BRING DOWN
THE MOON
An album whose difficult journey to completion eventually produced some of Robb's most beautiful recordings.
Featuring The Irregulars and a wide cast of musicians, including John Forrester, Arvin Johnson, Bethan Prosser, Linze Maesterosa, Naomy Browton, Jo Chedgey and Imo Bergonzi.
ABOUT BRING DOWN THE MOON
This has to be the album that was dogged by the most bad luck of any I have ever made.
Well, maybe the ill-fated idea of recording Love and Death and Politics in a cellar in Normandy was also pretty disastrous, but this album just seemed to have one thing go pear-shaped after another.
First of all, it couldn't decide what it was going to be called.
After settling on Here Comes the Moon — because calling it On the Road from Babylon seemed too much like Russ Chandler's album — Roger Stevens helpfully pointed out that George Harrison already had a song with that title.
So I had to change both the song and the album title.
Then it couldn't decide which songs it was going to have on it.
Having asked people what songs it should have, there wasn't much uniformity in the responses, apart from a strong lobby for Anyday — which wasn't actually one of the songs I was asking people to choose from, and definitely seemed somewhat out of place with most of the other songs — and Him and Me.
Despite trying the latter several different ways, it simply didn't seem to want to work.
Other songs didn't seem to fit either or, when they did, they overbalanced the mood of the album.
We still hadn't really decided on the songs when we actually started recording.
One of them, All the Angels Miss You, George, wasn't written until January.
Initially, the album was supposed to have been recorded over a weekend in Gent.
When, for various reasons, that didn't look possible, we rearranged the location to Hove — which was perhaps just as well, because that weekend John Forrester contracted food poisoning.
So Arvin and I recorded drums and acoustic guitar tracks.
We had hoped to add Bethan Prosser on violin, Linze Maesterosa on saxophone and Naomy Browton on cello the following week, but it seemed a bit pointless without bass.
Then Christmas happened.
We tried rehearsing the violin and cello parts by Skype, which also didn't quite work.
Then cheques started bouncing — thank you Santander — and then it snowed, so we had to postpone the mixing date.
By then I had given up any hope of getting the album back in time for the first gig of the tour at The Square and Compass.
However, along the way the actual recordings became increasingly beautiful, thanks to Bethan from The Bandanas, Linze — whom John had met through The Singing Loins — and Naomy, who had played on The Ghost of Love.
Jo Chedgey, who had turned up at Hove Folk Club and seriously impressed me and John, came and added superb vocals.
Imo Bergonzi sang the “la la la la lala lala la la” chorus on The Rotweiler Man.
Eight of the tracks have Arv playing brushes on the drum kit very tastefully indeed, and John plays lots of superb double bass.
I tried really hard not to put any electric guitar on the album. Only at the last minute did a couple of tracks find the black Squier Stratocaster making a very surprising and relatively brief appearance.
We were all very pleased with the album.
I wasn't sure how it would be received. I didn't think it fitted easily into anybody else's genres or preconceptions.
I wasn't even sure who else it sounded like.
A first mix was playing in the car one day when Arv got in. He frowned and said:
Praise indeed, I say.
TRACK LIST
Thirteen songs on Bring Down The Moon.
- Bring Down the Moon
- On the Road from Babylon
- African Roses
- Welcome to Mugsborough
- The Rotweiler Man
- Alice Annie Wheeldon
- Franz Has Got a Plan
- All the Angels Miss You, George
- Different for Al
- Looking for Blue Sky
- Karl Marx City Blues
- Downhearted
- Call Me Tonight
NOTES ON INDIVIDUAL TRACKS
Bring Down the Moon
I originally wrote this for my mate, songwriter Mike Reinstein, to introduce a gig at Hove Folk Club.
It was first called Here Comes the Moon, but Roger Stevens, another of Hove Folk Club's superb songwriters, pointed out that George Harrison had already written a song with that title.
It's about songwriting and singing — not for rubbish television and corporate television bosses, but for real, and for its own sake.
On the Road from Babylon
I started this in Middlesbrough and finished it in Grantham.
The metaphorical mythical cities of Babylon and Jerusalem stand for the prisons and injustices we are born into, and the freedom and justice we work towards.
But you knew that already.
The song features, along with William Blake and his favourite tricolour French Revolution cap, two other characters who crop up later on:
Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, and Alice Wheeldon, the pacifist activist fitted up by the state for a non-existent plot to kill Lloyd George.
African Roses
Apparently we have to import roses from Africa nowadays.
When I first sang this, someone in the audience said: “What about Fair Trade roses?”
To which my response is: you can't eat those either.
Welcome to Mugsborough
I wasn't going to write about the Olympics.
However, thanks to being presented with a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at Tolpuddle, I was finally getting round to reading this great novel that summer.
It seemed Mugsborough was very much still with us.
The Rotweiler Man
An entirely true story.
I am particularly pleased to have got all the swearing in.
Alice Annie Wheeldon
This is the true story of Alice Wheeldon: working-class suffragette, vegetarian, pacifist and socialist.
Thanks to Derby's Keith Venables for first telling me Alice's story.
Franz Has Got a Plan
Another true story.
Franz is the son of Kirstin and Christian, who organise gigs for me in Thüringen.
It's Christian's kitchen on the cover of Clockwork Music.
All the Angels Miss You, George
George is George Whitman, bookseller and Beat-generation co-conspirator, and founder of the wonderful Shakespeare and Company bookshop opposite Notre-Dame in Paris.
At one time it was also called The Tumbleweed Hotel.
One of George's guiding principles was the saying: never turn a stranger away — they might be an angel in disguise.
He died aged 98 just before Christmas 2011.
Sadly, the place was already slipping into more efficient, business-like hands — a process that has since increased, along with the prices and the number of books and bestsellers you can buy everywhere else.
Different for Al
Cornwall Folk Festival accidentally booked me again, and part of the deal was that I do a songwriting workshop.
Unsurprisingly, no-one turned up apart from my friend Malcolm.
We grumbled about how undervalued songwriters are.
Malcolm confessed a particular fondness for the work of Al Stewart. I admitted that I've always been particularly fond of Year of the Cat.
Things were surely different for Al, we decided, and promptly wrote this song together.
Looking for Blue Sky
We were on top of Maiden Castle, my sons and I, watching the clouds appear out of nowhere above us, when this song first got started.
We headed off one step ahead of the rain, looking for the blue sky.
Karl Marx City Blues
Chemnitz still has Karl Marx's “Nischel” in the centre.
Last time I was there, he was encircled by enthusiastically skateboarding young persons.
Downhearted
I'm not sure now why or where I had started writing this, because just when it was beginning to take shape, I heard that my Glasgow friend Kenny Caird had terminal cancer.
His mates were going to give him his wake — a concert — before he died.
They decided to use my song Undefeated as the concert title, because Kenny liked the song, and that's how he felt about things.
So this became written for Kenny.
I sent Kenny the lyric and he said he approved.
He died the week before the concert.
Call Me Tonight
I actually got accidentally booked for two proper folk festivals in 2012.
Mostly I'm lucky if every few years I get snuck in the back door at Broadstairs.
Warwick Festival was kind enough to provide me with a room opposite a Lebanese restaurant, which not only had some splendid houmous, but also served my very favourite wine, Kefraya Red.
After I'd played, I sat there steadily drinking my way through a bottle's worth of glasses of it.
My son Hari was having a sleepover with friends. I'd texted him to wish him goodnight and he had kindly responded.
I felt very lucky.
A few weeks later, at the first Brentford home match I could get to, Clayton Donaldson scored a simply breathtaking goal, which seemed to fit better than the original, obscurer, line about Kefraya Red.
It's probably the sort of song I was hoping I'd write when I was starting out writing songs, before Thatcher happened to my songwriting.
It's probably also the song no-one's going to notice, because surely no-one's going to find anything political in it.
I often think people only hear what they expect to hear: “Politics!”
Probably, of course, having songs with “Karl Marx” in the title doesn't exactly help matters.
There we go. Us songwriters — never happy, always grumbling away about being misunderstood and neglected.
Things were surely different for Al.
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