How can music respond to something as devastating as the London bombing? It is a question that has been weighing on my mind. Somehow, without quite intending it, I have stumbled into a response of my own. This week, my musical alter-ego The Ghost Who Walks releases a download single with proceeds going to charity to help victims and their families. The song is addressed to terrorists, posed as a series of hard questions about why they would attack fellow human beings they have never met. It is called ‘People I Don’t Know Are Trying To Kill Me’. With individuals throughout the music business rallying around to help, the song was written, recorded, mixed, mastered and released in the space of two weeks.
It really started with Live 8. As a rock critic, so much of what I do involves engaging with trivia, I found myself caught up in Bob Geldof’s dream that music can actually make a difference. I went to Edinburgh to march for Make Poverty History. The concert in Murrayfield stadium on Wednesday 6 July was a joyous, celebratory experience, more like an after-show party than a political rally. It felt like the work had been done. And then I woke up on Thursday morning and switched on my hotel television. Like everyone in the UK, I had to come to terms with an awful new reality. Live 8 was old news already. It felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of it.
I called my family and friends in London to make sure everyone was alright, then made my way back to the city that has been my home for 22 years. I am an Irishman in London but I am not an alien - after all these years I feel part of the fabric of this place, a vast city teeming with multicultural activity. Not unusually, there was a song going around my head. It was something I started writing months before, after reading headlines about the terrorist threat to London. I bashed it out in rough form on an acoustic guitar to Bono one night and he became very animated. “This is a song that needs to be heard now,” he insisted. So finally, when I got back to London on Thursday night, I finished it. I picked up a guitar and verses just poured out. “And when I’m turned to dust, will Allah or Jesus claim me? / And will the God of love welcome up above those who would maim me? / Can’t you hear the crying in the streets? Broken glass beneath your feet? Children and mothers weep to shame thee / I live in a world where people I don’t know are trying to kill me".
I am not a rock star who commands the world’s attention, just a music journalist with a sideline as an obscure recording artist. I wasn’t sure what to do next, but I felt Bono was right when he insisted it was a song whose time had come. It wasn’t exactly the ideal time for him to record it, however, and I couldn’t even bring myself to ask. He was still in Edinburgh on his quest to end extreme poverty, after which he was about to have his first break with his family in six months. So I took a deep breath and started calling other people I knew in the business. I thought of Bob Geldof and the phone book with which he set up Live Aid. My relationship with pop stars might not be as intimate as his but after 25 years as a rock critic with Hot Press and then The Daily Telegraph, I do have a lot of numbers in my little black book.
I called managers, record company people, PRs, musicians. The response was encouraging. I got the sense that, in the terrible void left by the bombing, people were eager for some active way to respond. They wanted to hear the song, naturally, so on Saturday night I bashed out a rough demo on a computer in a friend’s living room. It was raw and sketchy, but I sent it out to a few contacts. On Monday morning, Endeavour records said they would release it as a single (they were the first to offer, but not the last). The deal was done over the phone, a gentleman’s agreement that we would get it out as quickly as possible and give the proceeds to charity. By the afternoon, Universal distribution said they would make it available as a download single through all the usual internet outlets.
In my naiveté I thought that this would be an instantaneous process, allowing for a suitably rapid response, a kind of bulletin board pop single. After all, the beauty of the internet is its virtuality: there is no need to press hard copies, print sleeves and distribute to shops, just put a digital Mp3 online. I soon learned that four to six weeks would be considered a quick turnaround. I contrived a meeting with the head of iTunes in Europe, pointing out to her that when Paul McCartney and U2 performed ‘Sergeant Pepper’ at Live 8, a download single was available the same day. “Do you know how long that took to set up beforehand?” she said. “There were almost three months of intense negotiations.”
“Well,” I said, “Now you know how to do it, it should be a lot easier this time.”
It was amazing to me how quickly people volunteered their services. By Tuesday, I had top PRs, pluggers and marketing companies involved, even though it still hadn’t been decided who was going to sing on the record. I was calling London-based pop stars (or more usually their PAs and managers) with the vague idea that every line could be delivered by a different vocalist although I would have settled for a duet between any two people the public actually might recognise. It soon became apparent that the cream of the pop world had dispersed on holiday or on tour following Live8. A couple of household names did express an interest but could not commit immediately. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. I was offered recording time by Map Music. David Gray said I could mix in his studio, which would be free on the weekend. Jon Astley, perhaps this country’s top mastering expert, said he would put the final polish on it, but he was packing up his equipment on Sunday afternoon for a lengthy job elsewhere. Gary Farrow, a music industry heavyweight who runs his own PR company, The Corporation, said to me: “It’s going to take a month to get a bunch of celebrities together to sing this and by then the moment will have passed. You should do it yourself.” This was advice I was receiving from all corners. It was the song that was important, not the singer.
And so, on Thursday, I found myself in the studio with a makeshift band gathered around Paul McCartney’s brilliant musical director Wix Wickens, who took a break from rehearsals for a forthcoming world tour to come and play keyboards. We still didn’t have a drummer though, which was a bit of a concern. Flicking through my phonebook, I spotted the name Jon Moss, an ‘80s pin-up with Culture Club. I called and explained the situation. “I’m there,” said Jon. And indeed he was, pulling up at the studio in a compact car from the boot of which he hauled the smallest drum kit I have ever seen. He must have seen the looks on our faces. “Don’t believe anyone who tells you size matters,” he cracked. The kit sounded fantastic and he nailed the drum part in just four takes.
This was the smoothest and most focused recording session I have ever been involved in. Everyone felt the weight of the issues and was determined to give their best. “I’m glad we can do something like this,” said backing singer Margo Buchanan. “It gives you a place to put all your emotions.” It is not uncommon for rock bands to spend two years making an album, and two months making a single. We spent two days. I woke up on the studio couch at 3.30 am on Saturday morning to discover the producer and engineer gravely debating the decibel level of the bass drum. I said, “It sounds fine to me.” And we were finished.
Of course, in every other sense we were just starting. I have always been slightly mocking when pop stars complain about their over-scheduled lives, yet I have barely paused for breath in the last week. Guitar in one hand, mobile phone in the other, I am bouncing from breakfast television to late night radio and all media stops in-between. And unlike most pop stars, I don’t have an army of assistants at my beck and call (after two nights without sleep, I am starting to feel the same way as Mariah Carey about the importance of Hair and Makeup). It has been a steep learning curve, and perhaps one that all rock critics might benefit from.
Two weeks ago I was told it was impossible to make a single available online so quickly. Last Monday that assessment was revised to unlikely. By mid-week I heard that the head of iTunes Europe had said, “We are going to do everything in our power to do the right thing by this record.” It doesn’t exactly hurt your cause when the world’s biggest rock star offers unqualified support and I know he has been putting in calls in the background, helping this venture move along. “I love this song,” Bono told me. “It does what songs are supposed to, it expresses something that is in the air that people can’t quite articulate.”
I have never been involved in anything which inspired such almost unquestioning support. Perhaps, like me, people want to believe that music can still make a difference and all that hope and optimism stirred by Live8 wasn’t completely blown away by a bunch of murderous terrorists.
'People I Don’t Know Are Trying To Kill Me' by The Ghost Who Walks on Endeavour can be downloaded from iTunes, Napster, msn, tiscali, mycoke music, HMV, Virgin downloads and all other reputable download services. Profits from the single will go to victims of the London bombing and their families through the London United fund, overseen by the Mayor of London and the Red Cross.