Wednesday 2 November 2011

Invisible Friends: An Explanation

There's a moment in every Musician's biopic where the star gets the idea for his song from something said by him or something else. The inspiration moment. Dewey Cox is going to "walk ... hard. WALK... HARD".

Well "Invisible Friends" happened something like that, I heard another song, in this case, where Invisible Friends were mentioned and I said something like "I've got invisible friends, too, and I don't want to see the other ones" foollowed closely my "ooh that could be a blues line", the conceit, invisible friends, silent friends and leper friends, came soon afterwards.

I tried and tried to get tasteless and smell-free friends too but it just wouldn't work. "Some of my friends are tasteless, the rest I just don't want to"... what? Swallow? Lick? eat?

Anyway, the rest was just something I'd been working on before that. A sort of anti-blues. I'm no gambling man, it wasn't a woman that did me in, etc. Fortunately I wrote this before hearing The Folksmen sing I Never Did No Wandering in the Christopher Guest movie A Mighty Wind:

Never heard the whistle of a southbound freight,
Or the singing of it’s driving wheel,
No I, never did no wanderin’
Never did no wanderin’
Never did no wanderin’ after all

Hopefully I've avoided all out repudiation of the blues in that, in my song, something has left the singer with no friends.

"It wasn't the girl that ruined me, although she played her part"

The singer is ruined but not for the usual reasons. Even I don't really know what, though drink probably has something to do with it.