A Coming Of Age Track By Track pt 6 of 12

6. A Coming Of Age

I’ve been a bit lax in your track-by-tracks over the last couple of days. The tour took a bit of a manic turn in Manchester, one of those nights where you can sense something might kick off at any moment. I won’t go into detail but no soundcheck, an indifferent crowd, off-their-face lunatics (including second guitarist for a well known Manchester band) getting into the dressing room and harassing Ali (eventually being forcibly ejected by The Primitives burly drummer) all made for a unenjoyable night. It happens.

We high-tailed it over to Yorkshire as quick as we could, stopping only for some questioning by a bored copper, who we feared was going to ask for a full search of the van until I pulled out my best accent. “Is this your van?” “No, we’re hiring it.” “Do you have any documentation to prove that?” “Errrr….no” “Where are you going?” “We’ve just played a gig in Manchester and now we’re off to stay with me family” “Oh you’re in a band are you? Are you any good?” “Grand” I said.” “Have a safe journey then sir.”

York was much better, almost a hometown gig for me, although it got off to bad start when my guitar strap snapped on the first chord of ‘Woah Billy!’. I tried playing on one leg for a bit, then settled for kneeling on the floor, which I was just about getting away with, until Ali thought my mike stand had fallen down and unhelpfully put it back up, leaving me stranded. A quick change and all was cool though.

So… ‘A Coming of Age’

Usually in this band Ivor is the Riffmeister General but I’ve had the riff for this since the proto-Lucky Soul days in Glasgow although I could never find a suitable song to fit it in. It contains a discordant sounding flat 5 chord or ‘The Devil’s Interval’ as it better known. It was banned by the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages for basically sounding a bit evil amongst other more technical/nonsensical things.You’ll probably know it best from Jimmy Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ and also the start of ‘The Simpsons’ theme tune. It’s a great chord to use if you want something to sound really dark. We tried it with me and Ivor playing the riff at the same time but it just kept sounding like Black Sabbath, so it’s just me and a couple of pedals.

Apart from the obvious James Bond/John Barry reference points, for me this is wall to wall Scott Walker, particular the Scott 4 album and a little bit of his ultra dark meat slapping side. Probably the song ‘The Seventh Seal’, which deals with a knight playing chess with death, was the biggest influence and also his classic ‘The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime)’ which has my favourite bass line of all time. If you haven’t heard much Scott Walker then you have many treats ahead of you, and although he maybe a bit dark for some, his fatalist humour does it for me. If you were a fan of The Last Shadow Puppets album, it’s fair to say you will like (and recognize) Scott 4.

As well as Scott, this song is haunted by the ghost of Serge Gainsbourg and his pièce de résistance ‘Histoire De Melody Nelson’. This is an album you must own, if only because it probably doesn’t sound like anything else you have. Rubbery funk bass lines, moody arrangements and dark choral backing mixed with cantankerous narration en Français, all combine to make something very cinematic but also intimate in such a way that the listener can feel voyeuristic at times. Anyway enough with the classics and back to us, which is why we’re here. I’m really proud of the strings on this one, the best arrangement I’ve done I think and the way they play off Stephen Large’s manic hammond organ. It’s all very intense.

The title refers to a loss of innocence or a rude awakening rather than the triumphant statement of the the album title when taken out of context. This theme of innocence lost runs right through the album. I’m an optimistic and excitable person with very high hopes and that can lead to a lot of anticlimaxes and I guess that most of the lyrics for this record were written in a period of change and inactivity after the full-on excitement of ‘The Great Unwanted’. Inactivity breeds self doubt, at least for me, I’m only truly happy when I’m being creative. I think were still battling through the lyrics to this right up to the deadline and we really struggled as to whether the line ‘And where fools rush in, well I run hell for leather -too late to make it better, too late’ fitted. Now when I listen back I can’t hear anything wrong, in fact it’s my favourite line. The amount of times that happens over a record is astounding. At the time you can get really wrapped up in minute detail but with a bit of perspective it’s all fine.

I hope you like the song, I honestly don’t think many bands would have the ambition to try and pull something like this off these days.

You can download it for free here: http://www.luckysoul.co.uk/freedownload

A Coming Of Age by Ruffa Lane Records

And here’s a stripped down acoustic version:

A Coming of Age Absolute Session