00:18Genesis always was a hard act to follow, and I've always been aware of that. I think for all the guys in the band, that's been the case.
00:27Whether you have individual hits or whatever, there's always that sort of, it's a bit like the mothership, isn't it?
00:33When I write a song, I think, would this have passed muster with the other guys?
00:38Would Phil have liked it rhythmically? Would Tony have liked it harmonically?
00:43Would it have worked for Mike? Would it have worked with Pete lyrically?
00:48And you have all of that, but at the same time, of course, you want to do your own thing.
00:54And, you know, I just thought, yeah, I've really got to push the envelope harmonically with this.
01:00You know, it's got to be as good as some of those things that I've listened to.
01:03It's got to be as good as Grieg. It's got to be as good as Tchaikovsky.
01:08You know, it's got to be as good as that first day when I worked with Phil in the rehearsal room with the band.
01:14He started playing me something. I said, sounds fantastic. And he said, oh, that's Ringo Starr's drum solo off of, what's the one, Abbey Road.
01:25And I always remembered that. And I thought, you know, I want to do something like that.
01:28That's a little bit like Keith Moon, isn't it? You know, so it's got the bass drum going, but it's like it's like doing fills all around that.
01:35So we had the Wolves at the beginning singing away and the frozen reverb note of that.
01:41So they hit a seventh and then then the drums come in and then it's band kicking in and the orchestra and choir and everything.
01:51and everything.
02:21Every time I've done an album, I've always thought, well, I need to get orchestral perspectives in here, but how do we enlarge everything?
02:29And even if you've got a real orchestra on it or you've got several people tracked up, it's quite hard to not have the orchestra impoverished by the group because groups make a big noise.
02:43But there's this area of marcato stuff where they're playing with the edge of the bow and reinforcing some of the bass things with brass so that it's not just the sort of the kind of definition of bass end that when you get a great bass player with a really extraordinary sound, like Chris Squire, who's on the album.
03:09There's this thing that orchestras, they have a more amorphous bass end.
03:16It's not dependent on great speakers and sharp definition.
03:21It's more than that.
03:23So I wanted to get that idea of infinite bass.
03:28So we stacked up a lot of that, you know, we have more than one thing playing basses, you know.
03:33I mean, I think on one track we had about 20 different things all doing bass.
03:39There's a lot of things on it that shouldn't really work.
03:42Orchestras with rock groups shouldn't really work, you know, because they're not supposed to be as percussing.
03:48And I wanted it to sound like an expanded rock band, but not just an expanded rock band that sounded like it had an orchestra with it, but also with world music instruments as well.
03:59So the Arabian ud, the didgeridoo, the deduk, the tar from Azerbaijan, all these various things that help to expand it a bit, you know.
04:08So that's the way I found it a bit, you know.
04:38Working with these other instruments that I'm not familiar with, working with Malik Mansirov,
04:48who plays the tar, the tar, small stringed instrument with sympathetic strings, same
04:55family of instruments as the guitar and the sitar.
05:00And Malik from Azerbaijan, where 50% of the people are still nomadic, I believe, he's
05:07a little bit like, he's got the speed of John McLaughlin and, in a way, the mysticism of
05:13Ravi Shankar, he's incredible.
05:18And of course, the other instruments that might be less familiar to people, the Arabian
05:23Ud, I bought that in London, it's a fretless lute, I learned to play it a little bit, I'm
05:30not the level of virtuoso on it that Malik is on the tar, but I took some things from
05:37him, the idea of playing on one string, more things on one string than you would normally
05:42do in sliding and so on, Dust and Dreams, that kicks off.
05:48Some of these world instruments, they often set the scene before the songs start.
05:54It's almost as if when Malik is playing on the beginning of Warflight, you've got almost
06:00like the flickering flames of a campfire, you know, the kind of music that they might have
06:06played at one time when they just sat around to entertain themselves.
06:10And I wanted to get an aspect of that, so, a little bit like different relay teams, so
06:14you've got the world music musicians, you've got the aspect of folk songs, so, you know,
06:22at times I wanted to build back as far as Peter, Paul and Mary, I wanted to have that, but
06:29then I wanted to have rock as well, you know, the edge of that, and then whatever orchestra
06:33could do on top of that, it's my proudest moment, to be honest, you know, this album.
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