The Year We Were Born

Song Notes

• Tower - Wil: Arguably the best song H&V ever did; it was always fun to play, I thought the lyrics were good, the music was great and the recording was excellent. I think Bill had come up with the main riff messing around on his sister in law's guitar and she commented that it would make a good song. He showed it to us at the next practice and it got fleshed out from there. The name "Tower" is in reference to the movie "Mermaids" where Winona Ryder's character "loses it" ie "her flower" aka is "taken in the tower." The lyrics are about Anne Boleyn being a punk kid in high school, though there is an alternate third verse that is a more direct reference to the movie, however, Bill wouldn't let me sing it live and that's ok 'cos I never could get through it in practice without laughing. Bill: I think you've got me mixed up with someone else.  I've never written a song on my sister-in-law's guitar and she never commented on a riff in progress.  I've always considered this as the best collaboration that Wil and I have done so far.  I wrote most of the music and Wil wrote some of his best lyrics.  I always enjoyed playing this song because it was one of the very few H&V songs that actually had a guitar solo. Wil: Really? Oh wait...after we'd been messing with it, you were playing it on that weird slinky string guitar and your sister in law commented how she liked it. Was that how it went? Was I even in this band? Also, I like how you said best collaboration so far. :-)
• The Comeback Special - Wil: If "Tower" weren't so great, I'd say that this was the best song on the YWWB ep. Bill's songs were always slow in coming (twss), but very much worth the wait. Listen for Bill's laugh after the third verse when he mentions Bernie Taupin. Also, we'd wanted to put some "Sympathy for the Devil" type "woo-woos" on the outro, but John Deaderick (engineer, producer) strongly advised against that 'cos of any potential lawsuits. It would have been nice to be popular enough for that to be a concern, but as it stands we would have probably been pretty safe.
• Southbound Killers - Wil: Another short ditty that I wrote in my head while jogging through my neighborhood. It has a sister song called "Murder City Streets" that never made it to the band. The break down is pure John Deaderick production magic.
• Rio Bravo - Wil: I came up with the idea for this song on a conference call that I wasn't paying attention to. The structure was inspired by the Pixies song "Havalina," basically the same set chord progression repeated a number of times, with two instrumental bits book-ending a vocal part. I guess Big Band songs from the 40s did that as well. The lyrics are a shout out to my mom's love of Western movies and I think the trumpet captures that mood perfectly.
• Out of Sight - Wil: We were writing a lot of shorter songs in the last phase of the band, with this one clocking in just over a minute. I wrote it for Karla to make up for being a jerk about something (if you can imagine such a thing). Recording with Bill's buddy John Deaderick showed me a lot about layering instruments to make them sound like something else. This song is a good example of that. We also played this at Bill's wedding reception and the guy filming everything made a big deal about it…but it didn't end up on the video. Jerk.