My Life's Musical Journey... Beyond The Clouds - Tracks
The opening track 'Hear My Voice' is a plea for an audience. The lonely introduction is followed by a theme to which I wrote words that I kept reciting over and over, until the piece developed as I wished. It took hundreds of hours to achieve the right touch that I felt at the time, for the first few piano notes.
'The Silent Hills Of Childhood' is exactly how I recollect feeling as a young boy growing up in England soon after the war, in a somewhat austere environment, repressed and unable to express my emotions for fear of ridicule. The fact that the next piece, 'Riding The Storm' follows immediately, is purely coincidental. I was so affected by this interpretation of my childhood that I held onto the last chord for too long whilst recording and had to go to track three, playing it entirely from memory, ending up a complete emotional mess after a 17 minute session.
'Riding The Storm' is riding the 'emotional' storm that I was, by then, well into. This piece reflects the approach of the storm, followed by a temporary calm, then the flood of emotions, and finally the perfection of release from the prison of my mind.
The title track 'Beyond The Clouds' remains one of my cherished compositions. I felt as if I was flying. For some unknown reason the recording sounded better that the others, even though I had not changed my settings. I just flowed with it and it was some time before I came back, down to earth.
'Reminiscing' was my expression of grief over the death of my Grandfather when I was twelve. I used to look after him when he was nearing ninety. Just an old man, sitting in a pension flat, thinking about his past and feeling lonely. Used to take him to church and had to wake him up during the sermon as he started snoring. He taught me how to play chess.
Thereafter follows 'Why Is It So', written when I was thinking generally over my past, the death of both my parents in the eighties and the failure of so many relationships over the years.
'Searching for Inner Peace' was only intended to be an eight minute track, but a higher authority seemed to take over and convince me that I had to keep going. I finished it eighteen minutes later, shaking like a leaf at the fifteen minute mark in case I made a mistake. The tears started flowing soon after and when I had faded it out, I found myself completely undone, weeping uncontrollably for a couple of hours, realising that the album was finished after two years.
When I commenced this album I found that, at last, those feelings were surfacing and were being translated into harmony and melody on my keyboard. That profoundly affected me as, after the completion of each track, I experienced a feeling of well being, as if, one by one, my emotional conflicts were being miraculously healed.
I never had the opportunity of listening to that album for three months as I had borrowed equipment to record it on and I had to return it that night. When I eventually heard the CD,I thought, this is unbelievable, did I really do this. The enormity of my two year undertaking was gradually sinking in.
The completion of 'Beyond The Clouds' was exciting. I contacted all the newspapers and radio stations and succeeded in arousing the interest of several publications and attended live to air interviews. I really enjoyed all this and the results of my endeavours reflected in the amount of sales that were reported in my quarterly return of royalties. I thought “I must get a second album out as quickly as possible."
