So…a few years ago, I went out for a couple of years with this gorgeous redhead, whose name I shall for reasons of decorum not share here. Unfortunately, things did not work out, partly because I am simply an eejit and to this day I rue her as “the one who got away”. Amazingly, however, we managed to stay friends and keep in touch. A little while ago, I met up with her and she told me she was seeing someone new. Of course, I was happy for her. We all want the people we care about to prosper and flourish. But part of me also felt bittersweet about this development. So I did what I always do…and wrote a song about these complicated emotions I suddenly had to negotiate. This is the result.
Written in the unusual key of Csharp minor (spans of spoof rockumentary “Spinal Tap” will know that this is not quite the saddest of all keys; that is still Dminor!), it is entitled simply “Red” and plays with juxstaposing the colour of her hair with me being “Blue” (in all senses). The song just poured out of me. I wrote the music in a single day (the day before I went skiing with my son Willem, in Val Thorens in in April 2014). The words I wrote the following day in Val Thorens itself. Whilst my son Willem and his friend Christian were off in ski-school and I was waiting to collect the key for our chalet, I sat in a bar with a few beers, listening to the music on a loop on my iPad and wrote the words. I recorded them later that evening, again on the iPad.