Black Tears - The story behind the song

Black Tears was the penultimate song written for my forthcoming debut album Quicksilver – The Masquerade Macabre. It came as the response to the aftermath of an intense relationship – one of those ones that might feel great at the time but in retrospect was not a great idea. The original idea for the song was inspired by a chance comment whilst making one of my videos and slowly formed into its own story, linking the feelings that when a relationship ends, we often have nothing material to ‘keep’ apart from memories – and that the sometimes obsessive sadness that comes out of a break up can blind us to the possibilities around us – a trap that I know I’ve fallen into many times and I hope others can relate to. The demands we place on the ones we love can sometimes be unrealistic – the hope that someone will love us ‘forever’ or ‘until the end of time’ are unreasonable and of course cut short by our own mortality if nothing else. On a bleak note, the theme of drowning is mentioned in the lyrics, which also comes up in the ‘B-side’ Mad Bad World. There’s also a clue to who the song is about in there too, but I’ll leave that to the Jane Marples and Hercule Poirots amongst you.

The full (album) version of the song is structured like a ‘sandwich’, with an ‘introduction’ and ‘epilogue’ that are almost the same apart from a small lyrical change that suggests the narrator hasn’t really learnt from his journey. I struggled to cut the song down to the supposedly more palatable ‘perfect three minutes’ so there’s still one slice of the sandwich at the beginning on the single edit. 

People often ask how songs are written: ‘Which do you write first? The words or the music?’ Often, as was the case with this song, the approach is more like a collage or a painting – I had fragments of lyrics and some of the riffs in my head and it took time to piece them together – though I had an idea of the chorus, structure and some of the arrangements in my head for a long time before we started recording. This and another song replaced two numbers that I was never quite happy with and I’m quite glad that I added it ‘at the last minute’.

As with most of the songs on the album, the song was recorded in lots of different places, the vocals in my home studio, guitars at the guitarist Alex Steer’s apartment and the bass and drums added by Paul White and James Johnston at Shock and Awe Studios. I made some errors in recording so had to record the backing vocals with Alice Redmond and Anna-Marie O’Sullivan twice, but I think we actually gave better performances the second time round as we all knew the song a lot better. The build in the second bridge is quite tricky; there are some notes of slightly superhuman length, which will be a challenge to reproduce live.

I’ve still yet to find anyone who can pin down who the song sounds like, which is frustrating when trying to promote the song in a press release, but also feels like a nice compliment – hopefully it has its own sound. In my head I was hoping to create a sonic world similar to the style of an old Dusty Springfield or Petula Clark number, which I think is complimented very nicely by Alex Steer’s guitar that reminds me of the playing on David Bowie’s version of Wild Is The Wind. I’m very proud of the arrangement of this song as much of the work was my own and it’s more or less what I heard in my head when I first dreamt it up. Plus it’s evidence that something good can come out of a situation that at the time can feel unendingly painful and unpleasant.

Black Tears will be released through iTunes on 5 November and is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

Image by Robert Piwko / Bryon Fear (c) 2012

Black tears rolling down my skin

Black from all the bitterness that burns within

My black heart, beating in my breast

Remembering the one I always loved the best

All you gave me were things that I can’t keep

Schemes and daydreams to drown me in my sleep

All you left me were things that I can’t see

Black tears – black tears have blinded me

‘Give me your hand’ you said, as you led me into the blue

I softly bowed my head and said ‘My lord, I’ll follow you’

Through fields of make believes I walked three steps behind

As you sped on ahead, I tried to read your mind

Will you love me?

Will you be mine?

Will you stay with me until the end of time?

All you gave me were things that I can’t keep

Schemes and daydreams to drown me in my sleep

All you left me were things that I can’t see

Black tears – black tears have blinded me

So I made my bed, let you lie right by my side

And as you slept I wept, for fears I’d tried to hide

Concealing feelings that I couldn’t quite control

Made you a part of me, the half to make me whole

Will you still love me?

Will you still be mine?

Will you stay with me until the end of time?

All you gave me were things that I can’t keep

Schemes and daydreams to drown me in my sleep

All you left me were things that I can’t see

Black tears – black tears have blinded me

All you gave me were things that I can’t keep

Schemes and daydreams to drown me in my sleep

All you left me were things that I can’t see

Black tears – black tears have blinded me

Mad Bad World - The story behind the song

Mad Bad World was written in 2008 and has been a staple of my live appearances since then, pretty much becoming my ‘signature’ song. It was the only number I managed to complete for an aborted musical I planned to write called Murder On The Dancefloor. An independent television producer who had seen my musical Postcards from God approached me to write a vehicle for enfant terrible drag sensation (and former dancer) Jonny Woo – and the resulting story was a murder mystery with Jonny as enfant terrible drag sensation (and former fashion designer) ‘Marc La Mode’. Part Paris Is Burning, part Theatre Of Blood, the outlandish and highly unlikely story followed Marc and his entourage being picked off by a sinister killer in a series of grisly and incredibly camp murders. The treatment caught the eye of a producer from the Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborne festival and we hoped to present a semi-staged version of selected songs featuring Jonny and several rising stars of the alternative gay cabaret scene. Mad Bad World was written for the character of ‘Mahogany’, a larger than life (and perpetually stoned) ukulele wielding bearded drag queen to be played by Le Gateau Chocolat. The song was Mahogany’s ‘torch song’ where she looks back at her wasted life after the murder of another of her close friends (and just before being battered to death with her ukulele and thrown into a canal).

The song is a little unusual as it is written very low in the voice (I am a bass baritone and Le Gateau has an even lower range than I do) and originally the song stayed in that register throughout. My musical collaborator Michael Roulston suggested switching an octave higher two thirds of the way through the song which certainly added a lot of drama to what could have been a bit of a dirge otherwise. The song was always meant to be reminiscent of the music from Twin Peaks and the other soundtracks composer Angelo Badalamenti has composed for the films of David Lynch and think we’ve managed to capture that ‘dark jazz’ feel. I sang the song as one of my audition pieces for a vocal course led by world renowned vocal coach Mary King at the South Bank Centre as part of her Voicelab programme. It felt great to sing the song again when I was invited to perform at Paul Burston's Polari at the same venue. I had spread my wings and so had the song.

This recording is actually the third version of the song. We made a demo version that I used as a backing track for live gigs, but I felt like it needed a different treatment and started an alternative version. The original demo was recorded ‘colla voce’ – the musicians follow the tempo of my singing – and in this song, the tempo varies quite a lot throughout . The new version was done to a strict tempo and didn’t really work. We tried adding drums to the original demo but it was very difficult to keep everything in time, so we decided to record the song live at Shock and Awe Studios with Michael on piano, Tom Mansi on double bass and James Johnston on drums. Synths and strings were added on afterwards by myself and Nick Trepka. This was the third and final take and I was very pleased with the result, which has been described as the soundtrack to a drinking competition between between Nick Cave and Tom Waits, a great compliment I think.

If you haven't done so already, you can get a free download of Mad Bad World by joining the mailing list at my website. Visit: http://www.reevescorner.co.uk/music.html

Photo by Robert Piwko (c) 2010

Look around

At all the madness going down

Sometimes you’ve got to find a way

To drown your sorrows

Maybe get a little high

To chase the dragons all away

I drink and I drink and I drink and I drink

‘Til I’m drowning

From crying and crying and crying

The whole night through

‘Cause it’s a mad bad world

It’s a mad bad world

It’s a mad bad world

That makes me blue

When friends have two faces

And they tear your heart apart

Life starts splitting at the seams

You feel like you’re crawling

On your hands and on your knees

Down that boulevard of broken dreams

Night after night after night after night

I’m still falling

From trying and trying and trying and trying

To make it through

But I can’t break on through

‘Cause it’s a mad bad world

It’s a mad bad world

It’s a mad bad world

That makes me blue

If you ask me ‘What’s your poison?’

I wouldn’t know quite what to say

‘Cause I’ve been killing myself for all these years

Dying slowly, slowly

Every day

‘Cause it’s a mad bad world

It’s a mad bad world

It’s a mad bad world

That makes me blue

That makes me blue

Blue