SWEET JANE
/ BAY OF ANGELS
A vinyl single — one song on each side — made as a tribute to Lou Reed and to an unexpected musical encounter in Nice.
Released for Record Store Day on 20 April 2014.
THE SINGLE
Sweet Jane
Bay of Angels
ABOUT THIS RECORD
Lou Reed has always been a massive influence and inspiration on my writing, guitar playing and approach to music.
I think that Sweet Jane is just a sublime piece of rock'n'roll. It has a great lyric, truly poetic in its use of everyday language, and a lovely memorable two-word, two-chord chorus.
It's a narrative vignette that's complex without being over-clever, and it seems the perfect balance of intelligence and three-chord simplicity — only, of course, it's four chords, and there's that breathtaking bridge at the end that got left off most versions after the record company ditched it for the album Loaded.
I used to listen to Lou's playing with the Velvets — the manic thrashing and the berserk, feedback-heavy lead lines — and that was how I wanted to sound.
Somewhere I read a quotation from Lou where he said he thought rock'n'roll could and should show the same levels of adult intelligence as the novel or cinema — and then added: “I was wrong.”
I don't usually play covers, but I have played Waiting for the Man quite a lot, Sweet Jane rather more with most of the electric bands I've played in, and Walk on the Wild Side at acoustic gigs.
NICE, DIMI & LOU REED
When Lou died on 27 October 2013, we were in Nice.
My dad had died in August and I was utterly bereft. I needed something to look forward to, so the money I got for working on Gentle Men I used to get us to Nice for a couple of nights.
On the 27th we'd walked up to the hill that has the Bay of Angels on one side and the harbour on the other.
At the top, this guy was sitting in the autumn sunshine playing Stairway to Heaven, more for his own entertainment than with the intention of getting passers-by to put money into his guitar case.
I stopped and listened, and we started talking.
He said he liked playing those old songs because they reminded him of better times when he was young.
He looked at me: “We must be both about the same age,” he said.
He looked at the rings on my right hand and asked if I played. When I said yes, he handed me his guitar and said: “Play something.”
So I did.
He picked up some percussion and played along. I finished the song — I'd played Karl Marx City Blues — and asked him his name.
He told me his name was Dimi and that I should keep playing. We did three songs together.
People put money in the guitar case, and someone stopped and filmed us, but that wasn't the point.
I was so grateful for this kindness, for this little moment that reminded me how much it means to me to be able to play guitar and sing.
My life was saved by rock'n'roll, again.
When we got down from the hilltop, Arv found the news that Lou Reed had died.
I stood out on the balcony of our apartment, at the corner of the block, watched the street pass by and sang Sweet Jane.
The next day I started writing about Dimi and me, and me and Lou.
That became Bay of Angels.
MAKING THE SINGLE
Being a bit short of money again, I couldn't afford to do an album for Record Store Day, so I thought it would be really cool to do a single.
Originally I thought it would be hilarious to release a Christmas single in April, but everybody else — even my sons — thought I would be the only person to appreciate this situationist prank.
So I decided instead to make a single to say: “Thanks Lou.”
At first I was going to do an EP — not just Sweet Jane, but also Walk on the Wild Side and Junior Dad.
I think Junior Dad is devastatingly beautiful. I had seen Lou ending some of his later concerts with the song, with each performance seeming to become even more devastating and yet more beautiful as he added lyrics and images.
But after talking to the vinyl manufacturers it became clear that, in terms of audio quality, it was better simply to stick with one song per side.
RECORDING SWEET JANE
Bay of Angels wasn't really a problem, but how should I do Sweet Jane?
I think a really good song should sound pretty much as good on an acoustic guitar as it does with any amount of electricity and a band behind it.
And I think Sweet Jane isn't just really good — it's a great song.
So I worked out a way of playing it fingerpicked on an acoustic guitar, including the strange bridge about the “heavenly wine and roses”.
After Lou died I'd promised myself that I would finally take the trouble to learn how to add that bridge at the end. I also remembered that when I'd last seen Lou at Hop Farm Festival in 2011, he'd been including the bridge again in his performances.
Recording was a bit of a problem.
There was a mid-February deadline for Record Store Day manufacturing, which I didn't discover until the last days of January.
This was also when my last lot of acrylic nails had just fallen off, taking most of my real nails with them, and my voice was more ropey than usual, my throat having developed a nice line in catarrh and coughing.
But I was using my lovely old Martin D18, which sings like a choir if you so much as look at it, and I think the recording was okay.
You always think you could do it better — well, I do anyway — but usually I find you just end up doing it differently.
RECORD STORE DAY 2014
The single was released through participating independent record shops for Record Store Day on 20 April 2014. The photograph and sleeve design were by Hari.
RECORD STORE DAYTHANK YOU
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