There is a kind of uncertainty in relationships towards the end. I had a real sense of dread and foreboding for the weeks leading up to the break-up. Despite living together, I didn’t see much of her those last few weeks. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I probably should have known better, and maybe I subconsciously did, because I wrote this. It’s about that feeling of hanging on by your fingertips, and you know that it can’t last.
She worked in a bar and two in the morning started becoming four in the morning. I had the suspicion that something was up. She was either at work or doing theatre, but she wasn’t at home except to crash hard. She always seemed to have some place to go, when I wanted to spend some time with her. I thought it might be the attention that I was getting. I had been playing a residency at the Knitting Factory’s taproom, and there was a real scene there. She was often there, but I didn’t get the sense it was to see me. All of our friends were there. It was the place to be on a Saturday night. I mean, the place was packed. It was hot sweaty, and we were playing for hours. It was a lot of fun, and a bit of a grind at the same time.
I honestly thought that I was in the doghouse over something, but I didn’t know what it was. In the end, it wasn’t really about me- which was kind of the problem. The irony that has only occurred to me recently is that I wrote another song- “Hold On”- about the same girl. That song was written in the early months when we felt like we had found our soulmates. Now, here I was years later, and I couldn’t hold on.
I think I brought the song to Phelim and Andrew before it was even finished. I was excited about it- it was hot off the press after all, and we tinkered with it, but we never played it out. It didn’t seem ready. I felt like it needed a third verse. Of course, after I got dumped, it was hard to get back into the mindset of the song. I was in a completely different headspace, and I thought that someday I would finish it. Except that I didn’t.
What I didn’t appreciate at the time was that the song was already finished. I’d said what I needed to say. I had begun writing (gasp) shorter songs. I used to pride myself on my epics. More often than not, I would often have to chop a verse off a song, because it was too long, so having the opposite problem was a bit new for me.
I didn’t really resurrect the song until I was at NuMedia Studios with Bob Brockman. I don’t remember presenting the song to Bob Brockman like it was my next single, but we worked on it like it was. I just thought it was one of my collection. But we spent a lot of time on it. When the words ran out, the music took over. The song changes keys in the end, but not in the triumphant way that songs sometimes do. I feel like the last part of the song has a feeling of added suspension.
There’s a kind of hope in the song, and that’s from the moment when it was recorded. Brian Griffin played drums on this, and it kind of felt like we might get the band back together. I don't know if he made this choice, but the drum part on the verses has the same feel as the drum part on the verses in “Hold On”. I only just noticed that. It might just be serendipity, though Brian had played that song many times on tour.
That hope really kept me going at that moment in my life. I had lost everything I had spent years building up in my music career, and it was at this moment in the studio that I felt like I actually had a future. I was mistaken, of course, but still when you capture those moments on tape….