QuoteThank You...
... for all your comments yesterday... there was a definite leaning towards the Arena lyrics, but I guess that is because many of you are less aware of the hundreds of other albums, I have made 😉
I put together a kind of poll result based on your answers so far...
1. The Hanging Tree (This was a clear winner)
2. Butterfly Man
3. Dreams of the Ferryman (Not Arena... hoorah:)
4. The Legend of Elijah Shade
5. Paradise of Thieves
6. Mephisto Bridge (Not Arena)
7. Opera Fanatica
8. Shattered Room
9. Jigsaw (Not Arena)
10. Moviedrome
After this, many songs got single mentions.
I was asked several times to explain whole albums, but I'm not counting those. I will include more about the album Contagion if I should ever write a book!
If I get more suggestions, I will adjust this. For what I am considering doing, I might only be looking for about ten sets of lyrics, and this is helpful – although, if I'm honest, perhaps not surprising 🙂

QuoteHere's a thing — in amongst the plethora of Arena songs that exist, I wrote, what I privately call, the 'Vampire Trilogy'. Basically, three songs that, in my mind at least, feature a vampiric theme in some form.

We are currently performing one of them on tour — 'Don't Forget to Breathe'. There are various references to vampire culture in that song, including the "children of the storm" line, which of course runs rather close to the Dracula original:

"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!"

~ Bram Stoker, Dracula

The second song in the Vampire Trilogy is Butterfly Man. Although in this piece I use the image of a 'soul collector', he is — let's be honest — effectively sucking the life out of his victims and then owning them. Seems suitably vampiric to me.

Now here's my question:

What is the third part of the Vampire Trilogy?

I'll need a song title... and some kind of reason. It's entirely possible, of course, that I've unknowingly written a Vampire Quartet. 'Stranger things' have happened.

QuoteFor those of you who read about the 'Vampire Trilogy'... many of you quite rightly pointed out a fair few vampire references, although in my mind that would not make it a vampire song as such. Some of you were right that the third song was 'Shattered Room' (from Pepper's Ghost).

QuoteI need your help!
Finally... I am properly home after what has been about ten weeks of 'tour mode'... I can finally stop mentally 'holding my breath' and I can finally 'breathe out'!
And to celebrate... I have a question.
Maybe it's kind of a poll...

If I was writing a book, and wanted to include some of my lyrics, which ones would you like to know more about?

In my recent Arena tour blog, I talked quite a lot about the 'Moviedrome' lyrics and where certain parts came from and what they meant... Since then, I have been asked about several other songs...

So, there you have it...
Sleepwalker, The Cast, Strangers on a Train, Shadowland, Arena, She, Alchemy, King's Ransom, Imaginaerium and anything in between.
Please get involved!

Are there any lyrics I have written over the last 30 years that you might like to understand better?

QuoteDid you know that 'Moviedrome' came from a dream? Not just a fragment or a fleeting moment — but one of those vivid, cinematic dreams that feels like a message from somewhere strange and otherworldly.

I dreamt I was walking through a town... it was completely deserted. Not a whisper of life. No cars, no birds, no people — just that odd quiet that makes your flesh tingle. In the distance stood a hill, and something — I didn't know what — was happening up there. So, I walked towards it, and then up...

As I approached the top, I found myself at the edge of a massive crowd. Thousands upon thousands of people, presumably all the town dwellers, all standing stock-still. Staring upwards. Silent.Ahead was a massive tent — colossal, cathedral-like — and inside was a screen. There was no film as such... Not images... Just some kind of waveform: Flickering, pulsing. Totally hypnotic. And all those people... completely transfixed.Something had taken control. Not through violence. Not through force. But by captivation. Somehow, I remained outside its power. I was watching them watch. I tried to wake some of them up... but to no avail. And that's how Moviedrome was born.

When I started shaping the structure of the song narrative, the dream fused with another idea — something darker and more deliberate: the return of the Antichrist.

But not in robes and fire... not with horned and hooves... Not this time.

This time, he comes quietly, passively ... through technology. Through screens. Through the soft blue glow that follows us into every room.

'Stay down! Like a shadow in a hallway

Watching all the blues and greens

As I hide from the glare of the monitor screen'

In Moviedrome, the singer is one of the few who recognises what is happening. While others are hypnotised, he is hiding, resisting, and witnessing.

There are brief respites in the narrative. Moments where the mind retreats to safer, warmer memories — like the radiogram sequence. This is a flicker of the past... a look back to simpler times. But even those comforting echoes are fleeting. Soon we're back in the shadow, and the warning becomes clear:

'He has the face of a friend,

And shall reach across the world into every home.

We invite him in and offer no defence,

And with every given soul he reaches for his throne

He has the face of an angel,

As he leads us in the dance

Until we find ourselves

Alone!'

The instrumental break — chaotic, relentless — becomes the world unravelling into chaos... the strangle hold is complete. But Moviedrome doesn't end in total despair... There is a final note. A glimmer. A whisper of resistance:

'The few that see the world beyond the Moviedrome

Must march on through the wilderness

Of fantasy,

False images,

And pride'

They are out there. The last defence of humanity. The ones not seduced by the flicker... The ones who can still see beyond the lies...

Merry Christmas everyone!

OK... that was all a bit sombre, but some of you did ask!

QuoteI am sitting with my head in the radiogram,

Waiting for some sign of a ghost or a little green man:

Glued to the glowing of a sun behind the plastic hood,

And the bass heavy tones"

These are some lyrics from 'Moviedrome'. I just wanted to explain something about them. I tend to write my lyrics on several levels — I guess most lyricists do. The top level is relatively easy to see, even if it's nothing more than the joy that comes with the fabric and rhythm of the words themselves. But further down, for me, it must be more personal. I tend to immortalize all sorts of moments and experiences in my lyrics — more often than not, that part may never be noticed, and that's fine with me.

Fond memories, strong images, things that have irritated me, incidents in projects or bands, the professional highs and the unprofessional lows, moments of grief, moments of happiness, life changing experiences, journeys, places, and of course people... they all get sunk into my lyrics!

This little section of 'Moviedrome', however, doesn't need much drilling down. It's quite straightforward on the surface. My parents owned a very old-style radiogram. It was a thing of beauty: All walnut wood and 50's charm. The record player was set in the middle with speakers either side, and a valve radio above the record player. All of this was one very nice piece of lounge furniture. 

I used to sit with my head inside the record player recess, even though the speakers were fixed either side and I should have been sitting further back. But I'd sit there, watching the record go around. The music would reverberate around me, and I'd just drift — letting this wonderful flow of ideas and images fill my mind, all sparked by the music I was listening to.

Inside the top of the radiogram, there was this little translucent plastic hood, leading up to the radio above. And of course, in those days, this was a vintage radio — if you peered through the hood, you could just make out the various glowing and flickering valves inside, almost as if they were moving. I became convinced (I had a fertile imagination) that there was perhaps a whole world of little people in there, making it all happen. And I would spend hours with them — with what I thought I could see, with the music, and with my attempts to interpret what the music might mean... the stories they might tell.

"I saw the little people working there,

In the echoes and the chambers of my mind"

That bit of lyric comes from the song 'Tinder Box' — another reference to that child and the radiogram. Some elements do reoccur. I still believe that all those hours with my head in the radiogram were the seeds that were sown for many of the musical projects I now do... particularly the musicals

So, in many ways, those few lines capture not just a passing moment, but a period of many years for me — a whole stretch of time filled with wonder, imagination, and the quiet magic that consolidated my relationship with music and storytelling.

QuoteI spoke to some people who were interested in my explanation of the 'radiogram' lyric in Moviedrome, and so I thought I might offer another one. In the Tinder Box song there is this lyric:

'And I saw the lantern man as he stood so still

And the child knew this gentle soul — his kindness

The light went on — and he was gone

But the meaning — the meaning still remained

Like the fading away of a sweet familiar taste

Like the cleansing of the cool summer rain...'

This refers to a specific experience I had when I was very young — even before I started to put those records on the radiogram. This is one of my earliest memories and I swear that it was real (at least, for me!) — you can call it a ghost event, though most of you will call it a dream, or at best, a waking dream. Anyway, whatever sits easiest with you...

I was probably about three years old, and we were living somewhere outside of Reading. My dad had a teaching job which meant he had to travel a fair distance by train to get to it, so for about a year until we moved again, I didn't see a great deal of him.

I was asleep in my room when something woke me up — I later found out from my mum that it was about three in the morning. I opened my eyes, and the room was bathed in a soft light... standing a little distance away was an old man (well, old through a three-year-old's eyes). He was dressed in some kind of worn tweed jacket and dark trousers. He had a cap on, and he was holding a lantern — it was the flame from this that seemed to be filling the room with light. He was smiling at me — I remember that the smile reached his eyes. I felt completely safe: this was not some nightmare or scary experience! He seemed to be talking to me although his lips were not moving. I sat up and started to talk to him as well — it was a comfortable and magical communion.

My mum heard me talking and got up to come to my room (mothers are in charge of worrying). As I heard the door open, I turned and saw my mum coming in... instantly the light was gone and so was the 'lantern man'. I was wide awake and excited by the visit — I tried to explain to my mum about the experience, in the tumbling, stumbling words of a three-year-old. In later years, she confirmed that she had heard me talking, and when she came in, she saw me sitting up and pointing to the middle of the room, talking about the mysterious visitor.

What he told me will remain private, because I believe it was meant just for me — but I remember this experience after all these years as if it was yesterday. Definitely worth a mention in a lyric, I think. And yes, from an image point of view there are definitely echoes of that Dickens short ghost story, 'The Signal Man', but I can assure that at three, I had not read that!