Where Do The Children Play?

Alternative title: - "Guitars to The Stars (The other side of the Screwdriver)"

A Very Weird Story...

A mate from my early encounters in Yalding was Malcolm Disley. He migrated annually from the North of England to participate in the Kentish hop harvest, along with a long-time assembly of tradition-following others.

When I settled in Wales, he came over for the purposes of recording a track on my old Fostex DMT8 multitracking machine. He'd never worked in a studio before and had a life time ambition to at least make one half decent recording before the end of time. Fortunately, he could play in time and to a "click track" so I got him to strum his beautiful Martin and sing the song he wanted to do.

"Where Do The Children Play?" was his choice and I had never heard it before, so thought it to be one of his own compositions. It is, in fact, a Cat Stephens song but I didn't know that. He put down the basic arrangement and went back home. For a couple of weeks, I worked on the synchronised sequence using more guitars and the trusty YAMAHA QY20. But there was a technical problem with one of the lyric lines: - I'd managed to get a breath "pop" on the line "Will you tell us when to live - and when to die?"

There was no way of repairing the glitch and Malcolm wasn't going to return to Wales from Lancashire just for the one line overdub replacement. My only option then was to record the line myself, whilst attempting to mimic his vocal tone. The switch-over from his voice to mine comes at about 4 minutes 20 seconds in.

When done with the arrangement, "cooking" all the fiddles, flutes, drums and guitars, I burned it to a CD and sent it to Malcom. He called to say how pleased he was with the result; I had fulfilled a long held ambition for him and his gratitude was unbounded.

"Will you tell us when to die?" was truly an ironic happenstance. The day following his call, his mother rang to say he had actually died the night before. That really is truly spooky but I am also truly proud that the CD was played at his funeral.

It wasn't until three years later that I found out that it wasn't his song but actually by Cat Stephens, who eventually decided, presumably when the money ran out, after years of being someone else to return to money making as a "Capitalist Pop Star". Tcch!

"Where Do The Children Play?" on Sound Cloud. At 4 minutes and 27 seconds there is one plucked guitar string note generated in the sequence by the QY20. It is a low "D" leading into the G major verse. Clever machine; wish mine still worked.

Alternative title: - "Guitars to The Stars" & "The other side of the Screwdriver".

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