Page 8 - November 2021

THE STORY OF MIDNIGHT ADAGIO
By Rob Atkins
Last month, award winning singer/songwriter, Helena Mace, released her latest single, MIDNIGHT ADAGIO. This was a definite break in tradition for her, as all her previous singles had been her own compositions. MIDNIGHT ADAGIO was written by myself and two musician friends some twenty odd years ago.
As my eldest daughter, Helena was already familiar with the song. It was her original intention to feature the track solely for her forthcoming album. She recorded it at Matt Black’s ‘Hangover Hill Studio’ in Dorset, UK, back in the summer. When it was posted on face book in mid-August, by way of a taster, response was so positive that she decided to try it as an autumn single.
In common with two other tracks of mine, MOON GODDESS, and GOTHIC LULLABY, MIDNIGHT was written some years before Helena made use of them. The former was written and recorded in 1975, and LULLABY, although conceived about the same time, wasn’t completed as a song until a few years ago. MIDNIGHT, in contrast, was done and dusted within a fortnight, but spent a number of years on the shelf before Helena chose to record it.
The circumstances in which the song came about were almost accidental. Myself and Alan Coles, a guitarist who had played in a couple of bands with me over the years, had formed the habit of jamming together once a week in the home studio of fellow band member and bass player, John Ginger (who happens, incidentally to be Helena’s Godfather). Several sessions of improvising on old blues numbers and rock standards had progressed into us writing and accumulating a number of original songs.
I’d also brought in some draughts of ideas I’d worked out at home, and we had gradually built up a modest repertoire of self-penned material.
One particular evening, the piece we were working on just wasn’t coming together. Fingers were getting tired, throats were getting sore, and tempers frayed. We decided to pack it in for the night. Before we left, I asked Alan to play a couple of random chord
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sequences, one something of a rocker, the other slower and gentler. If John recorded them, I’d take them home, sketch out some lyrics and melody lines -and we’d have something concrete to get our teeth into the following week.
Alan, a bit of a heavy rock merchant and blues buff, ripped out the spade work for the raunchier sequence in minutes -though it took a little coaxing and persuasion from John for him to come up with a softer style of backing for the ‘slowy’. Nevertheless, he delivered the goods: a thoughtful, sensitive chord pattern in a minor key. We didn’t know it at the time, but he had laid out the foundations for MIDNIGHT ADAGIO.
Back at home, I put the chords of the rocker aside (we used them later for a number called AUGUST 1967, but that’s another story) and concentrated on the slower track. I have said elsewhere that I find melodies to be inspirational, they form in the air seemingly of their own volition while -with the words- I have to search for them in the recesses of my mind and drag them out by force. On this occasion, however, tune and lyrics seemed to come easily and simultaneously. I realised much later that this was probably due to the fact that none of the lines in the song rhyme. I was able to build up a picture of a starlit seascape and shoreline, using poet devices such as alliteration and onomatopoeia, but without having to wrack my brain in search of a rhyming pattern. Thus, apart from the inevitable need for some slight tweaking, I turned up at the studio the following week with the number more or less completed.
John began to work his magic on the track, giving it a slow, bosa nova beat; Alan added some atmospheric guitar phrases -the high spot of the number as it then stood. It was only the vocal, I felt, that let the song down -the key wasn’t really suitable for my voice, although I tried it in two different octaves, and even experimented with whispering the words on one take. These latter observations are solely my own subjective opinions on my voice, the other guys seemed happier enough with it -as