:09:34 GMT