John Greenwood – Dark Blue

LYRICS

Rosco Vidal, a seasoned traveller peddling illness, infirmity and death, expects that his journey will soon come to an end as certain agencies plot his demise. However, he delights in finding that his ongoing passage to further shores is facilitated by weak, corrupt, grasping and ignorant governments, and sings…

“Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine such a thing,
When I arrived unheralded, the death and chaos I could bring,
encouraged by your unpreparedness, and governments that can’t have cared less,
you give me opportunity, to travel with impunity,
embrace close-knit community, pin hopes on herd immunity.
So I stop your meetings, halt your praise, disrupt your lives in many ways,
No weddings, parties, concerts, plays; say goodbye to holidays.
Your leaders abuse autonomy, you’re sacrificed for the economy,
Trump endorses wild prescriptions, Boris’ chums ignore restrictions,
Scomo sidelined, feeling minor, tries to start a war with China!
So you hide behind your own front door, because you’re old, or your health is poor,
Vaccines have arrived too late, this Trojan horse is inside the gate”.

Emma Lovely, a young nurse working in the National Health Service, rues her situation whilst sanding in line and waiting for a hand out from a food van. She laments…

“For seven years I’ve worked on wards (now people clap me in the street),
It’s a shame my kids can’t eat applause (I still can’t seem to make ends meet),
But I noticed on the bus today, you upped and moved further away,
Seems not all appreciate……. my sacrifice”.

Mathilda Grey, a retired ex-matron from the aforementioned institution, sits in a reclining chair, taking in the world unfolding through the window of her room in an old folk’s home, and muses…

“In residential care I will see out what remains,
of a life spent nursing citizens with various complaints,
Now surrounded by the vulnerable, the old and the infirm,
I can only hope that no-one on the staff brings in the germ,
Its plain to me the government intends to wait and see,
More money for the hospitals without the likes of me,
A burden now I’m old so I will be …… a sacrifice”.

Boris Buffoon, clown in residence and unkempt protector of the sacred economy, stands on the front door step of Number 10, claps a nurse or two, and then tries to reassure a frightened (and soon to be dying) population that, despite what’s happening elsewhere in the world, a stiff upper lip, a cup of tea and a quick return to normal workalike is the British way. He blusters…

“The scientists have got it wrong (I’ve had it and it’s not that bad),
You won’t be ill for very long (Stay at home? You must be mad!),
A social distance is all we ask, go to work, just wear a mask,
Don’t dramatise, or roll your eyes and above all……sanitise!”

Mathilda, acutely aware of the muffled coughing that accompanies the comings and goings in the corridor outside her room, reflects on her own predicament – isolated from what’s left of her family, but exposed to her part-time ‘carers’. She reveals…

“The coughing has abated from old Peter in Room 9,
But Doris has a fever in the room right next to mine,
The nurse on nights turns out moonlights in a hotel in the square,
and I’ve been told that travellers have been quarantining there,
If I drink disinfectant whilst standing in bright light,
it has been suggested that it might turn out alright,
Another bloody idiot with another bloody lie! I wonder if they’ll test me, when I come to make …… my sacrifice?”

Emma, exhausted, overworked and under-appreciated, sits on the edge of her bed after a very long shift. Her head cradled in her hands, the stink of death surrounding her like a cloud of flies. She sobs…

“The ICU is full again (with different patients every day),
It seems that everywhere’s the same, (cancer care goes by the way)
The vaccine might have just occurred, too late for the weaklings in the herd,
I bet the businessmen preferred….. to make no sacrifice?”

ABOUT THIS TRACK

A song written at the onset of the COVID pandemic and based on news reports filtering globally, but predominantly from the UK. The story unfolds from the standpoint of each of 4 characters, one being the main antagonist Rosco Vidal.

CREDITS

Words and Music – John Greenwood

Female lead vocal – Emma Bartsch
Male lead vocal, 6 and 12-steel string acoustic guitars, nylon string classical guitars, electric guitars, keyboards – John Greenwood
Additional keyboards, ‘Tory Tango’ and crowd noises – Sean Timms
Bass – Nick Sinclair
Drums – Ben Todd

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

When the sunlight fails to pierce the ever-deepening clouds,
And the oceans rise to claim each new Atlantis, proud,
It will be too late, to cry and wring our idle hands,
What have they done?

When we gaze out, over the salted fields where nothing grows,
The green and living land confined to memory,
It will be too late, to halt the march of Vulcan’s hoards,
What have we done?

Too late! Too late!
The birds flew south, and never returned,
We took the light and turned it into darkness,
Gone in the smoke of the black we burned.

And now we’re told the world is dying faster than we though,
Fire and flood the hefty price for the comfort that we sought,
But the bloated fools, some chose to rule, say everything is fine,
When they sold their souls for oil and coal, they should have bought a spine.

The targets set will not be met whilst they deny the need,
So we won’t be forced to change our course from selfishness and greed,
And its much too late to set things straight, so we whine for all we’re worth,
And the meek….. shall inherit what’s left of the earth.

Too late! Too late!
All hope went south and sea levels rise,
Ignored the signs, sit back as life declines,
We’ll be gone in the smoke of political lies

Child’s Voice, spoken :-
I found a box today, out the back, by the dead tree. My great grandma had buried it there as a child and put some of her favourite things in it, with a note saying: “To whomsoever finds this in the future!”. There was a picture of her sitting where the lake used to be. She looked carefree and happy. My mum said I should make a time capsule just like it and we started to talk about what I might put in it. But my dad just said, “What’s the point? What can we leave them that will make them think better of us?” I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time, but I cried myself to sleep that night and my tears made me think, I would leave them water, if I could.

Too late! Too late! (Where did our Eden go?)
The rich flew up and never came down,
They took our toil and fashioned our extinction,
We’re gone in the smoke of our cities and towns…..

ABOUT THIS TRACK

A damning climate change report published in 2021 was largely ignored by the certain leaders of the western world, since action would have off-sided fossil-fuel producers and other significant political donors. Meaningful action may now come too late.

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood
Words – John Greenwood and Andrew Fanning

Lead Vocal, 6 and 12-steel string acoustic guitars, nylon string classical guitars, electric guitars, bass guitar, programmed orchestration – John Greenwood
Keyboards – Sean Timms
Violins – Sarah Greenwood
Drums – Ben Todd
Child’s Soliloquy – Kirstin Damkat

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

Instrumental

ABOUT THIS TRACK

Gifted the BBC Symphony Orchestra plugin by Spitfire, I found a tool that allowed me to make rudimentary inroads into orchestration. When recording Too Late!, i found that many of the orchestral themes were overshadowed by electric instruments and vocals and started to produce a purely orchestral version. During its composition, I changed tack, time and speed when another theme developed. This one, for me, conjured the ocean and I decided to ‘introduce’ it into the orchestral piece. Later it was expanded and developed to become the central theme of the album’s most ambitious track, The Ocean.

CREDITS

Music and Programmed Orchestration – John Greenwood

Additional keyboards, buoy bell – Sean Timms
Flutes – Nicola Black
Violins – Sarah Greenwood
French Horns – Nicola Chadbourne
‘Cellos – Thomas Marlin

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

A broken land left far behind
A war that faceless men designed
Sacrificed everything
Except our lives and the clothes we’re in

Strangers crowded on the sea
I pull my children close to me
Icy wind and freezing water
Nature offers us no quarter

It doesn’t matter where we land
‘Cos the people there will understand
We flee from hunger
Flee from war
Desperate for some foreign shore
To raise my children, make a life
Not living balanced on a knife
Finding a dream of home

With engine dead, the growing waves
Determine how the boat behaves
Water spills across the side
Relentless with the surging tide

The moon that lit our growing fear
Chooses now to disappear
Behind the clouds that quietly formed
And herald in the coming storm

It doesn’t matter where we land
‘Cos the people there will understand
We flee from hunger
Flee from war
Desperate for some foreign shore
To raise my children, make a life
Not living balanced on a knife
Finding a dream of home
Just finding a dream of home

Tiny fingers, cold and pale
Lose purchase on the flimsy rail
Helpless, blind, my son and daughter
Slide into the foaming water
Frightened voices, desperate, sing
To whichever cruel god they cling,
But deity and man spectate
Complicit in our awful fate

I live through the darkest ages
Back and forth through history’s pages
Tried to walk a mile in their shoes
In search of truths
One mile, one truth
Shines the loudest
That nation’s epochs stand the proudest
Built by those they would not have known
Had they stayed home

Come placid blue and morning air, no sign that we were ever there…

Living in the darkest of ages
Despair as we lay down the pages
Keep them out! is our final solution
Denying natural evolution

Comments pages; judge and jury
Experts of the Daily Fury
Can’t see that home’s not where you’re from
But to where you’ve upped and gone

Online sages, armchair racists
Take care to bravely hide their faces
Eminently qualified
To countenance a genocide

“Give those struggling foreign sons
A taste of righteous naval guns
Protect what I deserve by birth
My ancestors got here first!”

It seems to matter where we go, ‘cause on the foreign shore they don’t want to know,
The things we’ve lost and the way we’ve suffered, they don’t care,
They think we can’t make a life without stealing theirs,
If we don’t beat the ocean, then c’est la vie,
We’re not their problem when we’re out at sea,
This was our dream of home.
This was our dream of home.

ABOUT THIS TRACK

Refugees have fled conflict throughout history; sometimes welcomed, sometime not. Whether these refugees flee war (like those tragic souls lost frequently in the English Channel, Aegean, Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, or those escaping Nazi Germany in 1938/39), or other adversity (such as the Irish refugees seeking a new life in the USA during the Great Famine of 1845-52, they often contribute enormously to their adopted homelands. Some modern attitudes are shameful and inhuman.

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood
Words – John Greenwood and Andrew Fanning

Female lead and backing vocals and opening ‘cello – Emma Greenwood
Male lead and backing vocals, 6 and 12-steel string acoustic guitars, nylon string classical guitars, electric guitars (and guitar ‘orchestra’ in ‘The Storm’), bass guitar, programmed orchestration and choir keyboards – John Greenwood
Keyboards, buoy bell, thunder, programmed tympani – Sean Timms
Grand Piano – Sam Greenwood
Flutes – Nicola Black
Violins – Sarah Greenwood
French Horns – Nicola Chadbourne
‘Cellos – Thomas Marlin

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

Instrumental

ABOUT THIS TRACK

This began life as a classical guitar piece written after the death of my grandma, Anne. It became expanded when aspects of the North of England were irreparably dismantled (industry, sense of community, community policing, health, etc) to be replaced by an “I’m alright, Jack” ethos.

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood

Nylon string classical guitars, electric guitars, programmed orchestration (orchestra and brass band), keyboards – John Greenwood
Additional keyboards, gong, programmed percussion – Sean Timms

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

I look in the mirror
I don’t like what I see
It seems on reflection that you’re no good for me

How can you be so heartless?
How can you be so cold?
How can you be so heartless, heartless with me?

Get down to business
With us at apogee
Controlling disinterest is what you hold in me

How can you be so ruthless?
How can you be so hard?
How can you be so ruthless, ruthless with me?

There was a time when I could do no wrong (not so very long ago)
A time when I had something you sought (that could not be bought)
But that was before your hostile makeover
That was before your change of heart

How can you be so heartless?
How can you be so cold?
How can you be so heartless?
How can you be so cold?
How can you be so heartless, heartless with me?

ABOUT THIS TRACK

A song of betrayal hidden inside a jilting relationship.

CREDITS

Music and Words – John Greenwood

Lead and backing vocals, electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboards – John Greenwood
Additional keyboards – Sean Timms
Drums – Mike Giuffreda

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

I know what you look like on the inside
I know what it takes to keep you here
But the things I had to see
And the things I had to do
Hurt me too

You were broken when you came to me,
You weren’t aware I was breaking too
And you could never know
I had the pressure on me grow
To let you go

And I don’t know why the fear inside me haunts me every night
And conscience screams in broken dreams that I might not be right

The morning you awakened
Your agony sketched sorrow in the air
The days rolled into weeks
And the weeks stretched into months
With you still there

And I recall a golden day
When free of chains you walked away
Though all could see the clouds were looming low
And turning back, so clear to view
That pain had overtaken you
Not time to go

The crimson flowers bloom in the hours that should have brought us sleep
But never peace enough to close my eyes
The veiled looks and backroom chat denied me any hope of that
And chance of laying down this burden dies

I know what it looks like from the outside
To everyone I have the perfect life
But those things I’ve had to see
And those things I’ve had to do,
Hurt others too

When I call for them, they’re always there for me,
But when they need me, I’m with you
When they ask if I’m OK?
It stirs up so much pain. So much pain!

I have to choose, leave it behind
And walk away, or lose my mind
And hope that what I’ve built was not in vain
Only I know what I faced to keep you from that ‘better place’
I hope you think that it was worth our pain?

ABOUT THIS TRACK

A creepy love song, perhaps? or the straw that broke the camel’s back?

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood
Words – John Greenwood and Helen Greenwood

Lead and backing vocals, nylon string classical guitar, electric guitars, bass guitar, programmed orchestration, keyboards – John Greenwood
Piano – Sean Timms
Drums – Craig Blundell

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

I’m packin’ my suitcase,
I’m leaving on the morning train,
I’m getting out of this old city,
Not coming back this way again,
My baby’s gone and left me, left me with those blues again.

And repeat.

ABOUT THIS TRACK

An old song about desertion.

CREDITS

Music and Words – John Greenwood

Lead vocal, 6-steel string acoustic guitar, bass guitar – John Greenwood
Gypsy violin – Julian Ferraretto

Mixed and produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

Instrumental

ABOUT THIS TRACK

A song of experiential loss. Remember those kisses as a teenager? How they set every part of you alight in shuddering delight? Where does that feeling go? Nick Magnus contributed a stunning and realistic, considered and gentle orchestration.

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood

Nylon string classical guitar – John Greenwood
Orchestration and keyboards – Nick Magnus (courtesy of Magick Nuns Music)

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

Like the dust that settles all around me
I must find a new home
The ways and holes that used to give me shelter are all as one to me now

But I, I would search everywhere just to hear your call
And walk upon stranger roads than this one in a world I used to know before
I miss you more…

Than the sun reflecting off my pillow
Bringing the warmth of new life
And the sounds that echo all around me
I caught a glimpse of in the night

Oh but now, now I’ve lost everything
I give to you my soul,
And the meaning of all that I believed before
Escapes me in this world of none,
No thing, no-one

And I would search everywhere just to hear your call
And walk upon stranger roads than this one in a world I used to know before
Oh, but now, now, now, now I’ve lost everything
I give to you my soul,
And the meaning of all that I believed before
Escapes me in this world of none
I miss you more
You know I miss you more

ABOUT THIS TRACK

The ultimate expression of physical loss and grief and one of Tony Banks’ most beautiful creations.

CREDITS

Music and Words – Anthony Banks

Lead and backing vocals, Nylon string classical guitars, electric guitars, programmed orchestration, choir keyboards – John Greenwood
Piano and additional keyboards – Sean Timms
Drums – Craig Blundell

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

You know that you’re no Pink Floyd?
Stop trying to be Led Zep!
Well, you start out fine but you soon lose your way
Why don’t you figure out what you’re trying to say?

Why don’t you write a proper song?
A verse and a chorus and three minutes long
It doesn’t have to tell a story
It doesn’t even have to rhyme

Orchestras belong in classical music
If I want to hear a choir I’ll go to church!
Just write a tune that’ll get our feet tapping
Just write some words to make us happy!

Why don’t you write a proper song?
A verse and a chorus and three minutes long
I know you play guitar, and your friends think you’re great
But you don’t always need a solo in the middle eight!

(You never listen!!)

Why don’t you write a proper song?
A verse and a chorus and three minutes long
It doesn’t have to tell a story
It doesn’t even have to rhyme

ABOUT THIS TRACK

As I sat writing The Ocean, my wife entered the room. She’d been talking to a friend of her’s who opined that I should write “a proper song, you know short and catchy, and not deep”. As I became more upset, it was explained to me that “you’re no Pink Floyd”. It went from bad to worse.

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood
Words – Helen Greenwood

Lead and backing vocals, 12-steel string acoustic guitars, nylon string classical guitars, electric guitars, bass guitar, programmed orchestration, choir keyboards – John Greenwood
Organ – Sean Timms
Drums – Craig Blundell

Mixed and Produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

I’m packin’ my suitcase,
I’m leaving on the morning train,
I’m getting out of this old city,
Not coming back this way again,
My baby’s gone and left me, left me with those blues again.

And repeat.

ABOUT THIS TRACK

I loved the crackle of old records and the trebly plucking of guitars. Sean Timms and I had a lot of fun creating this version, which ends like all of my old records used to!

CREDITS

Music and Words – John Greenwood

Lead vocal, 6-steel string acoustic guitar, bass guitar – John Greenwood
Gypsy violin – Julian Ferraretto

Mixed and produced by Sean Timms

LYRICS

Instrumental

ABOUT THIS TRACK

My original version of this instrumental with my own orchestration; relegated to bonus material by Nick Magnus’ excellence, despite the best efforts of Steve Unruh and Sarah Greenwood!

CREDITS

Music – John Greenwood

Nylon string classical guitar and programmed orchestration – John Greenwood
Flutes – Steve Unruh
Violins – Sarah Greenwood