| For starters, you can see a video of the making of this song: SEE VIDEO
The video is a 10 minute short but we may include the 45 minute long form in the CD package. Now to the song. Jeff presented me these lyrics and said he wanted something to the effect of big, dramatic, particularly in the chorus. The lyrics of this song are quite revealing to him personally as Piece of Heaven was to me. The line "it's lonely this life being less than you expected" is just brutal honesty of which we can both relate. I think 95% percent of the world thinks that "the dream" of being a rock star is a frivilous pipe dream by people that need to get a life. The other 5% expect to live that dream, and well, an infintecimal percentage actually do it. For the other 4.999% know a feeling the other 95% don't understand and that does make you lonely and you do carry it with you all the time. But Jeff and I would both tell you we have too many good things to take it all back now. An the end result of this song to me is complete validation that we did have the talent to do it. So for the 95% of the people who didn't have the rock star dream this song can perfectly speak to most of us who have the questions of starting over when we die. However, they're Jeff's lyrics so I shouldn't presume anymore and let him add what he wants. Musically I felt a big responsibility to deliver him a masterpiece. We had some off-the-cuff discussions of him doing a cappella in the intro but I don't think he took it too seriously. But I originally made him record it fully a cappell and though it was good it didn't sound contemporary. We didn't change much, just some low frquency keys and a more emotional vocal take and it changed the song dramatically but to me it's still a cappella. One of the crazy things I did recording this was come up with an acoustic verse piece that I played off the cuff (a few takes) to a click track. I don't know what I played or how to play it again. There was no pattern or reason to it. I just ran a few takes of free form expression and kept the first one I didn't screw up. It's actually out of time with the click track. The whole song was recorded in pieces and the segments were tricky to link to the lyrics and It took me some time to direct Jeff through this but that's what I was- a director and it was fun playing that role with his song because I knew it was going to work. And he brought it home. I'm excited about the song but admittedly it's not where i expected to be on this album. This was suppose to be an album returning to the ferocious style of the Archivon '94 demos. The success of songs like When I Die really soured Jeff to the '94 remakes we recorded and this song in itself probably was the catalyst for a rift in our vision of the album. I think the one thing that tips the scale in Jeff's favor in the debate is that the overall recorded quality of this song kills the new versions of the old songs and that's more my fault than his as engineer so I've only myself to blame. This song was also the catalyst to an acoustic gem called Towers which we decided to save for the next album which will also be all acoustic so who knows when my really heavy, crushing "no I'm not old" album will be made. Probably after UDM does the country thing (to make my wife happy.. or really piss her off!).
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Okay...WID. I have much to say about this one so hopefully I can condense so Tom doesn't have to edit. If he does then he can edit everything up to the next sentence thus far. Originally, the title to this song was "From Whence I Came". But we both agreed to change that title. Reason being that it was a bit too much for Tom's taste and I easily conceded to change it...I wasn't too attached to it. The simple choice of title was to use the basic theme phrase in the song. The original intention of this song was to be "Peace of Hell". As I set forth in writing it was my focus. But as I made it half way through the writing process, it became clear to me that I had digressed from the original concept. So I decided to make a different song altogether. I will explain more about that in the "Peace of Hell" liner notes. So as I am writing, I immediately had a vocal melody in my head for the chorus. And as I would sing it aloud, the hair on my arms would stand on end. I get goose bumps just now as I type this. The idea seemed that it could be that of movie score material which is something that I have always been interested in. In the lyrical process, I wanted to keep within the QFG theme, yet write about the life and times of Jeffrey Harris and what I thought was, is and could have been. Sorry Tom, this is where I seem somewhat self absorbed. I wanted the listener to know that although I may not have reached the goals which I had in my youth of large scale musical success, I very well could have and when I die the remains of me will linger on with my accomplishments in song for anyone who may have the chance to hear. But it doesn't end there. The idea is for all to know that no matter what their accomplishments, large or small, they are an important integral part of this universe. We all make a difference in some way, shape or form. Now to the recording process. This had to be just right. It was my baby. When I brought it to Tom, I sang the chorus to him "a capella" so that he would know how to write around my idea. We recorded my idea and he would mess around with it. When it came time to listen to his contribution, I couldn't have been happier. Iknew that Tom had wrapped his arms around this one and cared for it like it was his baby, figuratively speaking. Although I had to kind of change the chorus melody slightly from its original form, I am more than happy with the outcome. We worked diligently at making the tune right. Right down to coming back months later and revamping the intro vox so that it would be right. When I Die and all that goes with that line in the song are all in part, questions for GOD. Kudos to Tom for making it easy to make this idea come to fruition. And perhaps the listener may someday, with a little luck, hear this song as some movie score. That would be a dream come true. Gosh...I could write so much more...TBC...Enjoy!
Note: The video is pretty cool...hopefully somehow, peeps will be able to enjoy much more of the unedited version.
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