'The music for SimplyDivineis about my friends, and how we used to go to parties and stuff. It’s based on memories from the past. And we all used to want to be pop-stars or actors, or to do something that wasn’t going to be boring. I found this little quote on a party invitation, and she said 'she was never bored, mainly because she was never being boring.' That quote to me made sense of much in my life.' Book Inc.
'With the songwriting and music, I started getting invited to people's homes and we would have things called living room sessions. So everyone would congregate. People would bring wine, they would bring food, sit around the table. And then suddenly musicians would get up and start playing instruments and singing fado music and show tunes. I was like, 'Wait. What's going on here? They would create music and I would structure some words. From those early sessions we developed ideas that eventually became songs.'
London.
Mark has been asked to write a selection of songs for an American theatre project. Recently he had sold the performing rights to Simply Divine and had also been working spasmodically with Luc Deere on a theatre project tentatively called Hello Goodbye 'It was a story of a former pop star fallen on hard times. Obviously influenced by some 80s icons.' The idea rose from a short story Mark wrote a while back.
'Once slightly plump, Mickey was now thin and emaciated. His long hair had been cut short and dyed blond and was concealed by a broad-brimmed knit hat. His blue-green eyes, once so full of life, were concealed by round, dark granny glasses. His clothes, which he'd always arranged with great care, appeared thrown on at random, and some rather strange expressions were printed on his coat: one read, F*** ME STUPID, another said simply, SUCK MY ****. Across the back of his shoulders was a third slogan: HEROIN FREE ZONE. And now, to make matters worse, the scorching ninety-degree heat was causing Mickey's make-up to run. His performance at the rally
was to be a solo outing; the other members of his former band apparently realized that this might not be the best moment to join their leader onstage. They already knew that over the last six months, Mickey had been using heroin. According to one of the singer's brothers, Mickey was now doing as much as two grams of heroin a day. When Mickey finally took the stage, he looked even worse than he had in the trailer. A make-up artist had told him that because of the heat, there was nothing she could do, so he had wiped his face with a towel and then applied a facial. To the crowd, though, it looked as if Mickey had splashed water on his face and then dipped it in a bowl of flour. 'It was unbelievable what people were saying as he went onstage,' one of Mickey's business associates said later. 'People were going, Look at him, he's stoned. He looks ridiculous. What an imbecile.'
The audience responded to his brief set, which included a gripping version of Black Man Down and two other songs by hurling nearly two dozen bottles and cans at him. Before leaving the stage, Mickey bid the crowd a sarcastic goodbye from 'your favourite drug addict.'
Unfortunately, there was more to it than his sarcasm would suggest. Mickey, the world-renowned pop star, was about to become a world-famous junkie.'
Mark had also written a few lyrics for the project, however he found himself dissatisfied with the script and scrapped the idea. One song Lies was eventually saved then ultimately cut. 'Somewhere there is a demo of me singing a rough outline of this song. The music was a mastery of upbeat, techno-oriented Europop creating vast sonic landscapes made for dancing. The lyrics, which were indeed inspired by a true story.' As Mark added, 'I was in a very, very angry mood. In short, I was majorly pissed at somebody for being deceitful. But rather than wallow in self-pity, I stroke a defiant pose, à la I Will Survive. In so many words, I am saying, if you think you're gonna get away with this, think again and take a walk.'
'All those lies
All those lies you used to tell me
Do you think that I care when I look at you in despair? Were you going to leave? What was it you were going to say?
Do you really think in my mind that you're going to find I have no feelings for you, tell me, what are you gonna do?
All those lies
All those lies you used to tell me
Crazy to think you were smart
As you took a piece of my heart
Fortune can be wrong, I've been around far too long
And did you really believe that I had no idea?
You told me all these lies that I knew all along
All those lies
All those lies you used to tell me'
After teaming up with Martin ('I send him ideas until something sparked.') and Pete at Spilt Milk for this new project, they all decided to look at the compositions already completed. Pete remembered one lyric that stood out for him, 'There's no use goin' back 'cos the damage is done. Throw away…'
'We are working straight onto master tape in his (Pete) home studio. As we get ideas, we put them onto tape. Sometimes this causes more problems, because I'll like parts of it and not others, but we both try to re-do as little as possible. I like to try and keep the performances quick and spontaneous. It's the sorting out of these performances afterwards, and the rethinking of structure or arrangements, that take the time. Pete sometimes changes the feel of the track dramatically, and it's important to keep the track moving in the right direction and to communicate what is wanted, which in my case is achieved through images, humming lines and letting the musicians do what they feel is right and saying if I don't like it. It seems to have worked, so far, and I always find musicians so inspiring. Quite often they'll put an edge to the track that gives it greater potential, so we both sit and re-think bits again. The tracks continually change, and yet the original feeling doesn't seem to. I'd like to think that by putting the initial muse onto tape, we've captured its soul, so that whatever we put on top of it, it is, in essence, the same.'
The story began some two years ago when Mark had a surprising offer from two leading producers, Samuel Johns and Neil Edwardton. They wanted to secure the performing rights to his Simply Divine book for a theatre event. 'They kept using that word, event, without actually saying what they meant,' Mark adds. 'Obviously I had visions of a National Opera company and full dance troupe but then the finances kicked in.' Samuel and Neil went away to devise a script, the book, while Mark was asked to come up with lyrics. 'I don’t write music, but I do write words and I can feel a song in my head without actually constructing it.'
Funding was quickly sourced and a promoter scheduled dates for a provisional workshop opening in Boston late 2017.
'Mark asked for a theatrical concert as part of his book and I guess this was a starting point,' said Neil. 'I wanted to take the essence of his story and adapt it further as all adaptations should be. But I loved the idea of a story set in the 1930s with modern electropop music. People say the two don’t mix but for me pop music is theatre.'
Both Neil and Samuel found Mark, very modern, contemporary in his outlook, and liked the way he worked.
'He has a liberating quality,' Samuel smiled. 'Put that in your book, he will love it.'
According to Mark, it was easy for him to shift from his previous project sentiments and that of writing a new book. He elaborated.
'I was running back and forth, literally, from my own London base where I was writing to working with Martin and Pete, who had also been commissioned and were also mixing the music for the show. We were together, non-stop, all of us. There are a lot of serious aspects to the project. I needed a release. When I would go to the studio, and we'd go up to his loft, it was like, 'Honey, I want to dance.' I wanted to be happy, silly and buoyant. I wanted to lift myself and others up with the music. So, yes, the music we created whether it is used or not was a reaction to all the other stuff I was doing, which was very serious in nature. I wanted it to put a smile on my face, too.'
Musically, despite the sound being influenced by 20s/30s jazz, the music was structured like a DJ's set. The songs are sequenced and blended together so that they are played continuously without any gaps. The complete set-list consists of lighthearted and happy songs in the beginning, and progresses to much darker melodies
and lyrics describing personal feelings and commitments. The music created merged elements from 1920s jazz, 1970s disco and 1980s electropop. Although the script was set in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Mark thought it may be an idea to incorporate elements of disco into the songs. The songs reflected Mark's thoughts on love, fame and religion. Before Mark teamed up with Martin and Pete, the writers Neil and Samuel suggested working with their friend Marvin Haley, however that collaboration did not suit the musical direction. According to Mark, '[Producer] Marvin is also very political, seriously cerebral and intellectual. All we did was sit around, talking politics all the time. So, that couldn't help but find its way into the music, which made the sound rather angry.' Hence after recording tracks with Marvin, Mark decided to stop the project and start fresh. It was then that he turned to friends Martin and Pete who he had worked with before.
Pete on working with Mark.
'We spent five or six weeks at the studio. We didn’t slack, in fact both if us worked really hard. I would work on a track overnight, then he would come in and we'd start messing around. He would do vocal melodies and I would come up with a few ideas, and then he'd go, 'Okay, I'm gonna go home and think about it.' Then he'd come back the next day and have the hook for Wiedersehenor the chorus for Party'sOverNow. Then I would carry on working on more tracks to keep us going. It was more of a really fluid and almost childlike environment than anything that seemed too serious. Mark kept saying, keep it raw, keep it rough.'
Mark on working with Pete.
'We did some recording at his house. I'd come by in the morning and Pete would answer the door in his vest and pants as he'd been up all night. I'd bring him a cup of coffee and say, 'Pete, your house is a mess, there's no food in the cupboard.' Then I'd call someone from my house to bring food over for him. He would work, I would tidy up. And then we'd work all day. We're very much the odd couple.'
It has been decided that the first complete run through of music from the show is to be performed in a small 200-capacity North London club. The roots of this performance were partially seeded the previous month when Mark went into a nearby studio and heard rough takes for the first time. Mark is running late after an interview on radio. He rushes into the studio ignoring everyone’s greetings and looks at the modest equipment which has been set up for the rehearsal performance today. 'This is high risk, this is,' says Mark.
Pete assures him that the music is all backed up on DAT, but after all this effort Mark does not want to have to use it. 'Performing with technology,' Mark points out, 'is much more live than someone sitting there with an acoustic guitar.' Mark suggests that the musicians should do a complete run through of the four songs they intend to do today.
'Yes,' Pete agrees.
'Because I may need to change some of the lyrics,' Mark adds. They play The Party’s Over Now twice. Pete wants to do it a third time. 'No,' beseeches Mark. 'Do you know what you’re doing there?'
'I do now,' Pete says. 'I won't.'
Mark turns to me.
'The lyrics were inspired by the film Boys Don't Cry. In this song, the drinks have been drunk, the party's over, people are being harassed by the media but you still wish to carry on. One last chance before we are sunk, it's only a fragment we have here. The lights are being turned off again is a thinly veiled reference to Sir Edwards Grey’s famous speech, The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.'
'And a lot of songs come about personal experience. People often talk about sense of melancholy in some of the lyrics. This isn’t a kind of aimless sense. I think it was fuelled quite directly by situations I have been in or experienced.'
'Photographed on the high street, reading the news and then On route to another party, being savaged once again
Waiting for a taxi in Park Lane, there’s a camera on my back
I suddenly hear the sirens, it sounds like a panic attack
Hey, hey
Don't ask me how
But we’ve changed, we have changed
The party’s over now
The lights are being turned off once again
One more time to be drunk
One last chance before we are sunk
Hey, hey
Don't ask me how
We're blamed
The party’s over now
Just a routine procedure, I was always watching you
You wanted to be like me, the things that you do
Another routine procedure, you were always on my case
Driving in your car, photographing once again my face
Stopped some place before I think you know the score
Hey, hey
Don't ask me how
But we’ve changed, we have changed
The party’s over now
The lights are being turned off once again
One more time to be drunk
One last chance before we are sunk
Hey, hey
Don't ask me how
We're blamed, girls don’t cry
The party’s over now
Got a taxi to the station, your song was playing in my head
Ran to get on the tube train, the police shot someone dead
Don't ask me how
But the party’s all over now
Hey, hey
Don't ask me how
But we’ve changed, we have changed
The party’s over now
The lights are being turned off once again
One more time to be drunk, one last chance before we are sunk
Hey, hey
Don't ask me how
We're blamed, the party’s over now'
'All these 'hey heys' are very Beatlesque,' Mark comments. The next song starts up, For Stephen, later retitled Wiedersehen, in the show. ' This is my tribute to So Long Farewell from The Sound Of Music,' Mark pipes up. This slow, stately, and deeply forlorn ballad is dominated by acoustic piano. Mark has described it as 'a very beautiful song,' noting that it's, 'really based on the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig fleeing his country before the Nazis' arrival, but used it as a base for a song about Stephen. He's saying 'auf wiedersehen' to his life.'
As for the lyrics, one's initial impression is that it's sung directly from Stephen's perspective, as if Stephen himself were the narrator as he offers doleful goodbyes to the 'lovers,' 'trees,' and 'Arches,' his beautiful home. But it soon becomes apparent that maybe Mark has adopted a third-person omniscient narrator who is nevertheless entirely privy to his innermost thoughts. Even amidst a string of literal, seemingly mundane observations, 'The train is on the platform, your suitcases are sitting on the luggage rack,' Mark interjects the painful metaphor, 'the knife is in your back,' expressing the profound sense of loss, threat, and betrayal. Perhaps Stephen isn't merely saying goodbye to his home and young life, but it's also his first step toward bidding farewell to the world altogether. On the pre-recorded demo, there was some backing vocals sung entirely in German, with the added words 'Wie wir gehen' (literally 'As we go.') 'Like poetic German, as we go.' Mark recalled.
There is silence in the studio as the music is played.
'Oh,' says Mark, as though the whole song, never mind its stripped-back electro arrangement, has come as something of a surprise to him. 'It's rather beautiful.'