Cathedral Park
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written January 1991, Refined in 1993
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When August 1997
Originally Sung By Steve Hillier
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“Her words are lame, like her life”It was a January day in Jesmond 1991, and I was listening to my grey promo CD of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’. There was a floppy disk on a tall pile next to the Roland W-30 sampler. On the label was written three words: ’potential number one’. I loaded it up, unsure what I would find. It was a simple melody, a chorus and I’d managed to include some text…’it feels like I’m living without you’. Could it be a number one? Would it?
My optimism was misplaced, Cathedral Park is the only Dubstar single, in fact the only Dubstar release* that failed to make the UK Top 40. Released on the week after Diana Princess of Wales died, there was simply no way the jolliest song we had recorded was going to be on the radio and TV. At any other time it might have, It did reach number 41 after all. Neneh Cherry and Youssou N'Dour took our place on the radio playlists with Seven Seconds. Now that’s a potential number one.
Cathedral Park was named after the Red House Painters song ‘Grace Cathedral Park’, and although that winning chorus melody was another written staring out of my window at the rain, the lyric was inspired by an afternoon I’d spent in Jesmond Dene years later, reflecting on the recent demise of my first serious relationship. And when I say reflecting, I mean being thoroughly miserable and trying to make sense of it all as Mark Kozelek sang about his own relationship woes. Red House Painters helped me through a difficult time. I’d like to think I paid them back by repeatedly playing their CDs to everyone I knew in 1993.
Sarah did a superb job of singing this song, especially as like so many on Goodbye the melody wasn’t written with a vocalist in mind, at least not a human vocalist. It sounds fabulous on a piano, and the huge leaps in pitch make sense when all you have to do is hit the right keys. But hitting the right note when you’re jumping nearly an octave in the middle of a phrase is asking too much. We never played this song live.
It was the experience of writing the songs for the Goodbye album that made me change my approach to vocal melody writing. Until this point, and simply by chance, writing melodies on piano had translated perfectly for mine and Sarah’s voices. But Cathedral Park sounded strange, strained, and definitely did not fit in with the ‘back to basics’ approach of melody writing that was being used by the Britpop pack. Consequently I sang all the melodies on Make It Better as I wrote them.
And as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Highasakite, and noticing they use huge leaps in pitch in their choruses. They also seem to use a lot of Melodyne to achieve this. Flamboyant melodies are back.
*that qualified for the charts
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now: