High

This song really came out of nowhere

I’ve been messing around with The End by the Doors

I could never get it to sound like Robbie played it until I realised that the top E is tuned down to a D and the bottom E is tuned down to a D and you play most of a D chord and set up a drone I was toying with the possibilities of playing in the it’s such a brilliant song and I love the sentiment of it.

So I’d been messing about

With my Les Paul through a Fender Deville in the lounge the day before in this tuning

I picked the guitar up the following day played an A bar chord and of course it sounded really odd because the string was tuned a tone down

I tuned the bass string up to E played the chord again but I hadn’t tuned the top string back up to E . But I immediately really liked the sound at and I pretty much played the cord section of high straight away and the lyrics came immediately

A C Em D

So I knew roughly what I wanted and I hadn’t really written anything like this before.

When we went to record it, I showed the guys what I had on the very first time we ran the initial chords and lyrics I really choked up when the band came in. I was so moved by it 😵‍💫

I had written it with a friend in mind So did emotionally catch me out which is really unusual.

My initial plan was to as the band came in WAS to Make it into it like a power ballad state where I go

let’s get

HIIIIIIIIEEEEEGGGGHHHH

BIG HEAVY GUITARS LOUD HIGH VOICE

But Jack immediately quashed that idea.

No, no, no he said let’s make it really laid back, a lot more subtle, we don’t want any of that power rock shit and it was just recorded intuitively I think in one take.

He was completely right of course, and I really really really really love this song.

And I used my Les Paul on it the main track through Marshall with the top E string tune to a D ( try it ).

And I used my Les Paul through a Fender amp to play the solo on the end

I played exactly what I wanted to play first time we ran the tape but Damon missed it and I couldn’t get it exactly how I wanted it again.

It does slightly bother me when I play the track even today, but that’s the only over dub on the track everything else is live in the room.

I’ve been going back through my recordings to see if I can find significant demos as to how the song shaped or originally started out so at some point I’ll put a few of those up just so you can see what I started out with and what we ended up with

Anyway, enjoy what I consider to be a very special track.