Mike + The Mechanics said it loud and clear and caught the spirit of departed fathers with this regretful reflection of lost opportunities. After the group had broken into the mainstream with three top ten hits around the world from their eponymous debut, Mike Rutherford decided to keep this side project alive indefinitely while he went back to Genesis to record and tour for their blockbuster 'Invisible Touch' album. When he was ready to get Mike + the Mechanics back together at Genesis' studio at Fisher Lane Farm in Chiddingfold, Surrey; Rutherford says the recording process was much smoother: "The first time around I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, I went away to Montserrat to record ten songs and I got back and I thought: Who's going to sing it? And then I found Paul Carrack and Paul Young...It was just done week by week; it really was. We'd just do a bit and see. We were feeling our way; so this time it was so much easier. I knew both Paul's were involved. I knew who was playing on the album. I knew who I was writing the songs for, in terms of who was going to sing it. I was working with the same people again and so it was easier."
The centerpiece of the album was a personal song with deep emotional resonance for Rutherford and his songwriting partner Brian Alexander Robertson. Rutherford reveals: "I realized I was following in my Dad's footsteps: like him I was often away from home and touring the world surrounded by a huge crew, only he had medals and I had gold discs. But when I was at home, Angie, the kids and I enjoyed a lot of sport together. It bonded us in a way that I'd never been able to bond with Dad: with him there was no shared language. He'd always ask me how work was going and he read all our press – he even came to concerts, making sure his gunnery earplugs were firmly in place first – but would never just pick up the phone for a chat. I was as bad...By the early 80s, life was a blur: album, tour, album, tour. We had four US Top 5 singles and our first US No 1. It was great – private planes, the best of everything - but it was also so busy that when I got home, I almost felt I didn't have to make an effort in other areas of my life. Angie had to nag me to ring my parents, but because I paid for them to go on a cruise each year, I'd kid myself I'd done enough. Then one night in 1986, when I was on tour in America, the phone rang at 3am. Dad was dead...My biggest regret was not telling him what a wonderful man he'd been in my life. But I'd also been to public school where you learned to hide your feelings to survive. And fathers and sons of my generation just didn't say things like "I love you" to each other...What Dad had impressed on me was the importance of duty. In his world, if you had an obligation, you fulfilled it – it was as simple as that...My third child was born a year after Dad's death – that's when BA Robertson and I wrote the song The Living Years, which we recorded with my new band, Mike and the Mechanics. BA and I had both lost our fathers and his lyric tied into both our lives. The number of letters that we've had about that song continues to amaze me. When I write something I never really think anyone's going to hear it, but The Living Years has changed people's lives – made them pick up the phone to their fathers after years of silence sometimes – and I'm very aware how lucky we were to have a song do that ... The lyrics were written by BA [Robertson] and the song is about something he went through. He lost his Dad and it's about the lack of communication between him and his father before he died. There's also the irony of him having a baby just after losing his father."
Sung by Paul Carrack, 'The Living Years' became a worldwide smash hit, going to number twenty in the Netherlands; thirteen in Germany; eleven in New Zealand; two in the UK; and number one in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the US. The song won won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically & Lyrically in 1989 and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1990.
http://mikeandthemechanics.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGDA0Hecw1k&feature=kp
Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I'm afraid that's all we've got
You say you just don't see it
He says it's perfect sense
You just can't get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defense
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye
So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts
So Don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different day
And if you don't give up, and don't give in
You may just be O.K.
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye
I wasn't there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye
'Living Years' full album:
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