Unlike most bands, who hit a writing rhythm - one side bringing their lyrics in while the other provides music - the composing balance in the Roses shifts with each song. At the centre of most arrangements, is John Squire, who also contributed many of the lyrics for Second Coming. This was a natural progression, according to Ian Brown, of Squire composing the lion's share of the music. "Words naturally follow when you're trying to get the music sorted," he says. According to Squire, "Ian and I had this spell where we were going away to write together. Invariably we ended up avoiding work, the two of us sitting over a tape recorder more or less doing anything we could to avoid having to get down to it."
As any band who have actually get round to making albums will tell you, your first one is the easiest - it represents the culmination of everything you've achieved and refined so far. Once these songs have all been used up, you invariably have to establish a new relationship and working pattern. The Roses clearly found this process difficult.
"It got to the point where it wasn't really a question of doing it when we felt like it anymore," says Squire. "The agenda was speeded up, we had to write songs. Originally I thought of doing a whole side of the album with a theme to it, segues and all. I imagined something like the second side of Abbey Road. The way that Ten Storey Love Song flows into Daybreak is about as close to that as I got."
With the writing impasse solved by Squire alone taking over, the songs began (as did The Who's under Pete Townshend's aegis) to adopt the guitarist's personal spin on life. "There's a lot of raw nerves on the album. I don't really understand why I do that. There's something embarrassing about the need to go through such public analysis. Some songs take on a life of their own, though, by which time it's too late to lose the original sentiment. It becomes part of it, so you go with it instead of rewriting the lyrics. Tears was like that."
Brown, meanwhile, is willing to admit that while the whole band were writing, the tracks that made it onto the album were the best. Reni bought Ian a guitar for his birthday and he is apparently a good strummer himself these days: "I've got about 20 songs half finished, just observations and that. I try and write stuff that's not specific so that people can try and work out their own meanings."
Mani: "John's phenomenal sometimes though. I don't know where he gets his juice from but when he gets in the swing he's a joy to be around and it's a pure pleasure being guided through songs by him. He operates very differently from the rest of us though. He's a lone wolf…… John fuckin' lives with his guitars, lives through his guitars, he goes to the bog with a guitar, he talks to 'em!"
Recorded at various 16-track demo studios, The Stones Mobile and at Rockfield in Monmouthshire, Second Coming took a mammoth 347 days of studio time to record. The bulk of the tracks were committed to tape at the Coach House Studio at Rockfield, famed for its 26x24' live area and custom Neve, 60-channel, flying-fader desk. Originally booked in for two weeks, intending to knock out the album as a quickie, the Roses effectively became permanent residents for the next year and a half!
Rockfield is also famed for its cache of old valve gear that includes original Neumann U67 valve mikes, stereo valve mikes, Urei valve compressors, and some much sought-after Neve valve EQ modules, similar to those used at Abbey Road for The Beatles' sessions. These were used to warm up guitars and fatten the bass. During their stay at the studio the band apparently managed to try just about every combination of mike possible on Squire's Mesa/Boogie and Fender Twin amps, eventually settling on a combination of Shure SM57, Sennheiser 421 and Neumann U67 valve mikes, all pointed directly at the cones and blended on the desk along with a small amount of room. Apart from a touch of compression from a DBX 160, the sounds went to tape flat in most cases, the band preferring to get the sound right at source. This was a policy that John Leckie had encouraged during the making of their debut album. Creative use was also made of the live room, which had a variable ambience and a maximum reflective delay of a whacking 3.2 seconds! This, more than anything else, is what gave the album its impressive feeling of size and space despite the many-layered overdubs of Squire's guitar.
When it came to recording the actual tracks that made up Second Coming, there seem to have been as many variations in approach as there were tracks. Ultimately, the band worked in whatever way suited them best at the time.
Squire maintains that the skittish recording method and the way he writes meant that the band never focused on any one song for very long. Parts would be added whenever he'd come up with a new guitar line, overdubs added and sculpted away until often the final guitar melody bore little relation to the original. The guitarist admits that he'd have liked to halt this perfectionist cycle and draw the line but when studio time is unlimited it's hard to know when something is really finished.
"We would slip onto something else all the time, then slip back and finish little bits off here and there. By Christmas 1993 I did a compilation tape of everything we had done and, in hindsight, I should have really thought about it hard, decided what was needed and knocked about four months off the recording time. I could have done a few less guitar takes - I am far too precious with my guitar parts for my own good. But you get into a frame of mind where you think, "It's been four years since the last album, why not make it five?"
So how did the tracks come about? Which are fleshed-out demos, which were first takes, which were live studio jams and which were assembled painstakingly from acoustic beginnings?
"My favourite track on the album at the moment is Tightrope," reveals Squire. "That was an acoustic jam made in the TV lounge of the place where we were staying. The vocals are Ian, Reni and me and it was like, "Okay, have we got it all worked out yet? Yes? Okay, let's roll it right now!" It's first take with some bass and drum overdubs. I really enjoyed the simplicity of that track, maybe that's why I like it so much compared to the rest - it was the least painful to make."
Daybreak, the itchy aggressive guitar and Hammond organ workout with echoes of Buddy Guy and '70s prog-funk, grew out of a studio jam. As it was being arranged and recorded by the band, Brown heard what they were doing, ran upstairs to the bedroom above the control room and wrote what the band rate as some of his finest lyrics.
It suited Brown ideally, as his preferred writing method is to initially ignore Squire's guitar, and instead take drum loops from the track, feel the rhythm of the loop and sing a melody over the top. Squire then listens to the vocal and adds the guitar overdubs, often completely changing the guitar melody to adapt it to Brown's vocal. It's a process that turns the conventional recording approach on its head. "I love Daybreak because it's a jam," says Brown, "but also because they used a section of it on Ski Sunday - with all the compression they use on TV it sounded great! Mind you, it was pretty weird hearing this chitlin' circuit jam set against pictures of these apres ski bimbos." Some observers have drawn parallels between Second Coming and the jam section at the end of I Am The Resurrection on the band's first album. "I'd agree," says Squire, "there was a conscious attempt to do that."
Reni: "John's very meticulous but at the same time he'll pile guitars onto a track like Groove Harder (the b-side of the Love Spreads 12") and it's a mess but it's one of the most exciting things we've ever done because it has atmosphere. All the best stuff we do comes when we capture the atmosphere and experiment, take risks. I Am The Resurrection, for example, started out as a reverse bass piss-take of Paul McCartney on Taxman. Mani used to play that riff every day, I'd come in and John would doodle some Fender over the top and we'd do it for a laugh at soundchecks. Finally we said, "Let's do it properly - this joke song actually sounds really good!"
As with the track Ride On (the b-side of Begging You) (it is actually the b-side of Ten Storey Love Song - Ed) the band can occasionally get things done incredibly fast. According to Mani, "we're the best band in the world for intros, endings and b-sides!" In this case, the whole thing was recorded and mixed inside four days, sonic clarity sacrificed in favour of that elusive vibe. Reni: "Technically that song was so-so but spiritually it was spot on and that was what we aimed for throughout the album. That's why Tightrope's on there the way it is."
Mani adds that the live vibe is what they spent so long searching for. "There was some bollocks going round that we hated each other and we played everything separately because of it. Bollocks! Almost everything on that record is live. That's the whole point of the album - feel."
This elusive vibe factor seems to be the only real constant throughout the recording. It's there on Your Star Will Shine, with its echoes of Pink Floyd's exquisite, lazy acoustic tracks from Meddle, and the frail harmonies of Tightrope and Daybreak. Yes they're rambling and loose, they don't have the focus of the band's debut but what they do have is a strange coherence of spirit, a genuine personality. John Squire: "Daybreak just happened, perfect from the beginning. We recorded it on a 16-track, Ian sang over it and it was pure, man. Ten minutes flat and it was done."
If only they'd all been that easy…….
John Squire's main guitar for the recording of Second Coming was his favourite sunburst '59 Gibson Les Paul Standard (see main picture). He also has a similar but newer LP which he uses for slide work. A newish pink Fender Strat also found its way onto the record via the many guitar overdubs. Squire then went through a classic selection of pedals and effects - an Echoplex delay, a Fuzz Face, an Electric Mistress, an original Tube Screamer, a Cry Baby wah and a Zoom distortion.
For amps, it's a similarly well-trusted policy. Squire's main amps are Mesa/Boogies and Fender Twins. The Boogies were used for much of the first sessions with John Leckie; the Twins were more favoured when work commenced with Simon Dawson. Squire's favourite vintage Fender Twin is hotwired by a simple retro-fit kit the guitarist found in California. According to Dawson: "It only costs about $50 and, I dunno, it bypasses something or other, and it makes it sound great!" (TGM understands it bypasses the roll-off filter, and provides a more direct line from the preamp gain stage to the power amp - Anorak Ed) Married to the '59 LP, this amp provided the main 'beef' for Second Coming. A new, but similar Fender Twin was occasionally involved for overdubs, as was a '60s Orange stack.
Mani's bass setup was no more complicated. His modified Rickenbacker El Dorado bass went through a Mesa/Boogie rig (an Ampeg stack was tried at Dawson's suggestion but rejected) with the occasional resort to a SansAmp tube combo simulator. For Tightrope, Mani overdubbed some (unspecified make) acoustic bass.
John and Mani dropped their bottom strings to D for Love Spreads (which, according to Dawson, also featured Squire's backup Les Paul) and the guitarist copped some authentic Nashville tuning for Your Star Will Shine….. Damn right! He got the blues…….
Back To part one