Cathedral Park
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written January 1991, Refined in 1993
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When August 1997
Originally Sung By Steve Hillier
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“Her words are lame, like her life”It was a January day in Jesmond 1991, and I was listening to my grey promo CD of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’. There was a floppy disk on a tall pile next to the Roland W-30 sampler. On the label was written three words: ’potential number one’. I loaded it up, unsure what I would find. It was a simple melody, a chorus and I’d managed to include some text…’it feels like I’m living without you’. Could it be a number one? Would it?
My optimism was misplaced, Cathedral Park is the only Dubstar single, in fact the only Dubstar release* that failed to make the UK Top 40. Released on the week after Diana Princess of Wales died, there was simply no way the jolliest song we had recorded was going to be on the radio and TV. At any other time it might have, It did reach number 41 after all. Neneh Cherry and Youssou N'Dour took our place on the radio playlists with Seven Seconds. Now that’s a potential number one.
Cathedral Park was named after the Red House Painters song ‘Grace Cathedral Park’, and although that winning chorus melody was another written staring out of my window at the rain, the lyric was inspired by an afternoon I’d spent in Jesmond Dene years later, reflecting on the recent demise of my first serious relationship. And when I say reflecting, I mean being thoroughly miserable and trying to make sense of it all as Mark Kozelek sang about his own relationship woes. Red House Painters helped me through a difficult time. I’d like to think I paid them back by repeatedly playing their CDs to everyone I knew in 1993.
Sarah did a superb job of singing this song, especially as like so many on Goodbye the melody wasn’t written with a vocalist in mind, at least not a human vocalist. It sounds fabulous on a piano, and the huge leaps in pitch make sense when all you have to do is hit the right keys. But hitting the right note when you’re jumping nearly an octave in the middle of a phrase is asking too much. We never played this song live.
It was the experience of writing the songs for the Goodbye album that made me change my approach to vocal melody writing. Until this point, and simply by chance, writing melodies on piano had translated perfectly for mine and Sarah’s voices. But Cathedral Park sounded strange, strained, and definitely did not fit in with the ‘back to basics’ approach of melody writing that was being used by the Britpop pack. Consequently I sang all the melodies on Make It Better as I wrote them.
And as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Highasakite, and noticing they use huge leaps in pitch in their choruses. They also seem to use a lot of Melodyne to achieve this. Flamboyant melodies are back.
*that qualified for the charts
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Disgraceful
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written September 1992
Place Written Gosforth, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When October 1995
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 (a different one), 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, on the entire debut album 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 starting dancing 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.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Hit
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written April 2011
Place Written Hove, Sussex
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland Jupiter-6 & System-100M, Yamaha CP-70B
“I made you”
I didn’t have much to write about in my own life in 2011. Things were pretty solid, I was about to move house, I’d reduced the amount of work I was doing outside of making music to nearly nothing, the second Dubstar reformation was drifting along, so…
I wrote about Sarah. I’d done this before, notably on I’m Conscious Of Myself, but this time felt different. There was plenty to write about, plenty to say. And it felt important to say it.
Hit was written at the very tail end of me working as a pro-writer, the Scandinavian influences on the music are clear and present for all to hear. I’d been listening to the electronic pop emerging from Eastern Europe and incorporated that into the arrangement. There’s also an Ultravox reference in the melody and vocals. I’d been a huge fan of the band in both incarnations and finally got to meet Midge Ure in Copenhagen last year. Strange it’s only now in 2020 that I can hear their influence on my writing for Dubstar loudly and clearly.
There are several versions of Hit. The Tim Mason version, my original demo and a further refinement I’d made in 2013 to update the sounds a bit. Plus I wanted a reason to use my Roland Jupiter-6 (for the last time, sadly) and Roland System-100M. Sounded awesome. I’m confident this song will see the dance floor in some form one day, if not through Dubstar.
When The World Knows Your Name
The writer's notes for When The World Knows Your Name, an album track recorded by Dubstar in 1998. Includes a new piano version by Stephen Hillier
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written AUGUST 1998
Place Written Hove, East Sussex
Released When JUNE 2000
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“Let’s make the memories that dreamers only claim”I was acutely aware that every new friend I was making in Brighton in 1998 either knew nothing about me at all, or that I was regularly on the TV with my pop act. An odd situation, hence the title.
‘When The World Knows Your Name’ was inspired by walking with a friend down Lansdowne Place in Hove to VAT’s bar, a dingy and fantastic late night drinking den under the Star of Brunswick pub (now long gone, but next to BIMM where I teach songwriting). The song is ‘what if?’, like when Mark Corrigan in Peep Show meets someone new and wonders ‘what if you’re the one?’ in nearly every episode. What if we, you and me, got together? What if we got together tonight? What if we did all those things that we’d talked about…right now? But the song is the realisation that it’s not going to happen, the disappointment and acceptance. Sometimes the thought of what you could have done is better than the memory of what you actually did.
There are two released versions of this song, one recorded at the Arts Centre with Spike and the demo, recorded in one take back at my flat during the Make It Better demo sessions. I’m not a fan of the version on the album so when EMI released a best of Dubstar I insisted they used the demo instead. They happily agreed, so when you want to hear the vocal version this is the version to play. Sarah sings the song perfectly and in one take, a fact that I hope she’s proud of.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Say The Worst Thing First
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written September 1996
Place Written Arts Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When July 1997
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760, Roland JD-800
Spotify Link
“…my words were knives that broke our lives”I broke up with my girlfriend after Dubstar headlined the NME tent at Reading Festival in 1996. I spent the next day wandering around Pink Lane, alternating between the The Forth Hotel bar and our studio in the Arts Centre trying to work out what on earth I was going to do next (a familiar feeling). On that long day drinking Guinness in the Forth Hotel I made a decision. Inspired by Ewan McGregor’s monologue in Trainspotting, I decided I would choose life… I chose to be happy rather than be a suffering artist. I chose that I wouldn’t feel this bereft, that I was such failure at relationships ever again. Next time would be the right time, next time would be the last time.
But like St Augustine before me, I had to do a little more suffering and drinking first.
I hadn’t appreciated until many years later how privileged I’d been at this moment. A broken hearted songwriter splits from long term partner and gets to metaphorically open his heart in songs that will be heard by thousands of people across the world. There are worse ways to recover from the end of a relationship, but few more self indulgent. I don’t regret writing this song, but I know I couldn’t write something like this now. It’s profoundly unfair. It overlooks the other person’s position in the situation in order to express just one person’s hurt.
So I wouldn’t be comfortable doing this in 2020, but I am torn. Isn’t this self indulgence exactly how artists have behaved down the ages, landing themselves in the middle of a situation involving loved ones…and then telling their own audience how they feel about it? I suppose a writer has to decide what’s more important, their art or their life. I chose the latter.
I love everything about this song except the version on Goodbye. I had too many things going on in the arrangement, like a collision of a hundred ideas for what should have been a stripped back ‘dagger through the heart’ Dubstar song. Still, the bridge with the instrumental mandolins, a reference to For Ever and Ever by Demis Roussos is my favourite moment on the whole album.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Anywhere
Songwriters Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie
Date Written November 1990, Revised In January 1994
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When October 1995
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 looking 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 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 in my mind for years. It’s impossible to predict when inspiration will hit to complete an old idea, but when it appears I feel compelled to run with it, no matter what else I may be working on. What I was doing when Anywhere reappeared was DJing at Planet Earth nightclub in Newcastle. I wrote “I’ll be around…any time I’m free,” 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 rather smug. 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 I got away with it. And of course, persistination is now in common usage 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.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Window Pain
Songwriter Steve Hillier
Date Written February 2010
Place Written Hove, Sussex
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Yamaha CP-70B, Telemark, Moog Little Phatty
"You don't need to lay me down, I'm ok"The comeback single! That was the rest of the gang’s plan. And why not, it had a great chorus, a strong melody, meant something, you could dance to it, it had a minor Danish ending, and it sounded like Dubstar had woken up in the twenty first century. Finally.
And inevitably…
I’m not a big fan of Window Pain. I’ve had this feeling before. The one where you know something’s good but you’re not feeling it… your head says “yes” but your heart says “come back later”. This had happened with Stars, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. My inability to spot or even like a hit means I will never make an A&R person, and Andy Ross’s ability to spot one at a thousand paces is one of the reasons why he is one of the best. He came to the comeback show at The Lexington in 2013 and told me “that Window Pain song, the new one, sounds like a single”. Or he may have said hit. I’m not sure because I was too miserable by the end of that gig to listen to anyone. I know he was being positive, whatever he actually said.
And ultimately I think Andy was right. So did the others. Stephen Hague produced a version of this song and there was even a video made in a camp site in Dorset (in which I ended up being dressed as a gimp lying in a wood on a dark and cold November evening. Nope… me neither). But this piano version is the first time the song has been released in any form.
This original unreleased recording of the song features the debut of two modern analogue synths in my collection, Analogue Solutions Telemark and the Moog Little Phatty. I’d not bought synthesizer hardware in years, instead using software whenever I wanted something my collection couldn’t provide. Tom from Analogue Solutions had met Sarah at an event somewhere and given her the Telemark and Oberkorn sequencer to try out. She and Paul had not been able to make head nor tail of them, and that’s no surprise, you really need to know what you’re doing with modular gear. So I bought them off Tom and put them to work. The Moog was for the bass of course, but I sold it a few years later. I loved the look of the synth but never warmed to its sound. Sacrilege, but I did an A/B comparison with Native Instrument’s Monark and preferred the software Moog to the real thing.
I still use the Telemark though. It has a reputation for squeaks and squawks, but it also has a unique bottom end. It’s ideal for solid sub bass with a rounded edge, and it’s one of my three ‘go to’ synths for analogue bass (the others being the Korg MS-20 and Roland SE-02).
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
I (Friday Night)
I (FRIDAY NIGHT)
Songwriter Stephen Hillier
Date Written June 1998
Place Written Hove, Sussex
Released When June 2000
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“The smell of the trees on nights like these”It was supposed to be a joke, releasing a single with a one letter title, and a reference to A R Kane’s album of the same name. Only the coolest would get the reference, so that’s brilliant! Obviously the record company wasn’t going to go for that, how would anyone find it, stock it, promote it? So ‘I’ became 'I (Friday Night)’, the only song I’d written that uses parentheses in the title.
Something went slightly wrong in the writing of I, from the attempt to rhyme the word ‘time’ with itself on three occasions to the whimsical feel of the verses. Twenty years later, I (Friday Night) on Make It Better feels like a first draft of a song that I should have returned to later, and now have done. The chorus is a real belter though and was more suited to a slower ballad-style arrangement. But we were on our third album, we’d already recorded enough of those for an entire career. Also, a slow piano ballad was something I was specifically trying to avoid. We were aiming to be as successful as The Cardigans, not the Red House Painters.
‘I’ is a reflection on Jesmond and the relationship I’d left behind. It was written while looking out of my studio window in Hove, this time staring at the Sussex Downs rolling off towards the west and to the sea. 1998 was a difficult time for me, the Tyneside era was over and I felt homeless. Writing ‘I’ was the first opportunity I’d had to reflect on all that had happened since Dubstar began. And so the final Dubstar single represents the bitter sweetness of the optimism of being back in the South, and the sadness of leaving the place I’d spent my adulthood. Some days I feel the same way, even twenty years later.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
The View From Here
Songwriter Stephen Hillier
Date Written February 1996
Place Written Wolverhampton Town Hall
Released When June 1996
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760, Roland JD-800
Spotify Link
“…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.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now
Stars
Songwriter Stephen Hillier
Written February 1992
Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released June 1995
Originally Sung By Stephen Hillier
Features Roland W-30, Yamaha DX100
Spotify Link
“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 ‘Westworld’ 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 closer was a shock, the club had quickly come to define the mid-week music scene for me. 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 to dance to my choice of music. Walkers is where I met Chris, it’s where the Dubstar story began. When the news came in 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 just 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?
The song 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 is from 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 to have 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 radios across the world.
I know why people like it now. It’s grown on me too.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now: