In The End
Written by Steve Hillier
Place written Umbertide, Italy
Date Written September 2006
Originally Sung By Steve Hillier
Features Yamaha CP-70B, Roland JX-8P & Jupiter-6
“It all works out in the end”Stephen Hague recorded a superb version of this song. The world should hear it. Maybe it will one day.
In The End was written at a writing retreat in Umbertide, Italy, that was organised by Chris Difford of Squeeze. Chris and I had spoken a few times over the years at the BBC Radio studios in Brighton. I was a regular guest on Phil Jackson’s ‘Introducing’ program, where he would play demos of local bands and people like me and Chris would decide if they were any good.
He invited me to a writing retreat that was happening in September 2006. These are often strange affairs…ten or twenty songwriters in a farm house with a studio and some pianos, writing songs together for a week. Not my ideal way to work, but it can be fun. On this occasion I arrived a few days later than everyone else from Barcelona. I’d been at Shelton and Philo’s wedding with Bill Brewster, the legendary DJ and author… and by the time I’d arrived in Umbertide, a no-horse town that seemed to be closed on Mondays, I was exhausted, utterly wrecked. This put me on a bit of a back foot for the rest of the week. Friendship groups and alliances had already been formed, I was struggling to get any writing done. I’m not a natural cowriter…my approach can be infuriating to my collaborators by the same measure as they infuriate me.
But by the end of the week I’d managed to spend some time alone with a Fender Rhodes and a view of the Umbrian hills in the distance. I wrote ‘In The End’, a message from someone who has died to the loved one they left behind, a topic I’ve returned to in recent years. It’s a classic Dubstar song.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now: