Common Things Lyric Blog
These blogs again, eh! I would say that they are back by popular demand but about 20 people read the last lot so maybe just by demand and/or my need to let off steam a bit.
Also, they are good for Mickey and Matt as half the time I don’t think they know what I am going on about – although Mickey definitely doesn’t read them, but if he did he would moan that I should have told him all this BEFORE we started recording the song so he would have a better idea of what was going on haha….
Anyway…
Common Things: me and Mickey (as usual) wrote this one in his garage after Mickey had been playing this riff over and over for about three weeks (it came to him in a dream I think) then we kind of adapted it into the chorus but had real problems coming up with the verses for ages.
I think what helped is that the chorus line paints a real picture of what the verses should be about – like with Jennifer or Joanna. It was just a case of filling in the bits of the story which fed from the idea of a couple being satisfied with just the simple things.
I suppose it is semi-autobiographical up to a point as I am quite a simple person and take more from the gaps than the need to fill them.. I’d like to think Jo keeps an atlas under the mattress when I am away but to be honest I am more than likely only in Swindon or somewhere so I doubt she bothers. And as for the coldsore thing well………
That line is actually from a really old song we had that went
“everyday she’s medically giving me coldsores
I’ve a reprieve because in two weeks I’ll be in Walsall,
she will still be lying on a carpet, thinking how could I have ever doubted him,
And the truth that lies within his skin”
But didn’t scan.
I wanted to get a mention of the arboretum in for Nathan as well, but it didn’t happen.
The song meandered quite a bit until we started playing about with it in a room with Matt Saxon and Nathan – Nathan’s hi hats are tremendous so that drove the bass line especially and we wrote the “geographical section” after getting rid of a bit that ripped off the oobeedoobbeeeedoobeees of Jennifer BUT the bit that brought it all together and made it sound finished was the percussion part that Mickey fashioned from me (badly) playing a combination of a djembe, a bottle, a bike pump and a bit snapped off an old snare drum….
We also recorded it and did the whole tracking for the album in an unfinished house in the middle of a farm which was deserted except for this old bloke called Percy who kept wondering into the studio. He used to be in a band years ago but now was just there as a voluntary farm hand and was telling us about this song called “OOOOH THE DIRTY DANCE” that he’d written haha. It was class because you would be in the middle of a take and just look up and there would be Percy just standing in a door way going “HOW’S IT GOING THEN?”. This would have been the weirdest part of the process if it wasn’t for a 10pm sound curfew agreed with our next door neighbour Steve Staunton who knocked on the door one night….
When she first gave me coldsores
On a park bench in Walsall
I remember the feeling
As the last of the light
Dripped with might
From the palms of the evening
Like a psalm on the ceiling
Of her home, of her home
I love those common things I do with her
TV at six o’clock is de rigueur
Don’t need to fall apart to works of art
Don’t speak no Portuguese in the dark
And we can’t be romantic
Cos we don’t live in France yet
Get our kicks from the frantic
Little movements of feet
As I gallivant she keeps an atlas
Sleeping under the mattress
So I’m home, so I’m home
Don’t need to run along to Chittagong
Don’t need to get to Delhi or Geelong
Don’t need to throw a coin into a fountain
Don’t need to digress in the Spanish Mountains
Don’t need to trek from Santander to Bilbao
When I’ve got this better way to find out how
Cos I love those common things,
I love those common things,
I love those common things,
I love those common things.