Stars

Written by STEVE Hillier

When February 1992

Where Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally Sung By Steve Hillier

Features Roland W-30, Yamaha DX100  

Spotify Link

YOUTUBE link to GDR demo of Stars 1994

Youtube link to Steve hillier’s 2021 Glitterball Remix

STARS and KING TUBBY DJ MASHUP 2001

“We’ll take out hearts outside, leave our lives behind and watch the stars go out”

Stars was written as Walkers Nightclub, an infamous haunt for students and gangsters and my first Tyneside nightclub, was closed. A favourite with the more discerning Geordie clubber, I’d DJed at the permanently sold-out Wednesday’s ‘Westworld’ club night since 1989…my first regular nightclub spot since arriving in Newcastle.

Walkers had numerous difficulties, from regular overcrowding to problems with the drug trade and a broken air conditioning system. It’s closure was a shock, the club had come to define the mid-week music scene for me and many others on Tyneside. While The Riverside was where you went for bands, in the late 80s and early 90s Walkers Nightclub was where you went to dance. And on a Wednesday and later Thursday night (at my indie club ‘Futureworld’) you came for my choice of music. Walkers is where I met Chris Wilkie, it’s where the Dubstar story began. When the news of its closure arrived I walked down into Jesmond Dene in the rain to gather my thoughts, I had no idea what I would do. I decided to write Stars, one of the most important decisions in my career, maybe my life.

Walkers returned as Planet Earth in 1993, and regained the Walkers crown to become the late-night drinking spot for many Dubstar sessions. It was a five-minute walk from The Forth Hotel and our studio ‘Stink Central’ at The Arts Centre. It was handy to know that when we got off the train from Kings Cross at one in the morning there was somewhere that would always let us in for the tenth drink of the night.

Planet Earth was a terrific club, there’s nothing like it down here in Brighton. But I miss Walkers, it had an extra something. Danger maybe?

Stars came together on an old piano in my front room in Jesmond, with a lead melody that only features on the ‘acoustic version’ on the B-Side of No More Talk (and now this new piano version). Stars took on a life of its own when I completed the first draft using my Roland W-30 sampler and sequencer. In fact, almost the entire arrangement you hear on the Dubstar version was assembled on the W-30. There’s also a lead ‘twinkle’ from the Yamaha DX100 I’d bought for £100 at Mckay Sounds on Westgate Road earlier that month…a pure sine wave, largely because it was the only sound I liked from the keyboard at the time. That opinion changed soon after. I now own three for some reason.

The arrangement to Stars was conceived with a nod to Massive Attack and the Dub Reggae tunes I grew up with in Lewisham, South London. Of course, being one of my songs, and having very little idea of how Dub Reggae actually works it had a strong melody and wistful lyric…a reflection of how I was feeling about the state of the club scene on Tyneside. And what on earth I was going to do next.

I didn’t understand why people liked Stars so much at first, I wasn’t that keen on recording it at all. But through my experiences working at Pinnacle Records, my first job after leaving school, and out of respect to Andy (the boss) Ross at Food Records, I knew that if there was any point in signing to his record label it would be to allow his expertise to guide the next stage for Dubstar. He wanted to release Stars first, so we did. It went on to be the most successful Dubstar song, and is still played on the radio and featured on playlists across the world.

I know why people like it now. It’s grown on me too. 

Anywhere

Written by Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie
When November 1990, Revised January 1994
Where Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Originally Sung By Steve HILLIER
Features Roland W-30 & JD-800, Casio CZ-101, Yamaha DX100

Spotify Link

“Even persistination couldn’t stay”

Pardon?

The sound of gazing out of Jesmond windows at the rain. The song Anywhere began as an attempt at a ‘classical’ melody that I wrote on the Roland W-30 using string samples featured on the factory-supplied floppy disk. The original chord sequence was very different to the version that appeared on Disgraceful. You can hear it on the last moments of the remix album, and now on this piano version.

Like so many of the Dubstar songs, it was an idea that had been kicking around for years. It’s impossible to predict when inspiration will hit to complete an old idea, but when it appears a songwriter is compelled to run with it, no matter what else they may be working on. Anywhere appeared when I was DJing at Planet Earth nightclub in Newcastle. I wrote “I’ll be around” on a sheet of paper covered in song requests from drunken revellers. It was a cold Wednesday night in January, I wasn’t quite in the nightclub mood. So I wrote a sarcastic message to the crowd: “I’ll be around… any time I’m free” and felt smug, knowing there’s a pervasive cattiness to the idea that you’re promising something and taking it away simultaneously. That was also the night I invented the word “persistination”, a portmanteau of ‘determination’ and ‘persistence’. I hope it sounds like it means something. So far only one person has noticed, I’m amazed we got away with it. And of course, persistination is now in common usage across the world and in my imagination.  

The version of Anywhere on Disgraceful was influenced by One Dove and The Other Two, both of whom Stephen Hague had worked with (although we hadn’t met Stephen when I put the arrangement together). Not only was this the first song we completed after Sarah joined The Joans (the precursor to Dubstar), but it remains my favourite from the Disgraceful sessions. What a bass line! Thank you, the Roland JD-800.

Also, that ‘dee dah dah, dah daah dah’ organ line from the Casio CZ-101? A few journalists wrote that it was a reference to this song by Kym Sims, which on reflection would have been pretty cool. In reality I’d gotten the CZ out for one specific reason…I loved this tune, a total raver’s anthem on Tyneside and thought there should be a hardcore reference in our first tunes together.

Just A Girl She Said

Written by Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

When April 1984 & March 1994

Where Welling, South London, Jesmond & Benton, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760,Yamaha DX100, YAMAHA TX81z, Korg Mono/poly

Spotify Link

YOUTUBE link to Just A Girl live at the BBC

“I’m a person who thinks, but you hope I’ll forget if you ply me with drink”

Just A Girl She Said is a combination of a melody and chord sequence I’d written for my O’Level music exam in 1984 and a poem from Sarah’s poetry book, some ten years between them. It works superbly, a defining Dubstar moment. Just A Girl was pivotal for us, the song where it was obvious that Dubstar wasn’t just another pop act, but something more considered. More intelligent maybe? The journalists loved it, so did the fans, and coming after Anywhere on Disgraceful, it was one of those nice moments when you discover an act can do something else, they’re not just about the singles.

I’m particularly proud of the arrangement. Of all the early Dubstar recordings, I think Just A Girl exhibits my passion for the Cocteau Twins most obviously. Some have pointed out that it bears more than a passing resemblance to ‘Monochrome’ by Lush. This is accidental of course, although both Chris and I adored their Mad Love EP (and are friendly with Emma Anderson… I produced an early version of Lush’s comeback single Out of Control). I enjoy the fact that this song feels almost perfectly ‘of its time’, it’s a reflection of the music and acts on 4AD that Chris and I had obsessed over.

For some reason, I thought it would be a clever to include funk breakbeat samples in a song written in 6/8. You can hear them most clearly at the end during the fade-out. Daft really, but it was the 90s so I’m forgiven.

When I was playing Just A Girl on the piano last night, I realised that of all the Dubstar songs, this one is the defining moment for Sarah as a personality. It struck me this is not the kind of melody I write, these are not my words…sure, the synth parts and the semi-chromatic chord sequence are mine, but ultimately this song is Sarah’s. I don’t think it would work if it wasn’t for her topline, it would be too ornate. Another happy accident from 1994.

Elevator Song

Written by Steve Hillier

When September 1986

Where Welling, South London

Originally sung by StEVE HILLIER

Features Roland W-30, Yamaha DX100

Spotify Link

“If you need somebody to love, well then I’ll be the one who’s there”

Elevator Song, originally titled ‘I’ll Be The One Who’s There’, is a ‘please like me’ song only teenagers can write.

Crouched against the radiator in my childhood bedroom in Welling, Elevator Song was a message to the girl I had a huge crush on at school. I hadn’t worked out how she was going to hear this song, or if I’d ever tell her how I felt… but that didn’t matter, I’d secretly let her know in a song. I met her again years later. She’d bought the Disgraceful album in 1995 and loved it, not knowing it was anything to do with me, and not knowing that Elevator Song was written for her. We’ve remained friends to this day… I still haven’t told her.

Elevator Song has no chorus, it’s based on a much older writing style popular in the 50s and 60s, where the writer makes a statement in the A section (‘I like it’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘There She Goes’) and then refines it in the B section. It’s a powerful and useful structure, vibrant and sincere. There were many versions of Elevator Song between its writing and release, each an attempt to sound contemporary. My favourite is the acoustic version on the B-Side of No More Talk. Of all the recordings, this stays true to the original intent of the song. I find the Disgraceful version difficult, there were adjustments to its structure that Graeme and Jon had insisted upon that simply don’t work to my ears, even all these years later. The Biff and Memphis remix is great though, and unintentionally hilarious.

On reflection, I think It would have been a good idea to have written more songs like this, rather than the bombast that made it on to Make It Better. You live and learn.

Day I See You Again

Written by STEVE Hillier

WHEN March 1995

Place written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne & RAK Studios, London

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

Youtube link to the very first demo of Day I See You Again

“If the man you’ve grown to be’s more Morrison than Morrissey…”

This lyric went down well in the music press of the mid 90s. I’m not sure how it would go down if I’d presented it to them in 2020.

Day I See You Again, which really should start with a ‘The’, was the last song to be written for Disgraceful, and another example of a melody that had been hanging around in my head for years before being incorporated into a song for Dubstar. Like so many others, this was written in 3/4 time and changed to 4/4 for the album. It was heavily influenced by the work of Russian composer Mily Balakirev and conceived as a Viennese Waltz, as you can hear in my piano version (replete with the original middle eight section…I think I prefer what we did for the album but thought it would be interesting to include on the DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland version). On the Disgraceful version you can still hear the triplet rhythm in the vocal performance, with Sarah sounding slightly unsure of where the beats are supposed to fall, especially in the first two verses. This undoubtedly adds to its charm, a vulnerability that resonates with the emotional centre of the song.

The lyric recounts a real situation. I’d met my ex-girlfriend at London’s Royal Festival Hall during the first recording session for Disgraceful in early 1995. The situation was gently tense, like a scene from a rom-com, so on returning to RAK studios I wrote how I felt, a lyric that said what I wanted to say to her but hadn’t. Earlier in these sessions, Graeme Robinson had told me that there were two types of Steve Hillier songs, the jolly ones you could dance to and the daggers through the heart. Day I See You Again is definitely the latter, the release and the fear as the blade pierces your chest for the final time.

Stars and Day I See You Again are my most successful songs as a writer from this era, a superb opening statement of intent from a new act. And this is the only Dubstar song where neither I nor Chris appear! If I recall correctly Sarah did a vocal session with Graeme Robinson and Jon Kirby in Darlington where they’d put together a new arrangement of my song and played it to Food Records without our knowledge. The record company loved it so much there was no chance we could go back to my original orchestral arrangement (some of it does remain though, such as the brass, piano and pizzicato strings). We had no choice but to go with theirs, and although that was probably for the best…

I can’t imagine I’d be so relaxed about an arrangement of mine being nearly totally removed today. At least I’d written it and Sarah sang it, so it still qualifies as Dubstar.

Week In Week Out

Written by Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie

Date written April 1987, refined in January 1994

Place written Welling, South London & Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

‘It’s not you and it’s not me, it’s a feeling’

I was on holiday in Biarritz France in 1987 and trying to impress a young woman from Stamford with an early recording of “It’s Not You and it’s Not Me”, a song I’d written at school. The cassette was all sparkly Cocteau Twins guitars and me on vocals. I think there was a drum part from my Drumulator too. She liked it, I think she was surprised it was quite decent. I know I was. We walked along the beach together that night while out on the Bay of Biscay an electrical storm was breaking, the charged air illuminating our footsteps behind us as we walked. It was a beautiful sight. The following day my Dad and I nearly drowned, swept out to sea from that same shore. Quite a holiday.

Week In Week Out is a combination of three different tunes, which is obvious once you know. The verse was from a song entitled ‘Mikaela’, the very first that Chris and I recorded as The Joans in 1992. The chorus is the song I’d played Samantha years earlier, written in a rare light-hearted ‘back from school’ moment in Welling. The spoken interludes are from Sarah’s book of poetry. Knowing its conception all too well, I struggle to connect with Week In Week Out. It has a compelling groove, but…I can’t help but hear the joins.

Not So Manic Now

WRITTEN BY Brick Supply

WHERE Wakefield, Yorkshire

Originally sung by Brick Supply

FeatureS EMU Proteus, Roland W-30

Spotify Link

Spotify Link to Original

Youtube link to First Dubstar demo

“I was making myself the usual cup of tea when the doorbell strangely rang”

Did the doorbell ring in a strange manner, or was the fact that the bell was ringing strange in itself? No one will ever know.

Graeme Robinson, who would later become Dubstar’s first manager, gave me a cassette when I was DJing at the Arena in Middlesbrough. It was a collection of artists he had recorded at his studio in Darlington under his Circulation Recordings label. The first song was Not So Manic Now by Brick Supply, total unknowns from Wakefield. I fell in love with the song driving home up the A19 in my Lada, the only Russian car on Tyneside without heating. It didn’t feel significant at the time, I fall in love with a lot of songs. Yet this was the moment that would transform The Joans into Dubstar.

I made an arrangement for Not So Manic Now on my Roland W-30 that weekend, Sarah popped round to Jesmond to sing it and Chris played some funky guitar. The original arrangement sounded a lot like Wear Your Love Like Heaven by Definition of Sound (who by coincidence toured with us on the first Dubstar UK tour). This was a classic example of me trying to marry two ideas that should never have met, let alone wedded. It didn’t survive. I have a DAT of it around here somewhere. 


UPDATE JULY 2021: I eventually found this early version of Not So Manic Now on a cassette in a cupboard in Hove, unheard for twenty two years. It’s actually rather good, nowhere near as bad as I thought…so I’ve linked to it below.

A few weeks later Graeme was at a show we were playing at The Riverside in Newcastle, heard us perform this tune, and couldn’t believe his ears (or his luck). Later that night he approached us to make some demos in his house in Darlington. Between him and Jon Kirby, his musical partner, they changed much of my arrangement back towards the original Brick Supply version of Manic, which annoyed me enormously at the time. I can see now that this was the right approach, and a defining moment for Dubstar emerged. Funnily enough, Manic was not a contender as a single until the mixes came back from Stephen Hague working at RAK. We heard them for the first time up at Chappel Studios in Lincolnshire where we were finishing off the Disgraceful album. We were excited, it sounded like a hit. It was.

What is the meaning behind Not So Manic Now? It’s actually not that clear from the song lyric. There was a story that went around in the music press that it was about an attack on pensioner, but there are good reasons to doubt this. Apparently Manic was originally two different songs that were joined together, much like Gary Numan’s classic ‘Are Friends Electric?’. This is easy to spot when you know where to look: the lyric keeps changing from the first person ‘Because I’ve been up here for a while’ to the third person ‘And she’s twisting and throwing to the wall’. The song repeatedly changes key too, such as between the intro and the first verse and then again into the B-section or chorus. So the lack of clarity might be that Not So Manic Now is two songs in one. Someone should ask Brick Supply, wherever they are now.

popDorian

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEn July 1992

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne 

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland S-760

Spotify Link

Youtube link to Popdorian live on GLR 1995

“Old enough to know he could die but too young to care”

A song that’s as fun to play as to hear, popDorian featured heavily in The Joans’ live set in 1992. Chris and I both played guitar on this original version and you can spot this in the recording. The harpsichord part on the Disgraceful version is my guitar line, Chris’s remains intact from our many gigs at The Broken Doll and Dog and Parrot. It wasn’t intended this way, but popDorian is one of the rare moments that Dubstar sounds determinedly retro, a little bit Britpop. The writing of the song was inspired by John Lennon’s ‘She Said She Said’ and so had a serving of the 60s DNA that defined British Indie music of the era.

Why is it called popDorian, not just Dorian… and why Dorian at all? The ‘pop’ suffix was applied at a random moment because it sounded like a pop record to me. And ‘Dorian’ was originally ‘Taurean’. I’m born in May and have had years of people drawing conclusions about me due to my star sign, something that’s also referenced in Not So Fast. I’m not superstitious and singing about star signs is impossibly naff so I changed ‘Taurean’ to ‘Dorian’. Plus I’d known a lad called Dorian at school, it’s a good name. There aren’t that many in the world, now they’re all immortalised in this song.

There was a version of popDorian that appeared on The Joans’s ‘Gear’ cassette from 1992, replete with heavy Drumulator rock drums (that would also appear on Victoria in 1998) and pitch-shifted harmony vocals. Sounds alright even after all these years.

Not Once Not Ever

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN March 1994

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne 

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, Kawai K1m

Spotify Link

YOUTUBE LINK TO GDR DEMO

“Living together is something you do, and married is something you are"

Written in the spring of 1994. A moment of refection on the passing of a relationship, and the first I wrote for Sarah to sing, not for me. I’m particularly fond of the lead melody we hear at the beginning of the tune, and the silly time-stretched drums. I’d been listening to a lot of Jungle (or ‘nightmare music’ as Sarah called it) and couldn’t help but put Jungle and Hip Hop references all over the Dubstar recordings. 


Not Once Not Ever is that feeling of leaving a relationship and a partner behind, knowing things will be better this way eventually, better apart. Standing upright, dignified. But in the meantime…fuck you, I’m glad you’re gone.

I love the original demo from the Graeme Robinson session and the version that appeared on Disgraceful (and was accidentally released on the first Dubstar promo CD), but the definitive version for me is the acoustic version on the B-Side of No More Talk. I was hoping for that indie-Bossanova style when I wrote the song, a sound we accidentally captured a whole decade before Nouvelle Vague.

St Swithin’s Day

WRITTEN BY Billy Bragg

Originally sung by Billy Bragg

FeatureS Roland W-30, Kawai K1m

Spotify Link

Spotify Link to Original

Youtube link to original Dubstar DEmo

“I miss the thunder, I miss the rain’

I love hearing women singing songs written by men for men to sing. Something happens, I struggle to explain it. Maybe the female voice brings out a different emotion in the lyric that’s hidden to the writer? Or is it the juxtaposition of the male point of view, written for a man, but performed by a woman? I think the reason the Dubstar ‘sound’ works is that juxtaposition, male lyrics but female vocals. Rosie Carney has accomplished this same synergy brilliantly with her version of Cigarette after Sex’s K and to my ears it sounds like…Dubstar’s niece?

Billy Bragg’s St Swithin’s Day is a heart breaking song. A perfect lyric, a man expressing himself frankly about heartbreak to a bold melody. Sarah sings the song differently to Billy, and makes it her own just as Rosie does with K a generation later. It’s a fluke that the song also suits that rolling 90s breakbeat trip hop beat, with a bass line provided by a combination of the DX100 sine wave and the Kawai K1m I borrowed from Sharon of The Crisis Children. This was the second song I recorded with Sarah in my front room in Jesmond. I thought it was going to sound a lot like I, Voyager by Trans Global Underground. Instead it sounds like Dubstar, which is probably better.

But something bugs me to this very day… Sarah gets one of the words wrong on this song. Can you spot it?

Disgraceful

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEn September 1992

Place written Gosforth, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland S-760, Yamaha DX100

Spotify Link

“Two people still looking for something else” 

The things you shouldn’t do when love breaks down, but do just the same.

Disgraceful featured on The Joans cassette Gear, and is another song that was straightened from 6/8 to 4/4 for the first Dubstar album. You can hear the original 6/8 version straining through the first few bars before Sarah sings. It’s been pointed out that this song has more than a passing resemblance to Bizet’s ‘Carmen’. This was not intentional I promise, but I’ll take it. It’s a French thing…

I moved from Jesmond to Windsor Terrace, South Gosforth for a brief period in 1992 following the end of my relationship, and shared a house with two freshly divorced strangers more than twice my age. One of the men I only saw on a couple of occasions which led me to speculate that either he was getting back with his ex or was an undercover police officer. The other chap let me know he hated my music. To be fair to him, I was playing a lot of Hoover Sound Techno, an acquired taste at the best of times. Unsurprisingly this was one of the most miserable times of my life and led to the writing of many songs. Disgraceful was one and encapsulates that moment of ‘Hey! You there… let’s do a selection of things we’ll regret’. My favourite line in the lyric is ‘imagine us now, talking tomorrow’. I like the way it plays with language and leaves the debauchery to the imagination.

The time signature change which featured in the original version of this song was inspired by this beautiful song by Kitchens of Distinction. Their album Death of Cool got me through this miserable autumn and remains one of my all time favourites. I had the privilege of seeing the band play at Middlesbrough Arena that year and loved every ear-splitteringly loud moment of it. Of all the bands I followed in the 90s, it’s these guys I truly believe should have achieved more recognition if for no reason than Patrick Fitzgerald’s lyrics are outstanding. And the walls of guitars. The drums are great too.

The main beat in the Disgraceful album version comes from a sample CD by Norman Cook called ‘Skip To My Loops’. He was present at the second Dubstar show in Brighton at The Pavilion and I have no idea what he made of us. After the first song my Brighton friends, of which there were around twelve in the audience, put on cutout Steve Hillier photo-masks and danced around like lunatics. Sarah burst out laughing, any sense of artistic mystique was lost, and the first of many questionable Dubstar gigs descended into befuddled bemusement. Quite a moment, sorry Norm.

Goodbye To You was originally to be the closer on the first album, but due to a cock-up on my part Disgraceful took its place. The album is much better for it.

B-sides & Bonus Songs

I WON’T FORGET YOU/BOW WOW NOW

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN JANUARY 1996

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne

Originally sung by SARAH BLACKWOOD

Features Roland S-760

YOUTUBE LINK

“I can’t bear the thought You’d Have to Die Before Me“

B-sides, songs that perform the function of having something (anything?) on the flip side of a vinyl single give writers an opportunity to say something they feel needs to be said without the pressure of writing a ‘hit’. There are no expectations, you can write whatever you want.

They hold a unique role in the development of a 20th Century act and for a fan’s relationship with their heroes. Growing up, I’d enjoyed the B-Sides of my favourite acts (Billy Bragg, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins) much more than the A-Sides. I wanted Dubstar to have the same treats for fans who hungered for more. Luckily that was easy in the 1990s, a decade defined by a million formats, all of which counted towards the singles chart, and all of which needed new material to fill them up. There was scope for an act to release three B-Sides with every single AND have a remix CD too. So we did.

The pressure was off when it came to writing B-Sides, I had the luxury of knowing that whatever I wrote was almost certainly going to be released. Bow Wow Now, as this song was originally known, is an example of this luxury and is one of a handful of Dubstar recordings that really deserved a better version than the released attempt. That melody, those words, the heartbreak…all of which could have done without the rather clumpy programming. Also, this is the only Dubstar song where the vocals were copied and pasted from one chorus to the next in a sampler. I can’t remember why, but It may have been something to do with there being no heating in our studio ‘Stink Central’ at the Arts Centre. You can hear Sarah shivering as she’s singing. It was January 1996. We were in the top twenty at the time.

Chris and Sarah were vegetarians when we recorded this song, I’ve been vegetarian now for many years too and am heading the vegan way. Consequently, I’m rather pleased that we managed to have a song about the loss of an animal in the Dubstar canon. It’s not Meat is Murder, I Won’t Forget You expresses something different. It’s the closeness people achieve with their childhood pets and the grief of their passing.

So why change the name of the song? ‘Bow Wow Now’ as a title was always an ‘in-joke’. It was an attempt to hide the sentiment of the song, a cross between 90s irony and self-conscious deflection. But last night when I was playing this song for the first time in decades, it felt ridiculous to hide the meaning of the lyric. And I never liked that title. So from here on this song will be known to me as ‘I Won’t Forget You’, which is the title it should always have had.

A NORTHERN BRIDE

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER

WHEN February 1991, Lyric April 1996

Place written Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne

Originally sung by SARAH BLACKWOOD

Features Roland S-760

“This is my final try”  

Prior to 1996 I’d had no concept of Sarah as a ‘star’, simply a fabulous vocalist who happened to be singing my songs. The media was regularly writing about the ‘Northernness’ of Dubstar, so I thought I’d endorse it and write something that felt ‘Northern’ to me as a Southerner, a new approach. And who better to star in a northern melodrama than Sarah Blackwood? So A Northern Bride is the first song written with Sarah in mind not just as a vocalist but as a person, a character emerging in the media.

Composed on my piano in Jesmond, I’d had this tune running around my head for years. The lyric is self-consciously kitchen sink, inspired by a conversation I’d had with my girlfriend’s best friend. Her relationship had broken down and was falling apart. It had become clear to her that ‘he’ had always been a bad guy. She’d not seen it until now, he was not the man she thought he was, and she had to get her dad and brother to come round and rescue her from their marital home. Not a great situation.

The vocal for this song was recorded in a studio in Berlin while we were on tour in the late Spring of 1996. Although I’d managed to get the accompaniment down, we’d run out of time to record it back in the Arts Centre. So the version on Elevator Song is Sarah singing in Germany and a DAT of everything else from Newcastle, combined quickly in an afternoon between gigs. Consequently, it’s one of my faves and the last song of the Disgraceful era.

A CERTAIN SADNESS…

WRITTEN BY John Court & Carlos Lyra

WHEN 1967

WHERE BRAZIL

Originally sung by ASTRUD GILBERTO

Features Roland S-760 & JD-800, KORG MONO/POLY

Spotify Link to Original

“here goes…”  

I’ve been gently obsessed with romantic songs since my early childhood in Abbey Wood and was working my way through Gilberto’s song book as we recorded Disgraceful.

A Certain Sadness seemed like the perfect addition to the Dubstar canon, a mood somewhere between Billy Bragg and Charles Aznavour. It was also a way to align ourselves with a more international view of the world, just as Blur had with Francoise Hardy. So while the Britpop bands around us were trumpeting their imagined English heritage, Dubstar was covering Brazilian songs.

That felt good at the time, it feels truly inspired now.

And if there’s anyone who can do justice to an Astrud Gilberto song it’s Sarah Blackwood. Both have that detached feel to her delivery, just enough sincerity, pureness of intent and slightly wonky tuning to beguile and draw in the listener. I said in an interview once that Sarah Blackwood was the indie Astrud. I’m pretty sure she liked that.

ANYWAY

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER

WHEN APRIL 1996

WHERE Arts Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by SARAH BLACKWOOD

Features Roland S-760

“…you knew I’d hate you but you did it anyway”  

It was only when Dubstar ended and I worked with other musicians from the 90s at BIMM that I discovered just how much of an easy ride we’d had as musicians with Food Records and EMI. It was an incredible privilege to be able to write a song, record it and have it out in the shops and in the charts weeks later with no interference from the ‘industry’. Incredible really, and one of many reasons I’m eternally grateful to Andy Ross for the opportunity.

Anyway was one of these songs, another reflection on what happens when love breaks down, messes up and evaporates away. It’s a rare instance of a song I’d written in 6/8 actually staying in 6/8. It was also the second of three songs I wrote for Dubstar with the prefix ‘Any’ as an in-joke with myself…I’d read that Sting had amused himself by writing a series of songs with ‘Every’ in the title so I thought I’d give it a go and channel the wisdom of the local hero into my own Tyneside canon. His songs are more popular, but mine are funnier.

DON’T BLAME ME

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER

WHEN NOVEMBER 1991

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE HILLIER

Features Roland S-760

YOUTUBE LINK

 “Don’t blame me, even though you hate me”

Often the second song in The Joans set, and inexplicably one of my favourite songs at the time. I was disappointed that Don’t Blame Me ended up as a B-Side rather than as a single in its own right.

The arrangement for this song changed significantly from The Joans era where both Chris and I would play guitar. I put down the guitar and bought a new sampler (the Roland S-760) when the advance came through from Food Records in 1994. Originally the song was much faster and so short it was finished within two minutes. Now with some posher sampled sounds I’d slowed it down, tarted it up…and it lost all its angst. My favourite memory of this song, of the entire Chappel Studios session where Don’t Blame Me was recorded, is Chris recording his part with me, Sarah, Graeme, Jon and the engineer all shouting at him to ‘play in time!’ as he sat cross legged on the studio floor. He was rushing his playing and we were playfully antagonising him to ‘play properly’`. Don’t blame Chris though, who can relax when being bullied by five people simultaneously?

Listening to it now, Don’t Blame Me could never have been a single. And I am rubbish at A&R.

[On reflection I don’t think we actually shouted at Chris]

EVERYDAY I DIE

WRITTEN BY GARY NUMAN

WHEN 1978

Originally sung by GARY NUMAN

Features Roland S-760 & JD-800, KORG MONO/POLY

SPOTIFY LINK

SPOTIFY LINK TO ORIGINAL

“…Your favourite trick was to touch me inside”  

Not ‘suck me inside’, as Gary wrote.

When Dubstar first played live, we included a couple of covers beyond St Swithin’s and Manic. Timeless Melody by The La’s survived for one tour, as did Everyday I Die, a song by Gary Numan that featured on his Tubeway Army album. A Numan fan since the age of ten, I thought it would be fun to try one out in Dubstar. Our version was inspired by the version included on Numan’s Living Ornaments 80 album. I’d programmed the opening synth riff into Cubase on the Atari ST and switched on the MIDI delay facility by accident. Suddenly all these notes were cascading out of the MIDI port and into the JD-800…it sounded awesome and survived in the released recording (you can hear it clearly from about one minute into the song). I recorded that back into Cubase somehow and sorted out the rest of the arrangement in an afternoon.

For reasons I don’t recall, we messed up the chorus whenever we played this live and on the recorded version too. Numan’s own version has a fabulous chord change on the phrase “Everyday I Die”, but we didn’t incorporate it, and didn’t even notice we’d missed it out. Consequently, it bugs the hell out of me when I hear it now. Although we did a reasonable version of Everyday I Die, and Gary liked it, I would have loved to have covered this Numan song instead. I think Sarah could have done serious justice to the lyric, and given that nearly everyone else on Random had chosen an old song I wish I’d recorded something current that proved I was a true Numanoid.

It hadn’t occurred to me until long after that we were covering two songs with references to masturbation. Sarah didn’t seem to mind, maybe she hadn’t noticed either?

IF IT ISN’T YOU

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN JANUARY 1991

WHERE Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland S-760& TR-909, Korg Mono/poly

“…doesn’t stop me thinking, that if it isn’t you…?”  

Then who? The first song I wrote using the Roland W-30 sampler. It was written around a sample from Durutti Column’s LC album that I’d slowed down and thrown my TR-909 under. I’d bought the drum machine for £100 from a second-hand guitar shop on Old Eldon Square and sold it a couple of years later for £300. Market price today? Around £5000. Damn…I have a t-shirt of it now which suits me better. And who cares about money?

The Dubstar version was very different to the original that appeared on the Joan’s Gear cassette, where everything was slowed down, way down. The version on the Not So Manic Now single was the very first song we recorded in our studio in the Arts Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne. Rent was £20 a week for two enormous rooms above the Star Inn on Westgate Road. No heating though.

Song No.9

WRITTEN BY STEVE HILLIER

WHEN January 1991, refined January 1995

Place written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE HILLIER

Features Roland S-760, Korg Mono/poly & M3R, EMU Drumulator

“…You can’t face me, I’m just your flatmate’s girlfriend, and Monday I’ll be gone”

Student life, another song inspired by real events. I’m particularly pleased with this lyric, every time I hear it I’m taken back to Otterburn Terrace in Jesmond, a shared house I stayed in with my girlfriend before moving north:

I came to this town, a weekend with my boyfriend, his final year away this time, but..

Remember how we sneaked around the last time?

And without a sound, we knew that New Year's just around the corner, somehow

I should be somebody's partner, but we know he's working late, a barman at the Union… and left me in the house…

You were there

Remember your alarm clock on his bedside and thinking we'd be heard?

No one came

Christmas seemed so far behind me, we know New Year couldn't be the same

You can't face me

I'm just your flatmate's girlfriend

And Monday I'll be gone , and until then

I won't touch you, I won't smile, I won't try,

You will laugh and be the same,

And I won't cry , because

New Year's going to be the same

Song No.9 was part of The Joans’ live set, although the Dubstar version was a significant update. The drums were supplied by my Drumulator drum machine in an overt homage to Robin Guthrie’s unique style of programming. There’s also a reference to Frazier Chorus’s Forgetful in the intro of this song. Their album Sue had been one of my favourites in my first year in Newcastle when the events set out in this song occurred.

This is one of the rare Dubstar songs that began life as a chord sequence, and I think you can tell. There are three distinct melodies that fit under the main sequence (the first you hear on the piano version above). They don’t work together, you have to hear them separately. So you begin with the string melody, then the vocal melody, then the dulcimer melody. I don’t often write like that, but it happened on this occasion because I wanted to refine this song from The Joans’ live set to fit into the Dubstar set. In its original incarnation, it was mainly instrumental, with a middle section where I would sing almost entirely unaccompanied. That’s the vocal melody you hear in the verse in the Dubstar version. But it wouldn’t make sense to have Sarah standing there on stage with nothing to do for four minutes, so I rewrote the song to include a lot more singing and an entirely new lyric. Trying to avoid Sarah having nothing to do onstage explains why on Make It Better there’s hardly a pause from the singing at all. Take a listen, there’s barely time to take a breath.

I am aware that I’ve enthused about so many of the songs in the Dubstar canon… and I’m going to do it again now. Not only do I think that Song No.9 is the best Dubstar song from the Disgraceful era, I think it’s one of the best songs I’ve written. It has everything that I love about music: A soaring melody, drama, and a lyric that is concerned with something real between two people. Something that actually happened. And when it’s over, you feel like you’ve been taken somewhere.

I even like the fact that it was tucked away on a B-Side so very few people ever heard it. Now everyone can hear the piano version.

STARFISH

WRITTEN BY Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris wilkie

WHEN October 1995

WHERE Arts Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne l

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760, Atari ST, Yamaha DX100

YOUTUBE LINK

“Korma man with trousers down”  

Probably the lowest quality ‘song’ Dubstar ever recorded, shame it ended up on our biggest selling single.

There probably was a good idea in there when we began, but by the time it was finished we’d lost ourselves in Viz Comic humour and too many late nights on Tyneside. This song is a tribute to going for a curry with a person we knew very well at the time. Unbelievable really.

Still, Starfish has a distinctive sound and I rather like that main melody. Kind of a James Bond theme, if Bond had come from Gateshead. The bass line in the final few bars is out of tune with the rest of the piece by one semitone because I hadn’t spotted that mistake in Cubase until after the song had been released. It’s the kind of attention to detail that you only get with a Dubstar b-side.

NOT SO FAST

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier & Chris Wilkie

WHEN AUGUST 1992

Where Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne

Originally sung by STEVE Hillier

Features Roland GP-16 & S-760, KORG MONO/POLY

YOUTUBE Link

“…not another Taurean”  

There was a trend in the 90s where ‘serious’ bands would use everyday phrases in their songs and titles. Maybe it was part of the whole Britpop faux authenticity thing?

By way of contrast, I was being obtuse, potentially sarcastic and referencing AR Kane’s song ‘What’s All This Then?’. Also, the title is a phrase that know-alls and intellectual show-offs use repeatedly: “you may think that, but actually…”. I often use that phrase, I like it.

Not So Fast made its debut on The Joans’ Gear cassette, where it was completely mangled as the original DAT recording corrupted in being transferred to the album. This version was more refined with samples of my (now sold) TR-909 doing the Dub Reggae drum beat at the end. I’m amazed to reflect on just how many songs were floating around in the first few years we were together. Looking through my old DATs and cassettes, there were dozens. Well over sixty, and I hadn’t really thought of myself as a writer at the time. Although there may have been a shortage of big hits towards the end, Dubstar was never short of songs. And the total count of Dubstar songs with ‘Not’ in the title? Three and a half, Not So Manic Now, Not Once Not Ever, Not So Fast and If It Isn’t You. And then there’s ‘Not you and it’s Not me’ in the chorus to Week In and Week Out.

You can read the full story behind Not So Fast here on the Dubstar Archive blog

the view from here

WRITTEN BY STEVE Hillier

WHEN February 1996

WHERE Wolverhampton CIVIC Hall

Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood

Features Roland S-760 & Roland JD-800

“…I was lost a long time”  

It was during the third Dubstar UK tour, just after Manic came out. Things were truly exciting. I was standing behind my keyboard setup waiting for Paul (Wadsworth, our drummer), Chris and Sarah to show up for the sound check. I played some chords on the JD-800 using a string sound that I’d modelled on the Polymoog Vox Humana that’s all over Gary Numan’s Pleasure Principle album. I was struck by the size of the room we’d sold out, how hundreds had paid money to come and see a band who’d played only a handful of shows. The opening melody just appeared out of nowhere…and it all made sense, look at the view from here, this was not just the next step, it was real. It’s a theme I’ve returned to regularly, the idea of facing the future, like the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich.

The version on Goodbye has more movement in it, a lot more everything, yet I enjoy the direct simplicity of this B-side version and the piano version. It’s a tune written in a flash of inspiration during a sound check and then refined on a JD-800, some ADATs, an ATARI ST and some samplers…that was the spirit of the Disgraceful era for me.