In The Meantime
Like it or not there's one thing that people come back to time and time again, no matter how hard i try to crawl from under its shadow: 'In The Meantime' was a song my friend and bandmate Royston wrote, probably in his bedroom in Headingley before he had even met me in New York City a year or so later. The song is brilliantly underpinned by a British telephones' 'busy' and 'dialling' tones combined, and modulates at the chorus to great effect. Inspired by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's 'Telephone and Rubber Band' song which does the same and augmented with an inspired bassline and some backwards piano chords for dramatic effect. The lyric is a universal love song to the Alien, a welcome mat if you will.
It is the first song i ever heard Royston sing, the one that convinced me that i was in the presence of a potential superstar. It was the first song we ever recorded together, at a jingles studio on W57th Street in 1994. In attendance was a teenaged Sean Lennon, who's moms house we visited afterwards. We arrived there, nervously filing past the spot where John Lennon himself had been slain years earlier. I think i had been in New York a matter of weeks and there i was in the Dakota Building with Yoko's slippers on playing one of John's guitars.
'In The Meantime'was then re-recorded in the Barn at Bearsville Studios near Woodstock, NY. It was a year later and we had signed to Seymour Steins' Sire Records. The barn had been used by the Stones in the 70's and had been refitted with recording equipment appropriate for the baby bands of the nineties alternative boom. With so much analogue gear there was a polaroid camera handy to record settings of amps etc: Being the bands archivist i collected them, not realising how useful they would become later.
Once the album was done, 'In The Meantime' was unanimously voted to be the first single. Setting off on tour opening for Tripping Daisy, the single quickly gathered momentum on rock radio. By the time we got to Seattle there were more folks there to see us than the headliner which was awkward.
By the end of 1995 we were making a video. Director Jake Scott had been drafted in on the strength of his work with REM, Radiohead and Oasis. The idea was to recreate a scene from the Movie 'Blow Up'
www.youtube.com/embed/jSJGEn4FDys
where The Yardbirds play to an audience of disenchanted hipsters. I don't think I was into the idea or the execution at the time. But in retrospect I think he, with the help of my friend Ned Amblers' casting, captured a moment of mid nineties East Village Bohemia. The clip went into active rotation on MTV and pretty soon the song was following us everywhere. One morning i remember, watching the clip for the upteenth time on tv, stepping out to get coffee, hearing it on KROQ in the deli, then watching a homeless guy perform an inpromptu guitar solo over its dying moments atop a shopping cart in Tompkins Square Park . It was pretty surreal.
www.youtube.com/embed/TDkhl-CgETg
It was always going to be difficult to trump that initial flush of popularity, it being the culmination of so many factors. I was grateful of course.. But i was also frustrated that other songs didn't get noticed in the same way. When things got a little unravelled later in the promotion of 'Resident Alien' it was 'In The Meantime' that kept on giving.
We were fortunate that it got picked up in a Mitsubishi Car Commercial later that decade. We were broke at the time and I remember arguing with Roy about the deal on a rain soaked street downtown. As our disagreement reached its climax, the exact same car from the commercial, whizzed passed us and soaked us with shitty street water: It was a sign.
Then just as we thought all the attention had gone away, we got our re-record clause back. The record contract allowed us to re-record any 'works for hire' we had produced during the term after a decade. Two video games called Guitar Hero and Rock Band had approached us for the track and it was an ideal opportunity to reclaim control of our intellectual property. In order that players participate in songs on the catalogue, the game makers ask for seperate tracks, (drums, bass, vocals, guitar etc) as well as a finished mix of the song.
So back we went into producer Bryce Goggins' studio, this time in Brooklyn. Armed with the Polaroids we pieced together a recut of the song with almost forensic like attention to detail.We then delivered it as a brand new master. The Proceeds went on to fund 'As It Is On Earth', a record we made in the same Brooklyn recording studio, in a manner consistent with the olden days of major label recording budgets.
I'm not sure we'll get so lucky funding record #5, but with a track like 'In The Meantime' you can't rule anything out.