Stephane Marlot dropped by the studio on Monday last to add his beautiful cello arrangements to two songs. One song we discovered on a 1977 sixteen track master tape of a collection of songs I recorded way back then. The other song I wrote and recorded in four hours just a few short month ago. To use the recordings from 1977, we baked the original analogue two-inch masters at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios around eighteen months ago. (It's a slow and risky proposition that paid off...)
Sandra and I had a listen through the tapes in the main Real World mixing hall. Most of the songs were firmly fixed in their time, but it was there that we heard the sweet tones of a very young man and his guitar playing a song written on the evening of a first child's birth. A song we had not heard since the day I first recorded it. An emotional listening experience both then and now.
On another track from 1977 I play guitar and sing backing vocals to a reworked lyric from 2014. Drums and bass were recorded back in '77 too and sound as fresh as a daisy. Here I add the new lead, with new backing vocals from Sandra and Toby (one of our sons) plus guitar from Mike.
All the other songs were recorded between February 2013 and October 2014. We recorded first in 'Get It Together' studios in Stroud, with the bulk of the album recorded at Ragged Moon Studios.
The 'Boy' sessions are now the longest in rock history - around 37 years between turning on the tapes for the first time, to the completion of recordings.
I'm proud of the album. It's quite autobiographical. It is the result of a long and complex journey.
