A tale of two ditties

I have a very clear memory of writing Claire (the girl with boofy hair). Sat on the arm of this massive arm chair in our sunroom, I came up with the riff that forms the verses and kind of liked the quirky 16th-double strum on the 4th beat of the bar. The words came quickly, cheesy as they are, especially the rhyme on the final word of each line in the first verse (school-cool-drool-tool-cruel). At the time I was playing live a lot, every weekend for a Saturday night comedy club kind of thing. So I was coming up with stuff fast and not polishing it the way I would normally. Sometimes, however, this is the best way to go. Claire is unfussy and catchy.

While I was working on the Barry Starr concept, I listened to the version I had recorded originally, which is mostly what you hear as track 4 on the album. I re-did the drum track from scratch and re-mixed it. At some point, it occurred to me that this would be the quirky, sing-along hit that transforms Barry from indie folk college idol to mainstream guitar hero.

Once I'd come up with the 'feel' of each era of Barry's career, I felt like it would be cool if Barry had originally recorded an indie-folk version with brushes, ukulele and vibraphone. Then, I thought, he would be discovered by a record label agent who would convince him that he needed to re-record it with electric guitars and new, radio-friendly lyrics. To get this 'original' version of the song meant re-writing the lyrics and re-recording it, the first time I've done such a radical re-write. It was great fun, as it turned out, and I now far prefer the indie folk version, especially the lyrics. But of course this is just a shameless teaser to make you want to download the album from bandcamp, since this version is only available as a bonus download.

I'd originally thought of Barry's biographer as a piano player from the original band who was just bitter at being moved on because he was crap. But with the invention of the indie-folk version, the vibraphone player idea hit me and it all just grew from there... More on that in my next post.