Steve Winwood saw a chance and took it with the transfixing translation of this dramatic do it yourself do over. The celebrated star of major groups like The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith had been reluctant to record a solo album; but Island Records insisted on new material. After the disappointing response to his self titled debut, he was looking to buy his way out of the music business; but first, since Jim Capaldi had moved to Brazil, he needed a new songwriting partner.
Winwood relates: "Will Jennings and I have been writing together since 1980, and we met really through kind of an uninteresting way, through publishers. We started working on the Arc of a Diver album, and we just hit it off from that point...I think he'd read something in a rock 'n' roll yearbook of 1970 that said some rather unpleasant things about me, so he didn't really want to get in a car with me, and I couldn't really understand what he was talking about, cause I hadn't really read the book at the time, and it was only quite a while after that he told me, it was like a year or two after, he said 'By the way, that first time we met, I read this thing about you in a rock 'n' roll yearbook,' which shall remain nameless."
Arc of a Diver was produced, engineered and mixed by Steve Winwood at his own Netherturkdonic Studios that he had built in the Gloucestershire house he shared with his wife Nicole. Winwood played all the insturments himself: acoustic & electric guitars, mandolin, bass, drums, percussion, drum machines, keyboards, synthesizers, organ, lead & backing vocals; with only additional engineering by John "Nobby" Clarke. The process was not effortless; it took two years. Winwood quips: ""I'd sunk nearly all my money into my home studio, so I could work at my own pace. I thought it would be quick, inexpensive and easy but it turned out to be slow, expensive and difficult...The record company was almost embarrassed to ask how it was going. I knew that if the album didn't make it, I'd have to sell up, maybe move to a little flat or join a gypsy caravan...I figured I'd continue doing some things that I like doing and enjoy life as best I could in diminished circumstances."
It was well worth the wait. Arc of a Diver became a worldwide smash hit, charting at number thirty three in Sweden; twenty six in Germany; twenty four in Norway; thirteen in the UK; six in the Netherlands; five in Australia; three in France, New Zealand, and the US; and number one in Canada.
http://www.stevewinwood.com/
"While You See a Chance" was the breakthrough solo hit he was seeking, going to number forty-five in the UK, twenty-eight in New Zealand, sixteen in Australia, seven in the US, and number three in Canada. The instrumental introduction to the song was composed after Winwood accidentally erased the drum track.
Winwood remarks: "Thankfully there weren't too many of those kind of accidents...'While You See a Chance' was the first song I wrote with Will Jennings, who's been my chief lyricist. I met him through my publisher at the time, Island Music. I'd said I desperately wanted to somebody to write songs with, and they said, 'Oh, there's this bloke ...' ... Will just came up with the lyric, and it was right for me, right for him, and right for the song."
Jennings says: "It's like writing... if you're writing a play, you're writing for a particular persona, a particular character, and you try to feel as deeply inside them as you can - where are they coming from and what they've been through. It's the same with Steve, 'While You See A Chance,' because he was coming out of a whole period with Spencer Davis and Traffic, and then where else do you go? I was up there at his place in rural England, and I was in his life so to speak, and trying to see through his eyes as well as mine. And that's what all those things were about, all the songs we wrote ... When Steve played me the music that became the song 'While You See a Chance', it was like looking right into his soul ... We didn't talk about what the song was about ... 'While you see a chance take it, find romance, fake it, because it's all on you'" - the lyric of the song is about realizing that you are all alone in this life and you have to do with it what you can - it was written around 1980 in a certain part of my life when I realized it was all on me to do, the lyric inspired by Steve's transcendent track....The next line explains it: 'Because it's all on you.' There's an old English expression called "Fake it till you make it." If you don't have romance in your life, meaning in the broader sense, really, something to make life interesting, just imagine it until it's there."
Stand up in a clear blue morning
Until you see what can be
Alone in a cold day dawning
Are you still free? Can you be?
When some cold tomorrow finds you
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance fake it
Because its all on you
Dont you know by now
No one gives you anything?
And dont you wonder how you keep on moving?
One more day your way, oh your way
When theres no one left to leave you
Even you dont quite believe you
Thats when nothing can deceive you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance fake it
Because its all on you
Stand up in a clear blue morning
Until you see what can be
Alone in a cold day dawning
Are you still free? Can you be?
And that old gray wind is blowing
And theres nothing left worth knowing
And its time you should be going
While you see a chance take it
Find romance fake it
Because its all on you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance
While you see a chance take it
Find romance
"Night Train"
Steve Winwood - Night Train by jpdc11
Arc of a Diver
full album:
All songs written by Steve Winwood & Will Jennings except where noted.
Side one
"While You See a Chance" - 5:12
"Arc of a Diver" (Winwood, Vivian Stanshall) - 5:28
"Second-Hand Woman" (Winwood, George Fleming) - 3:41
"Slowdown Sundown"- 5:27
Side two
"Spanish Dancer"- 5:58
"Night Train"- 7:51
"Dust" (Winwood, Fleming) - 6:20
No comments:
Post a Comment