I Lost A Friend
Written by Steve Hillier
Date written January 2000
Place written Hove, East Sussex
Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland Juno-106, Korg Prophecy
SPOTIFY LINK
“I’ll never see him again except in memory of someone good”I left Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne in March 1997. I felt as if I’d done everything I could on Tyneside, I’d had two significant and long lasting relationships, both now ended. I’d DJed everywhere from Luckies Pub to the Riverside, performed at pretty much every night club and worked at both Universities. I’d formed a music act and we were doing well. It was time to move on, and I had a choice: London for the sake of work, or Brighton for the sake of my happiness. I chose the latter. I’ve not regretted the move once.
But I didn't leave Jesmond completely. I returned half a dozen times even before we made Make It Better back at the Arts Centre, trying to find…something. A pilgrimage, an inability to let go? These were not happy occasions, I’d alight at Central Station and pull up my hoodie or pull down a baseball cap in case I bumped into someone I knew. Paradoxically I’d hang out in the bars later that day hoping to bump into someone, anyone I knew from the old days. I think I spent more time in the Forth Hotel after leaving Newcastle than I did when I lived there.
I’m not sure exactly when it was, but one cold winter’s morning in 1998 I was walking around Newcastle city centre and into the library, just behind the HMV records that we’d opened two years earlier. I wanted to speak to my ex-girlfriend, I had no idea how to reach her. I had an address but couldn’t bring myself to simply turn up unannounced… I needed a telephone number. So ‘I searched the phone book’…nothing. More broken-hearted than depressed, I spent the rest of the day wandering around the city searching for evidence of my past. Anything that would validate the decade I’d spent on Tyneside in the rain. It’s peculiar, but now I have spent more than double the time living in Brighton than in Newcastle, I have more memories of heading north to find my past than of the past that I actually lived up there.
I Lost A Friend is that lonely day in song form, one of my favourite self-penned songs. This is what Dubstar was about, not breakbeats and rock guitars… a dagger through the heart and a melody through the head. There are two versions of this song, the I (Friday Night) B-Side and the ‘version’, which is stripped right back and loses the Smiths-style DMX drum machine for something more sympathetic to the song. I prefer that one.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Vini (Unchained Monologue)
Written by Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie
Date written March 1987, January 1994, Refined March 1997
Place written Welling, South London & Jesmond, Newcastle
Released June 1997
Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760, Roland JV-1080
“I’ve been hurt again” ‘Unchained Monologue’ was initially entitled ‘Vini’ and inspired by the Durutti Column and Imperfect List by Big Hard Excellent Fish. Twenty two years later my wife would perform Imperfect List at a Feminist Swearing Night in a pub in Brighton for the Finnish Institute. Life eh?
There are two main accompanying parts in this tune, one written on piano by me when I was at school played on the JV-1080, another from Chris. It’s the original piano composition which predated ‘Unchained Monologue’ that you can hear on this new recording. It had knocked around as a demo for The Joans for years but I could never quite get a vocal melody for it. Maybe there were too many notes going on already? So I decided not to write a melody. I took inspiration from Imperfect List and wrote a monologue translating what people say and what they mean. There was a section of the song where I’d not written anything, I’d run of things to say so Sarah filled in with ‘that noise in the background is only the TV’ and a few other lines. There’s a sampled drum fill on this track that rears its disgusting head again on ‘Rise To The Top’, a song on Make It Better. I have no idea what it’s from, I found it on Jungle tape I’d bought in Camden Market while waiting for Goodbye to be mixed at RAK. Sounds terrific.
I have mixed feelings about ‘Unchained Monologue’ now. As a writer in his early twenties, doing a dream pop version of Smiley Culture’s Cockney Translator seemed like a great idea. Now it feels alittle trite. Every word was true though, I meant it at the time and that’s what ultimately matters. And your tastes change. It’s handy to be reminded that trying to recreate the person you were when you were young-and-foolish is something only the old-and-foolish should attempt.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
I Won't Forget You (Bow Wow Now)
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written January 1996
Place Written 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 gave writers an opportunity to say something they felt needed to be said without the pressure of writing a ‘hit’. There were no expectations, you could write whatever you wanted.
They hold a unique role in the development of a 20th Century act and for a fan’s relationship with their heroes too. 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 connections 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 heart break…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 on 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.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
So Say We All
Songwriter Steve Hillier
Date Written September 2010
Place Written Christianhavn, Copenhagen
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Yamaha CP-70B, Korg MS20, Korg MONO/POLY
“All that we leave behind”This work is my proudest moment as a songwriter on the entire Dubstar journey.
So Say We All is the sound of acceptance and unity. If the song ‘United States of Being’ from four years previously was an explosion of glorious intent, So Say We All is the moment where you sit back and reflect on where that unity has taken you, what you have learned about yourself.
It was written on a walk into central Copenhagen after a party at Solveig’s place in Christianhavn. There was something about the Nordic air, the view of the canals, my ongoing love affair with Scandinavia (then in its fifteenth year), the proximity to Christiania, my hangover...the lyric and melody came to me in an instant:
“All that I was meant to be
Every way that time has changed me
All that I was meant to do
Every word I said that was not true
And all that we leave behind, all we resign
Like a child in my arms is
All that we leave behind, it…
Crumbles to dust
And sand in my hands
And drifts away
But it stays
While you learn to live again”
I sang it into my phone and brought it to the Dubstar demo sessions at Gavin’s studio ‘Base HQ’ in Newcastle later that month. A classic Dubstar song was born. And through the long crescendo coda, or Danish Ending as I like to call them, I mixed in vocal snippets from all of the other songs that were destined to be on this second attempt at a finished album. It was a direct and clear homage to Looking Glass by The La’s, one of the songs that had brought myself, Chris and Paul Wadsworth together all those years previously. It felt right.
If ever there was a song I’d written that worked exactly as I’d wanted from start to finish, it’s So Say We All. I put it next to Stars, Song No.9, I Lost A Friend, In The End and Manic… these are the finest Dubstar songs of them all.
We will not hear their like again.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
A view of Christianhavn from the spot where So Say We All was written.
The Self Same Thing
Songwriter Steve Hillier
Date Written April 1998
Place Written Hove, Sussex
Released When June 2000
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“We’ve an equal stake in all we’ve planned”The Self Same Thing was the first song of the new Dubstar era in Hove, Sussex.
When Dubstar played our ‘we’re back!’ gig in 2013 at The Lexington in London, this was the song I most wanted to redo the arrangement for. Although the chunky guitar chords made sense when I thought we could be the English Cardigans, fifteen years later they felt dated, an ambition from another time. So I replaced the ‘ba ba ba ba’ vocals with synth bells and the bass line by a drone on a Moog Little Phatty. For the first time, it sounded like the song it should always have been.
The Self Same Thing was written in the early Spring of 1998 as an attempt to cheer up my girlfriend, now wife, who was hating her first job after leaving university. It’s an expression of solidarity between two people, between two sexes… and a musical way of stating my belief that men and women have more in common than separates us. We are the same, just about.
I left the act before this song was released as the title track on The Self Same Thing EP, the final Dubstar record. On returning from holiday in Mexico, I met Chris at a coffee shop in Belsize Park, just around the corner from where he and Sarah shared a flat. I’d spent a whole afternoon running into waves that were beating the shore at Cancun, trying to work out if Dubstar was still worth pursuing. For all the dramas over the past couple of years and the changes I could see coming in the music industry and my own life… I’d decided ‘no’. I told Chris I was off. Even though I knew I was doing the right thing, there was a gnawing sense of unfinished business, Dubstar had more to say. That feeling persisted for ten years and led to the writing of another fifty songs. So I was probably correct.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
No More Talk
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written April 1987
Place Written Welling, South London
Released When July 1997
Originally Sung By Steve Hillier
FeatureS Roland S-760, Yamaha DX100, Novation Bass Station
Spotify Link
“Let the feelings out and take the pain away”it’s a funny thing, I have stronger memories of writing this song in the 80s as a teenager than completing it in the 90s as a published songwriter.
I hated education, which is ironic given how I’ve been a part time University lecturer since 2004. No More Talk was the result of yet another depressing day in the Sixth Form at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. After the 51 bus home I would come home and erase the stink in my mind by immediately playing the piano, the only way my parents would know I was in the house. Although I could read music, I was never that good at it, certainly not a sight reader and having little patience to improve I would improvise melodies and write tunes of my own so I had something to play. No More Talk was one of these melodies.
As the demo sessions for what would become Goodbye were being completed, I was getting concerned. Dubstar needed another obvious single (Girlfriend and Cathedral Park were clear contenders right from the start), something that felt like it could be as big, potentially bigger than Stars. So I pulled out this nine year old melody and wrote new words reflecting the sheer frustration I was feeling. it became the lead single for the second album.
The release of No More Talk also marks the moment when my fears that Dubstar’s rise was over were realised. We were waiting outside BBC television centre to be called in for our appearance on the National Lottery. Jo Power from Food Records came over with the news that No More Talk was number 20 in the midweek charts. That sounds terrific now, but I knew this was a disappointment for everyone, we needed to be in the top ten. We should have been in the top ten. I was gutted, so I distracted myself by shuffling and grinning like a lunatic all the way through the biggest TV performance of our careers.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Just A Girl
Written by Sarah Blackwood, Steve Hillier & Chris Wilkie
Date Written April 1984 & March 1994
Place Written Welling, London, Jesmond & Benton, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When October 1995
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760, Yamaha TX81z, Korg Mono/Poly
Spotify Link
“I’m a person who thinks, but you hope I’ll forget if you ply me with drink”Just A Girl is a combination of a melody and chord sequence I’d written for my O’Level music exam 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 it’s Just A Girl that 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. Purely 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 as I was working out what to play that this is not the kind of melody I write, these are not my words…sure, the synth parts and the semi-chromatic chord sequence came from me, 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, even retro sounding. Another happy accident from 1994.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
We're Great
Written by Steve Hillier
Date written September 2006
Place written Hove, Sussex
Originally sung by Steve Hillier
Featured instruments Yamaha CP-70B
“We're not good, we're great"The Yamaha CP-70B changed my life, in the middle of the naughties this was my instrument.
I’d fallen in love with the sound of this piano working with Keane in 2002. A hybrid between a piano and an electric guitar, it looks like a box made of Tolex and sounds like nothing else. The Keane boys made it theirs on their first two albums, and pretty much have the final say on what you can do with this electric grand.
I bought mine from Gary Numan in 2006. He’d had it stored away in his garage for decades, and when I came to take a look, it stank of mould and neglect. Truly. But it was a wonderful moment…two keyboard fanatics setting up an ageing bit of kit on a driveway in Sussex, a piano that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades…and it worked perfectly. No need to remind me to smile eh?
Many of the Dubstar recordings from this era are dominated by the sound of the CP-70B, with We’re Great being a prime example. You can bash away for hours on this instrument, and as long as you have the sustain pedal down you’ll probably end up with something worth listening to. We’re Great is another example of my writing inspired by the work of Vini Reilly. He’d released what would be his best album in Keep Breathing and was an inspiration on many levels, that an artist could release so many records and yet still have his best work within him almost thirty years into his career.
This song was completed between Chris and I but Sarah never managed to sing the vocals. It was abandoned after the whole Client kerfuffle, so the only surviving recording has me on vocals, just like The Joans. I imagined it could be the opening song on the new album. Sadly not.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Swansong
Written by Steve Hillier
Date written February 1999
Place written Hove, Sussex
Released When August 2000
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760, Roland VG-8
Spotify Link
“Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end” Mary Hopkins, Those Were The Days And so we arrive at Swansong, the final song Dubstar would officially release on an album. This is the sound of the end, two people who despise each other and will separate forever. It’s spiteful, it’s bitter, and it’s exactly what I wanted say. This was the last act of an act that began as a stoned daydream to become a 4AD records artist… but instead had taken three people around the world on a crazy and rather wonderful escapade. Not a bad swap really.
And with a farewell reference to the 4AD dream, there’s a nod to the Cocteau Twins as this song fades out. I had to get this in, they were the reason Dubstar existed.
Swansong features a wall of guitar from Chris right at the very end. We created this by him playing the same part in various places on the neck of his Fender and using the Roland VG-8 to ‘retune’ his strings. Sounds tremendous, and we returned to this idea a couple of times on the United State of Being sessions too.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
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: