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We Love the City (PURE106CD) Released 16th October 2000 on Too Pure on CD and Vinyl We Love the City, The Greedy Ugly People, Good Fruit, Painting and Kissing, Hold Me Closer, Don't Go, The Greater London Radio, As Soon As You're Ready, She Can't Sleep No More, The Cure For Evil, The Day That Thatcher Dies, Your Head to Your Toes |
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We Love the City This is London, not Antartica, so why don't the tubes run all night, We love the city because it lets us down, We love the city NOT the suburbs that surround. I am intrigued, not merely curious as to why it takes so long to change your mind. We can hold those aspirations down with bad luck and half hearted frowns, And if you don't love me now, if you don't love me now, if you don't love me, then you can't have me, you can't have me now. The Greedy Ugly People
Good fruit If it doesn't mean a thing, then don't say anything. Painting and Kissing I'm in love with Linda, I think she understands me. Hold Me Closer I want a single bed, I want a simpler life, Don't Go
Put on your underwear, pull your tights over your knees. Button up your blouse, zip up your skirt put on your tiny shoes we're going out I have never loved you more then I do right now, hold on. pull down those tights, Take off you under wear, lets got to bed, it's getting late. I have never loved you more then I do right now. hold on. The Greater London Radio
As Soon As You're Ready I will polish your shoes, She Can't Sleep No More
The Cure For Evil It took a little time, it took a little wine, The Day that Thatcher Dies Your Head to Your Toes
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Other Information
I was trying to make a proper album one that didn't have any filler, and has different styles of songs that sat well against each other, a bit like, and I know this sounds lame, a Beatles album. 'Hold Me Closer' was perhaps supposed to be like Beatles song but it actually sounds like Badfinger to me, which is no bad thing in my book. Although a long way off of being my favourite song, it is possibly my favourites sounding Hefner song. We played it as a 5-piece with John's friend Mark Bandola playing piano and you you can hear the sound of the band bouncing down the piano mikes, making it sound all big and boomy. She Can't Sleep No More, tends to split people a bit, look it's supposed to be out of tune!! It took a long time to get the brass section to play that bad on purpose. We only played this live once. The Cure for Evil is my attempt to do a mini rock opera, like 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant' by Billy Joel. The Brass part on this one was written by me but all the rest of the brass parts on this album were written by John. We Love The City Web Diary The other day I was getting a new aerial for my car. It was my 3rd attempt to get the correct aerial and I was taking back my second aerial to the Fords parts center. They discovered all the wrong aerials had been delivered to them in the wrong boxes. It struck me at the time how much of our lives we spend putting wrong things right rather then just doing right things right. The first day of work on the fourth (if you count 'Boxing') Hefner album has most definitely been a case of putting wrong things right. A humming bass, a rattling guitar amp, howling monitor feed back all got me to that hair pulling stage. When I start getting stroppy like this the other members of Hefner shrug a lot and try and not to give me eye contact. The situation is compounded by the fact that I'm beginning to realise that Jack Hayter (father, gardener and hefner) cannot fix absolutely everything that I break. "Jack, why can't you just magic the amp back together??" Its like one of those life changing moments, like when you accept your parents aren't right about everything. It'll make me and Jack stronger in the long run. So here's the plan. 11 (maybe 12) songs in 14 days. Recorded for the most part live. Miti is our engineer for the beginning and end, new boy Simon Askew gets some time on the pitch in the middle.Our assistant engineer is Gil who , like Miti, worked on 'The Fidelity Wars' and 'Christian Girls'. The idea is that this will be our most uplifting record thus far, an album for couples and most definitely an album for lovers of the city. On six of the songs we have decided to use a brass section, they arrive on Saturday, so the first three days are possibly going to be some of the busiest as we get those songs ready for the weekend. Its not until mid afternoon that enough problems are rectified so we can start recording. After this much time screwing around, the mood is harder to find, but with the right amounts of coffee and beer we are 'inside the zone'. The basic tracks for 'The Greedy Ugly People' and 'Good Fruit' are laid down and thankfully the live vocals cut the mustard (well by my standards anyway). We even get time to overdub some piano before rushing home to catch the latest episode of Castaway 2000. Speak to you tomorrow. (ps. I am aware that every sentence I write here will be worth a thousand interview questions, so to all you journalists here doing your research, the answer is probably in the text. Read it again slowly. Did that sound rude?) Day 2 Thursday 27th April In the TV lounge at Roundhouse studios, they have magazines and stuff to read. Not proper magazines and newspapers mind, just Music Week, Melody Maker, NME etc,etc. No New Scientist or Guardian here (I think Blink182 took them all). Making Music is my favorite have you ever seen that? When me and Ant were at college together we used to laugh at the chord of the month column. Anyway the highlight of this months issue was a technical interview with Danny from Embrace. Now I know both me and Danny both come from a non-singing school of singing and that there should be some sort of unspoken code between us, but his voice does sound pig awful doesn't it. I mean out of tune is ok if there's some character, and a characterless pitch perfect voice can be useful, but to combine the double whammy of tuneless ness with no character really deserves respect. So, bearing this in mind it was with some amusement that I read of him compiling 15 takes to get a complete vocal. (that means singing it 15 times to get enough bits together for one version). Do you realise how much work that is? Personally I couldn't be arsed, (which says a lot). Anyway the best bit was when Danny found himself at an impasse on a particular song. 'We just kept taking the vocal out and the song sounded great.' (..er, yeah.) 'I went to the bathroom looked at myself in the mirror and said 'You're going to get it in one' and I pretty much did ! With almost no fixes !!' There are two things that made me laugh here. One is Danny likening a vocal overdub to something out of Taxi Driver, the other is his use of words like 'pretty much' and 'almost', so that means you didn't get it one then Danny? I mean there are things that get me more angry (washing machine repair men, Barclays bank, cable and wireless, the third world debt) but all these bands who go on about making records 'practically' live and getting it 'virtually' in one take. Are telling a pack of lies. They all spend months slaving over every syllable and hi-hat hit making sure their record sounds like 'The Who Sell Out' or whatever. (but of course sounding nothing like 'The Who Sell Out'). They all do it, bunch of fucking prima-donna pretty boys; Weller, Cast, S Club 7, Fugazi, Henry Rollins, Sonic Youth. Not us. We're the real McCoy. I pissed out seven perfect takes before I even had breakfast this morning, and if there not perfect?? Well bollocks to it. This good mood you find me in is probably due to the fact that my amp has packed in again. It was fixed, then it broke. Mind you Gil did find a bit of it that Jack forgot to put back in so that could be it. We managed to get work done though. 'The Cure for Evil' is a song with been playing quite a bit on the recent tour, a happy 'up' love song. (hello girls, sorry boys) We got nearly most of that almost completely done in virtually one take as well as 'She Can't Sleep No More' and a new, as yet, untitled song which we opened the Southampton, London and oxford shows with. Antony has added some metal bins to his drum kit. DAY 3 Friday 28th Feb We with probably had the most exciting day so far in the studio. I don't think anybody in the band could argue that we got off to uneven start, but today everybody was firing on all guns, it was enough really for Miti to keep up and record everyones ideas. Another distraction we've been having for the last few days is that Jacks son James has been a little unwell, so the early morning news that he is on the mend puts us in high spirits. The day starts off, as always, with us slagging off Embrace. This is a noble gentlemanly thing to do and you might well want to try it at home. John said he saw Danny on the Jo Wiley (?) show and he was saying how he loved the way Karen Carpenter sang out of tune (???). This man has an obsession with tuning, can't think why. Today we recorded 'The Greater London Radio' and 'The Day that Thatcher Dies'. Anyone who saw the live show over the last few months will know the thatcher song. It's a big scrappy old mess live, usually because it's the last song and , well, that isn't just coke I'm drinking on stage you know. It took a few attempts before the ultimate goal of 'in time and in tune' was achieved. (something we discovered in the process was that if you listen to the drummer you are far more likely to stay in time.) 'The Greater London Radio' we've only played a couple of times, and never in England. Its maybe the oddest song on the record, which is not to say that its willfully obscure or anything, but you know there are tempo changes, harmoniums, moog synthesizers, you'll like it honest. Oh and it was Antonys birthday today and as regular listeners to Hefner records will know a Hefner record is not really complete without and Ant lead vocal somewhere so its his sweet, sweet voice you will hear on the chorus to 'GLR'. DAY 4 Saturday 19th April Feeling tired and excited as I arrive to the studio this morning. It really feels like we're making an album now. Recording is my favourite part of being in a band, and if that wasn't available to us, I probably wouldn't bother. The most exciting things are usually when people from outside the band become involved. I would say that Hefner's greatest asset is their ability to collaborate. Ideas are allowed to flow freely, and there always seems to be a general feeling of what works and very rarely any disagreement. There aren't four people making this record, there are about ten or eleven. Today is the first day of recording some of these guest stars. First James (10) and Owen Hayter (4) come in with their dad (big Jack) to do some vocals. Owen thinks it's hilarious to wear the headphones around his waist and blow raspberries into the microphone (AKG 414 if your interested (I wonder if those Austrian sound technicians reckoned on their mikes withstanding so much spittle)). They are here to sing ‘Ding dong the witch is dead' on ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies', but James tries to wrangle a writing credit by coming up with ‘Ding dong the witch is dead, Thatcher is a poo poo head'. They are paid £15 which they spend on an Action man bike and a copy of Ape Escape.. Next in are the brass section, for their first of two days. Neil (trumpet and flugel) and Matt (trombone) worked on ‘The Fidelity Wars', Andy (sax) is new to us. Amongst their recent credits are a young up and coming band called Embrace. They work with speed and confidence, like all horn sections not seeming overly impressed by our works but none the less doing the job and making them sound ten times better. Neil proves himself to be the Brian Wilson of the section, coming up with a real tear jerking ending for ‘The Greater London Radio' which Jack now thinks is the best thing Hefner have ever done. The Brass section are paid £15, 000 which, surprisingly, they also spend on an Action Man bike and a copy of Ape Escape. Day 5 Sunday 30th April day 5 and the second day of the brass section. Now we've got to know them and stuff the day seems even more focused and productive then the day before. I sometimes worry with waged musicians that they may have less pride in their work or whatever. But these guys never miss an opportunity to improve their parts, or takes or to suggest something that would improve the song. John Morrison tends to write a lot of the brass section parts, but there is a difference between writing a melodic line and knowing who to voice it with sax, trombone and trumpet, which is what Neil the trumpet player does with Johns parts. Andy bought along his flute and baritone sax as well, and Neil bought his flugel, so on songs like Greedy Ugly People we were able to vary the instruments in the horn section. Unfortunately like most musicians horn players like to drink. Already my ‘just the one rule' for the band at the beginning of the album has changed to just the two. Our work rate collapses by 6 and we are in the pub. We only return to get Jack to fix some guitar and then the day is done. Did you see Embrace on Later last night? What does he thinks his hair looks like? Sorry today's photo isn't very good. We took some with Mitis digital camera which we'll put up later in the week. Day 6 May 1st 2000 May day. They are having one of those anti-captilism marches in the city. All very good and everything, capitlism being evil and everything, but its not actually pro- anything else is it. Not that we'd notice anyway. Studio one at Roundhouse is underground, no windows, very nice to work in but you feel pretty cut off, not even my mobile phone works, (mind you , everybody elses does, that's one to none for you). Some how you still manage to sense it's a bank holiday though. Today is the first part of the second phase. Simon takes over from Miti as engineer for five days. We met both Miti and Simon at the BBC and they have known each other for a long time, in fact Miti claims to have trained Simon. It's the first time we have ever used two different engineers for different songs on an album (except Boxing , obviously), and I'm quite excited about what different qualities Simon will bring to the project. We kind of throw Simon in at the deep end, by giving him ‘Hold me closer' on his first morning. I play acoustic, and our friend Mark Bandola (from Ausgang) came in to play piano. Its dofficult and no doubt boring to explain, but it can cause engineers problems sometimes to have a lot of acoustic instruments in a small space. However these problems often give remarkable results, and the song by mid-afternoon had this amazing dense sound, with a lot of the instruments echoing through the piano. ‘Head to your Toes' was also recorded and mixed today, thus making it the first song to be completed. It's the only true weepy on the album, and will most likely be the last song. ‘One for the Ladies' Jack calls it. DAY 7 Tuesday 2nd May ..and I'm writing this on the morning before day 8 and I'm late for the studio aaaahhhh. Yesterday we recorded ‘We Love the City'. The song was written just before we went into the studio for ‘Fidelity Wars' last year, and we nearly put it on, but already I was having this idea for an album loosely based around London. This isn't to say that all the songs on this new record are exclusively about London, most of them are still about girls and stuff, but that it deals with feelings and situations particular to city types. Because the song is so old we didn't play it for the last six months so as to lend it some freshness or what ever. Afterwards Jack overdubbed some rock ‘n' roll guitar, and I put some Moog synthesizer through a Leslie Cabinet, which made a thunderous sound. We took lunch at one of the weirdest greasy spoon cafes I have ever been in. All the staff were over 70 and they broke about 4 plates. We escaped and worked on ‘As Soon as Your Ready'. Jack put on some autoharp and then me, Ant and Jack did some harmonies. Ant was best, I was second, Jack was worst. However when finished it sounded like the Mamas and Papas, honest. DAY 8 Wednesday 3rd May So here we are over half way. Jack is becoming increasingly suspicious of this studio diary thing (he hasn't read it). “What are you saying about me?”, “I hope you've told them that your amp is working!”. Well its true my amp has been working the last few days, since Jack had another play around, I have a theory however, that Jack is canbalising my amp and secretly putting all the good bits in his amp, ( since they are both the same and all of a sudden his has started working again, hmmmm.) Today Amelia Fletcher of Marine Research (and previously of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly ) came in to put vocals on ‘As soon as your ready', ‘The Cure for Evil', ‘Hold me Closer', ‘Good Fruit', ‘Don't Go' (the untitled song now has a title) and ‘The Greedy Ugly People'. Mostly they are backing vocals, but Amelia sings her own lead parts on ‘GUP', ‘Cure For Evil' and ‘Hold me Closer'. I'm always fighting with the others to get more singers on our records, I don't see why I should have to sing everything. If other people sung Hefner songs once in a while then maybe I could listen to Hefner records sometimes. In every case where I had written something for Amelia, she came up with something better, Which is excactly the reason you get some outsiders to contrbute to the record. The evening was spent recording everybodys favourite ‘Painting and Kissing', but boy was I tired. We through Moogs keyboards and lots of Heavy guitars at it, trying to make it sound like a Jugernaut, but I couldn't see the woods for the trees, we will have to check tomorrow. DAY 9 Thursday 4th May Election day, I hope all of you in London in voted. I think you know which way our choice went. The studio diary may start to get a little boring, now. Not because there isn't hard work to be done, or that the work isn't important there just isn't much to say about the mixing stage. All the songs are now recorded, and all the album requires is for us to go through it and decide what we want to keep and what we want to get rid of, its closer to editing really, and any good writer knows that editing is the most important part. (not implying for a minute that I am a good writer.) Today we mixed Painting and Kissing (which did sound good after all) and As Soon As Your Ready. We also sorted through the London field recordings that Jack has been making the last few days; Trains, cars , children and Cafes. We also manage to get Matthew from Murry The Hump onto Greedy Ugly People in true John Lennon ‘Free as a Bird' style. Todays picture is of engineer Simon Askew. DAY 10 Saturday 5th May Got drunk last night. Mitis girlfriend; Sams birthday, hangover, can't be bothered to write this, ouch. Day 10 and 11 5th & 6th May Yes ,well as you may have gathered day 10 went a bit pear – shaped, it was Simons last day on the album you see, and Sams birthday. The mixing went fine we mixed Painting and Kissin, Hold me closer and We Love the City, but more important is the fact that John Morrison threw up, Jack wussed out and went home early and Gill didn't get his round in. A very late start on Saturday, everybody looking very, very pale. Got Greedy Ugly People and Good Fruit mixed, we may have finished Thatcher but I'm not sure about the drum sound on Thatch. It was so sunny and nice outside, there are no windows in the studio, pah!! Day 12 and 13 Sunday 7th and Monday 8th Well the mixing continues. Really these last two days could easily be said to be the busiest so far, but try telling anyone that sitting listening to music is hard work. There is an art to mixing, a knack. Much like recording there is a number of different approaches and none of them necessarily wrong. Hefner have always approached mixing in a similar way to recording in that your are not striving for the perfect version, more so the best or most honest version based on what you were feeling at the time. For this reason fast mixes, often on the day of recording have worked well for us in the past. Having said all of that, this is the longest we've ever spent mixing. I guess its an experiment. A few times over the last few days I've driven Miti a bit mad chasing my own tail searching for a certain sound or effect for a drum or whatever, often realising what we had to start with was fine, but the few times when the chase has been worth it we've been glad we had the extra time. It's a sad part of making an album for me really. You realise once again that you never quite get that sound that's in your head, but you get something that's close to what's inside all four of our heads, and ultimately what your hearing isn't the sound of compromise but of collaboration, which I would say is Hefners greatest strength. But its sad for another reason and that is that it'll be another year till we do this again. The actual making of the records is by far my favourite part of being in this band and it's a constant bug bear that we are very good at doing it quickly. Day 14 Ah here we are, journeys end. The morning is spent tidying the edges, Miti remixes ‘Don't Go', but it was fine to start with. We believe we have a solution to the most troublesome song ‘We Love the City' by crossfading two different mixes (putting the beginning of one version with the end of an another). The Beatles did the same thing with Strawberry Fields don't you know? In the evening we record ‘Seafaring' and ‘I Will Make Her Love Me' for use as b-sides. And that's about it. Hard to say what I think just yet, bearing in mind I still don't know what I think of Breaking God's Heart (I don't listen to Hefner very much you see). Its not quite the polished pop album I half expected it to be, but those who considered ‘Fidelity Wars' to be over produced will be pissed off again. I still haven't learnt to sing in tune, which probably puts the charts out of reach, but it is direct, honest, heartfelt album, more so then the previous two. No ego required to be in Hefner, you see. Anyway you'll find out for yourself in September. |
After, Breaking God's Heart and Fidelity Wars I'd already felt like I'd said quite a lot and was definitely of the opinion that we should only continue to make albums if they were going to be consciously different. In a way its the first complete Hefner album written with an audience in mind. Every album up to this point has a large proportion of songs written from before we were signed. All of these songs were written specifically for the album so consequently the album has more of a unifying theme than Fidelity Wars and, yes, I guess I would allow it to be called a concept album.
All the songs are supposed to be about living in the city, or about being in love in the city. I was, and still am, very much in love, both with my girlfriend and London. I wanted to make a brave, confidant album. I also wanted to make an 'up' album.
Most of the music I listen to is uplifting music and I wanted to show we could make music that people could listen to when they were feeling good, we lost a few fans on this one but we actually gained a load more new ones and this record remains our biggest seller by some margin.
If I'm really candid I wanted the album to sound like Dexy's Midnight Runners, or at least some of the records that they were probably listening to back in the seventies, stuff like Chairman of the Board etc. This is most apparent on The Day that Thatcher Dies which sounds like both Elmo Jame by CotB and Geno by Dexy's. I even state my intent of trying to copy Dexy's at the begining of the Good Fruit video so you can't say I'm not upfront.
Miti only recorded half the album this time due to some problem with dates, filling in for him was Simon Askew who was trained by Miti and worked with him at the BBC. It worked out well, their sound and approach matched up an they were more than a little competitive with each other. Listening to the record now I can't tell who did what. The song; 'We Love The City' was the first written for the album and I had it ready at the end of the Fidelity Wars sessions but knew I wanted it to be a title song for an album almost straight away. At the time there were all these fox-hunting people clogging up London with their stupid marches and I also remember Catatonia writing that song about how much they hated London so I felt it was time for a response. Its a good song, maybe a bit too grand and pompous but it does what it says on the tin. All major chords you know.
Painting and Kissing was written during the Fidelity Wars tour and played at a lot of those shows. The title is kind of a 'Belle and Sebastian' joke, the song itself has a little more bite than the title suggests. It's a great song and has always been a live favourite but for me the recorded version doesn't quite hit the button, I think maybe we'd just played it live so many times before taking it into the studio.
Don't Go is my favourite Hefner song, or is it Greedy Ugly People, anyways I love it and I'm not sure if I'm going to better it. Like all my favourites its simple and uncluttered it delivers a uncomplicated sentiment in an unusual way. It was written in Malmo when we were on tour with the Violent Femmes, we played it that very night but John misheard where the beat was and played on the off, however to me it sounded great and that became the arrangement of the song. Ant plays some paint tins which were attached to his drum kit. Big argument with Miti over the guitar on this one, he ended up doing two mixes saying, 'Use the one you like if you want but you're wrong.'
Greater London Radio was purpose built for the album once I'd got the concept straight in my head. Greater London Radio is what is now known as BBC London and used to be a great station, well they played hefner anyway. When the changed theit name I thought, well if they're not using it anymore. Everyones firing on all cylinders here, a fantastic brass arrangement by John, great vocals on from Ant, the fade out is really good too. We caught Jack and Antony playing an arrangement of the tune on their folk instruments and recorded them secretly. It's wrong to say that everybody was on board with the 'We Love the City' mainfesto, Jack grew up on a farm and Ant comes from the Isle of Wight. Jack pointed out that it isn't the city or the country thats the problem its the suburbs and promoted the lyric revision in We Love the City from 'We love the city and the suburbs that surround' to 'We love the city NOT the suburbs that surround'
'As soon as you're ready' is the first and only song to credit the whole band as writers. The reason being that the song kind of grew in a rehearsal, and in that situation its so hard to say who did what, so lets say everybody did it! The harmonies at the end are the closest we got to our Beach Boy ambitions, its me, Jack, Ant and Amelia Fletcher. We worked our asses off doing that.
'The Day that Thatcher Dies' is everybody's favourite right? It inspired some of the funniest heckles when playing it live including an un ironic 'Who's Margaret Thatcher? from a sweet girl at the front one night. Now that makes you feel old. I think its a good idea for a song and even though people always mention Costello's 'Tramp the Dirt Down', a pretty original one too. I think you can here the fun we were having here. Thats Jack's children in the photo further up the page and on the record. The were pretty professional all said and done, though I remember Miti getting itchy about them blowing raspberries down expensive microphones.
'Head to your Toes' is another love song. I'm still immensely proud of this album, and have no hesitation in saying that its my best work. What follows is the original day by day web diary of the making of the album.