Festivities over and done with, we now had to work out how to finish thealbum. They often say the last 20% takes 80 % of the effort, and Franny feeling the need for a little solitude to finish the writing left for L.A. two weeks before we would join him.
Meanwhile in London Joby Talbot's beautiful string arrangements were being recorded for Humpty Dumpty Love Song and Indefinitely. We kept Franny informed of the progress, but were keen to get out there and join him.
Arriving back at the Chateau Marmont was brilliant, felt like a reunion and everyone was keen to get back to it. Franny had come up with Last Train and
Dear Diary, and the light at the end of the tunnel was getting brighter.
We would be in L.A. for three weeks, in which time we would record the new songs, Nigel would mix the album and at the weekends we would try and record B sides with lovely Darrell our engineer.
Both the new songs took shape really quickly. Dear Diary started as justacoustic and vocal, everyone agreed it demanded the arrangement be kept verysparse, just a little piano, bass, backing vocals and percussion and a few Nigetricks
making up the backdrop.
We were quite chuffed with the end result and when tricky in the next studio invited us to a party in the Hollywood hills we felt we deserved a night
out, ah that good work ethic.
The party turned out to be a hoot, filled to the brim with celebrities being cool while we all stood round a table nudging each other and saying through gritted teeth "there’s Larry Sanders"! Highlight of the night for me was playing mini basketball with our pal Jason Falkner and Jim Carrey. Every party should have one.
Jason came in to the studio a couple of days later to play Rhodes piano onLast Train. It was great having him in the studio. Nigel had recorded Jason’ssolo album "can you still feel" so it was all really relaxed.
After spending a while going through the arrangement the basic track was done late in the evening with the studio very dimly lit and most of us sitting on the floor, all very broody. It only took a few takes to get the feel right. When Franny first played it to us I thought it was a great song, and I think it turned out as one of our favourites on the album.
At some point during the next couple of days Franny had strummed the chords for Killer Queen and thus planted the seeds of an idea.
Andy and I went and bought Queens greatest hits, learnt the chords and thought it d be fun to do a quick cover version. However once you start something like that it takes on a life of its own, and before we knew it we were taking the original apart andtrying to recreate it exactly. Again Jason came in to help out and play piano. It sounded quite good but we realised we were going to have to learn every single backing vocal if we were going to do it at all.
Me, Franny, Andyand Jason learned each part bit by bit and spent the day straining to hit the notes and making some of the best singing faces of our lives.
It’s a strange feeling as you get towards the end of making a record. Until that point you are very much in a bubble, concentrating solely on what you’re
making and everybody that you see day to day is involved in some way with that process. However as you get closer to finishing more and more people begin to arrive and you have to start letting them hear what you’ve been doing for the past few months. Pressing play with crossed fingers.
However we weren’t quite finished. The record needed something else on it- another tune.
We had decided at some point that Flowers In The Window wasn’t going to be on the album. Feeling it didn’t quite fit, but now with everything else done webegan to think it was just what it needed. But it still wasn’t quite right.
Listening to it with fresh ears it was unanimously decided that the rhythmsection had to do something less ploddy . So as the gear was all packedaway and the crew began removing the flight cases from the studios, me andNeilly tried to make up new parts. We eventually managed at the eleventh hour to do something that seemed to fit in and with a sigh of relief that Flowers was on the album.
The last guitars were packed away. It’s good to have a bit of a panic at the end. We kissed good bye to Ocean Way studios in the middle of March. Nigel had suggested a running order for the record that sounded good to us and was
going to finish mixing in London. So for us it was time for photos and album covers and videos and touring and all those other visible things.
But after all that had happened over the past few months I still had one
question.
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