Dubstar and Human League at Tynemouth - The Final Gig
Dubstar at 25+1: The Final Gig
…and a heatwave on Tyneside
We played our last gig of the twentieth century on Wednesday 12th February 1998 at the Norwich Waterfront. The tour to promote ‘I Will Be Your Girlfriend’ had not been a happy excursion. For an act that was more a studio creation than a live experience we’d played a remarkable amount of shows in short succession. By my reckoning we’d completed nine tours in three years. This outing was the last time that we played with the extended line-up of Rochelle Vincente on backing vocals and Sleeper’s Diid Osman on bass (not forgetting the amazing Paul Wadsworth on drums of course). And on that final show in Norwich it was Diid’s birthday, the band sang ‘happy birthday’ to him on stage while the audience gazed on, baffled.
That was it until we shared a stage for Miles Jacobson’s Birthday (erstwhile of Food Records, now Managing Director of Championship Manager) in November 2011. A long thirteen year hiatus for Dubstar, but we’d taken a breather and now we were back. Next we headlined the Riverside fundraiser at the Cluny in Newcastle on August 29th 2012, then the big comeback show at the Lexington Pub in London on 15th April 2013 and finally ‘The Mouth of the Tyne’ festival at The Priory at Tynemouth with the Human League. We didn’t know it at the time but it was to be the farewell…
Dubstar at the Riverside Fundraiser, Cluny, Newcastle 2012
After the abandonment of the act and first United States of Being album in 2008, the coterie of advisors we’d grown around us evaporated, but I’d kept on nodding terms with Simon Watson, the Human League’s manager. A fellow resident of Hove, our paths had crossed on a handful of occasions, I think Sarah knew him from her days singing for Client too. He had a proposition:
“The Human League are playing in Tynemouth, would Dubstar be available to support?”
It was an intriguing idea. As an act we’d already begun to drift apart again, Chris was up north, Sarah in London and me settled in Brighton… but we said ‘yes’, why not? And playing home turf again (Chris was living literally across the road from the venue) would be great.
So on July 10th 2013 I travelled to Newcastle by train, Sarah and Paul B brought up my equipment by car. That evening I met some old friends from the Newcastle music scene at the Cluny and made a presentation at a music conference nearby. The following day, slightly bleary-eyed we completed one sweltering and very quick rehearsal at Gavin’s studio Base HQ in the Armstrong Industrial Park, just as we had the previous year for the Riverside show. We were hot and bothered and ready.
The day of the gig was even hotter.
The dressing room was in the disused Coastguard Station and was enormous, with the most incredible views of the North Sea and the Tyne river. We had the back rooms, the Human League the main observatory which was even bigger. Our vegetarian curry was delivered after soundcheck, and as I sat there eating alone I had to laugh at the very Dubstar nature of the situation. We were playing in Tyneside, but not Newcastle, opening for an act I’d adored as a child but had lost track of. We had an incredible view, but through someone else’s dressing room. I was sure I’d been here before….
Waiting to go onstage…the view from the Coastguard building at Tynemoth (Chris, Sarah and Paul B)
The show went well, everything was smooth, I only played half a dozen wrong notes. It was a short ‘greatest hits’ set plus Window Pain, an unreleased song from our second completed United States of Being album.
Using the venerable Prophet 600 for bass was a bold move, it felt like the earth was moving for the closer Stars. I looked down at the crowd, literally, who were mainly families picnicking in the fading sun, kids running around with their parents occasionally nodding their heads. This was how we’d started all those years ago and it somehow seemed to be the future for Dubstar too, playing old songs to fans of other bands. Hmmm…
Inevitably Human League were amazing, you can’t argue with Being Boiled, Empire State Human or Love Action. And why would you want to? I was a little irritated they included ‘Together In Electric Dreams’…I’m an original fan, I bought Reproduction on vinyl in 1979 and that’s not a League song! The crowd loved it of course, no one cared no matter how hard I frowned. Phil thanked us from the stage which was a thrill, and from deep in my memory a voice was telling me ‘one day all records will be made this way’.
The show was over by 21.00, remarkably early. We’d nearly finished the rider and were simply hanging around as I watched the League pull out of Tynemouth. Jo and Susanne were walking the grounds of the Priory with multiple champagne bottles under their arms, Susanne calling out ‘Phil, are you coming back in our car?’ The luckiest women in pop indeed…
I strolled out into the evening heat to sample the delights of Tynemouth, a place I knew well but had never explored at night. The town was heaving with League fans in t-shirts in the sweltering heat, the atmosphere electric. Normally I loved the post gig banter with fans, but tonight I wasn’t inclined, because…
Tynemouth Priory in a heatwave
…Dubstar had just completed a circle with a circumference of decades. We started on Tyneside twenty two years earlier, left Newcastle, travelled the world and now we were back where it all began. And yes, It was great to play with the Human League, an honour, but I couldn’t shake the nagging thought that I’d already done this years ago. An entire generation ago.
So I went out to the benches on the promenade with the final beer from the rider and listened to the music I had on my phone. The songs Emma and I had been working on, the Dog in the Snow productions, the Hockeysmith songs, my own new material, ghost writes I’d completed…
And although I’d realised this the previous year, now I could feel it and I could see the evidence all around me. There was no angle to grow Dubstar from here, at least not in a way that would work for me. The circle could keep turning but would only ever be a border, an impassable frontier defined by all we’d accomplished decades earlier. That was the exact opposite of what Dubstar was supposed to be.
I looked out through the haze to the sea and the ships queuing to enter the ‘Port of Tyne’… this wasn’t a sad moment. It was elating, the dramas were complete, the struggle was over and the journey had been great. I finished the beer, put my headphones on and slipped away…
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Stars - Demo at Graeme Robinson's house in Darlington June 1994
I wrote ‘Stars’ in early 1992 as a reflection of my concern of what to do when Walker’s Nightclub closed. It had been my home for three years, and suddenly it was gone. Three years later, on this day in 1995 it would be the first Dubstar release and the first time we made it into the UK Top 40. It would go on to be the most successful of all the Dubstar songs.
There were many versions of Stars, last time I counted there were over twenty remixes. And prior to our debut on Food Records there were half a dozen other versions too. On these cassettes next to me I have two live takes and a studio recording with me on vocals, a run-through from Jesmond and a live version with Sarah singing, and this…the demo that was taken to Camden Town in June 1994.
It was recorded in Graeme Robinson’s back room in his house in Darlington. He’d invited us to make some demos with him and his sidekick Jon Kirby having seen us play at the Riverside a few weeks earlier. There was some talk about taking these tunes being played to record companies…we knew he was the drummer in a Food Records signing called ‘Planet Claire’ (fronted by Claire Worrall who went on to play keyboards in Robbie Williams’ band and is now married to one of my musical heroes Stephen Duffy).
But we weren’t thinking anything much would come of this trip to County Durham. In the world of music, thing’s normally don’t.
So I took my Roland W-30 sampler down the A1M and laid the entirely programmed arrangement onto Graeme’s tape machine. Chris is playing on this demo somewhere but is mixed so low I can barely make him out, Sarah sings well though.
In the earlier versions of the song there was no middle 8, so Graeme suggested I wrote something new to break up the choruses that repeat towards the end. Unfortunately I couldn’t think of anything. I have a problem revisiting old songs, something to do with a short attention span I suppose, and this one had been around for more than two years at this point. All I could think to do was pause, maybe take a break from the singing? It was supposed to be a ‘Dub’ song after all…consequently this became the defining structure for Stars.
We recorded three songs in that first session, I think they were Stars, Anywhere and Elevator Song. Jon drove Graeme down to London to meet Andy Ross at Food, and then back up to mine in Jesmond. He had some good news…
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Not So Manic Now - Rehearsal at Steve’s in Jesmond May 1994
The first release form the treasure trove of cassettes I found last month!
During the first half of 1994, and prior to singing to Food Records, Sarah, Chris and I were performing regularly across the North East of England and rehearsing in the lounge of my flat in Jesmond. I don’t recall why we stopped working in the local rehearsal rooms, but I know that on this occasion we needed to record the live set as demos for more gigs. The whole recording survives to this day on my cassette.
The gig was at Rumpoles in Middlesbrough the following Saturday. There were eight songs: we opened with ‘Joni’ (which two years later would become ‘I Will Be Your Girlfriend’, ‘Manic’ was number four and we closed with ‘St Swithins Day’. For some reason ‘Stars’ wasn’t in this set…
At the gig I was enjoying myself and thinking ‘we’ve actually got something here’. It was the first time that the act had really come together live since Sarah had joined eight months previously. The crowd seemed to love it, even the bar staff. Unfortunately, apart from one show at Newcastle’s Riverside later that month we wouldn’t play live again for well over another year. Damn.
This is the original arrangement for Manic that I discussed on dubstar.com. More upbeat than the version on Disgraceful, it’s way more fun but lacks the majesty of the single released eighteen months later. Despite this version obviously being a work in progress, you can clearly hear Sarah relishing the song.
My strongest memory of this time is the cognitive dissonance of believing we were finally getting somewhere, this act sounds good… and days later waking up on my 25th birthday thinking this act is doomed. I’m too old, it’s never going to happen. It was literally the next day that Graeme Robinson invited us to work with him in Darlington, which led directly to us being signed by Food Records with months.
There’s a lesson in that…
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DUBSTAR Preludes Volume 2
Almost all of the early Dubstar songs began their lives in my home in Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne. I was lucky enough to share an entire Tyneside flat with just one other person which gave us both a huge amount of living space, a dream at only £120 a month each.
With this luxury I would write the song on the piano in the front room with the view of Jesmond Dene, then put together an arrangement on the Roland W-30 sampler in the back room later that day. This working process gave us Disgraceful, Song no.9, Stars, Day I See You Again, Anywhere…almost all the songs on Disgraceful.
Goodbye was slightly different. In 1995 I moved the equipment out of the flat and into our first studio in the Newcastle Arts Centre on Westgate Road, directly over the Star Inn pub. The following year when the time came to record the B-sides to Elevator Song, the studio moved to a much nicer room in the main quad of the centre (with heating!). Rental per week? £20. I maintain to this day that one of the best things Dubstar ever did was not move to London…
Consequently for the second Dubstar album there was a longer delay between the writing of the songs in Jesmond and demoing them in the studio. Whereas previously everything I had written had some sort of arrangement made the same day, in 1996 there were dozens of tunes that started their lives at home but were never completed. Not even demoed…
This is where Dubstar Preludes Volume Two comes in.
During the Covid-19 pandemic I’ve had the time to listen through the Minidiscs and DATs of tunes that I started writing for the act but ran out of time to complete. It’s amusing to reflect that even though Goodbye was way too long at fifteen tracks, there were still piles of other tunes waiting to be completed in the wings. As I said to the head of Food Records…”there are always more songs Andy, and some of them are good”.
So here are my favourite four of those compositions, each written twenty five years ago in the late Spring of 1996. I hope you enjoy them:
There was never a Dubstar instrumental. Sarah was the star, it wouldn’t make sense to have her missing from a Dubstar tune. But Infinite Summer was written with this destiny in mind, just to try something different. I had plenty of problems to write about but I was concerned that our audience might be getting tired of hearing Sarah singing my state of mind. Hmmm….
So Infinite Summer was written as a guitar instrumental, possibly as an opening song to the new album. The fact that it sounds nothing like anything that eventually made it onto Goodbye explains why we’re hearing for the first time now.
I included this tune in my GGGGHOST live sets in 2015-17. The original idea was to have one simple motif repeating throughout the song (the doo-deeeeee-dah melody) and then write a vocal to sit on top. But there wasn’t enough musical space to insert another melody, so I didn’t try. A rare case of harmonic restraint from me. Also, I was shying away from doing another spoken word piece like ‘Unchained Monologue’, so it was forgotten for twenty years.
On the original minidisk you can hear Lee and Herring’s “Fist of Fun” playing in the background. Can you get more 90s than that?
I had hoped that Dubstar would record a dance anthem (with words) for the second album. We’d gotten some of the way there with the Motiv8 version of ‘Stars’, but that song was really a slow, dubby ballad. This new song would be written from the get-go at a dance floor friendly 125BPM. It would also have an uplifting-rather-than-reflective-melody that would land us smack-bang into the front of the record boxes of the super star DJs. That didn’t happen of course, I was distracted by the Britpop activity around me so wrote more sad-anthems instead.
This piano piece arrived on a cold early morning in Jesmond when things weren’t great, at least not for me. So I played a melody with an accompaniment that was straight 8th notes all the way through, something I’d been avoiding for years as it sounded too much like Shoegaze (which I love, but Dubstar couldn’t be shoegaze). No such restraint now.
Sunset on a Family is the sound of an unseen child moving through my victorian flat, a future ghost simultaneously sadder and older than its years.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland Volume 3
With the re-release of ‘Stars’, it was on 24th March in 1996 that Dubstar achieved our highest chart position in the UK Top 40.
And to commemorate, today sees the release of the last instalment in the DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland trilogy, an idea that began as a misunderstanding & blossomed into a suite of piano pieces… memories of the songs that I wrote & then recorded with Chris Wilkie & Sarah Blackwood when we were Dubstar.
It’s been a fascinating journey. Covers excepted, all of these songs started their lives alone with me in front of a piano…and went off into the world to have a life of their own. DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland has felt like I’ve called them home from a journey across time & space courting producers, engineers, band members, record companies, fans…
And now they’re home, sepia crystallisations of memories from a long, long time ago.
I didn’t return to or reference the Dubstar recordings to make this trilogy, these are how I recalled the tunes, and mainly without the words. Those were from another lifetime…reenacting them now would be reciting lines from a diary. No, not a diary… mimicking the sounds you made & thoughts you had as a younger & foolish person. Bon mots from a VHS of a birthday party, Christmas with the family, words that could only exist in their specific callow context, a land forever lost.
Then found again, as if you were climbing into your loft for the first time in decades.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these recordings, they’ve been an enjoyable obsession for me during this pandemic…the first occasion in thirty years that I’ve actually had the time to look back & assess how far we came. And as the pandemic feels like it’s subsiding there’s a new vista coming into view. New horizons and a new soundtrack, & all of it arriving very soon.
Thanks Dubstar.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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If I Can't Change Your Mind
We made our first release as Dubstar for nearly a decade all the way back in 2010. A cover of The Passion’s ‘I’m In Love With A German Filmstar’, it was released by Buffet Libre as part of a compilation for Amnesty International and remains a favourite of mine from the late Dubstar period.
We actually recorded two songs for the compilation earlier in 2009, the second being this cover of the Bob Mould classic ‘If I Can’t Change Your Mind’. There were two versions. Like Filmstar, South Central completed a mix (which sounded great)...and there was this demo, recorded at Gavin’s studio 'Base HQ' behind Newcastle Central Station.
‘Filmstar’ and ‘Change Your Mind’ were the initial songs we recorded after the sudden ending of the relaunch of Dubstar in 2008. I think you can hear a tangible sense of ‘nothing left to lose’ in these tunes, a sense of fun and just doing something because we could. The noughties were nearly over, the opportunity to revisit old glories squandered. The act could only ever be a hobby for the three of us now…in many ways it was a relief.
My strongest memories of this time were the evenings where we'd finish recording and go for a pint with Gav at The Forth Hotel, our local from the 90s… then head back to Jesmond for late night drinks at ‘As You Like It’ before Chris returned to his family in Tynemouth. It was like we’d come full circle from 1991.
There were a further sixteen Dubstar songs recorded in 2010 and 2011. They remain unreleased.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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'Just A Girl, She Said' live at BBC Maida Vale Studios
Dubstar was truly getting into its stride when we were invited to play live at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios for the Marc Radcliffe show on Radio 1. We were to perform stripped back, kind of acoustic versions of songs from our first album to promote its release. Exciting times.
And there’s a confidence in this recording that maybe isn’t present in the version on Disgraceful. From the oboes and flutes, to the understated guitar playing and Sarah’s impassioned vocal, this live version is my all time favourite of Just A Girl.
My enduring memory of this session was the studio at Maida Vale, there was a sense of history everywhere I looked. It felt…amazing frankly. But like so many of these extraordinary Dubstar events, it sped by in an instant. I can’t remember what we had to do next, but I know it had to happen IMMEDIATELY, not a chance to take stock and catch our breath. It was great.
The BBC were extremely supportive of Dubstar from our first release right through, and Marc Radcliffe was a particular champion. Thank you everyone, it meant a lot.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland Volume 2
On this day in 1995 Food Records released Dubstar’s ‘Not So Manic Now’, the act’s breakthrough single. In those days you had a greater chance of a song landing high in the charts if you released your single in the few weeks after Christmas before the rest of the music industry returned from their Caribbean holidays. A song could sneak in while no-one was looking, and it worked.
Manic arrived at number nineteen in the UK Top Forty singles chart, our first of three visits to the Top Twenty. This was immensely exciting. We appeared on Top of the Pops, a crowning achievement for a new act. The record company threw us an infamous after-show party at Soho House in London too…quite a night. My hangover has just about worn off.
And so to celebrate this landmark anniversary, I’m releasing the second instalment of the DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland trilogy, a collection of piano reimaginings of another thirteen songs I wrote for the act plus a piano version of Brick Supply’s ‘Not So Manic Now’, the song that was our first bona fide hit.
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I discussed back in October how DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland began, a misunderstanding that led to a summer’s worth of piano playing and recording. As the days are so short, it feels fitting to release this collection on a Sunday at Christmastime, a cosy dose of memories for the season of nostalgia. I hope you enjoy it.
And a big thank you goes out to Roger Newbrook again for his fantastic photography.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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Face The Music
Written by Stephen Hillier
When February 2012
Where Brighton, East Sussex
Originally sung by Sarah Blackwood
Features Analogue Solutions Telemark
“I'd find you again, in another world...”The Dubstar song that actually features a lyrical dagger through the heart, not simply implies it.
Every year Café Del Mar would get in touch to ask if I had anything that would be suitable for their compilations. And every time I’d said no, but as we were now in full reformation mode it seemed this was the moment to reconnect with our Ibizan roots. I said ‘si, here’s Face The Music’. Cafe Del Mar said ‘non’. Dammit.
This song was originally known as ‘Sorry’, but I thought it best that I would rewrite the words. Chilling out with a Negroni watching the sun going down to a song where someone is repeatedly telling you they’re ‘sorry’ didn’t make sense to me. On reflection, it also didn’t make sense to submit Face The Music, which had a sullen and obviously incompatible mood running throughout. Unfortunately, knowing what’s appropriate and when has never been my strength.
In the winter of 2012 I’d seen The Robin Guthrie Trio at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton. A basement venue, it was a totally spit and sawdust kind of place. I loved every second, one of the most important gigs of my life. So I investigated his solo catalogue. He had released three stunning albums with Harold Budd: the Californian ones that were mirror images of each other, and Bordeaux following a few years later. ‘How Close Your Soul’ conjured an image in my mind: What if Sapphire and Steel were to be updated for the 21st Century, like Battlestar Galactica had been? Where would it be set? Who would play the leads? And who would supply the music?
I had answers to all of these questions. It would be in black and white, it would be set at night in a deserted French village, Alexander Skarsgård would play Steel and Karen Gillan would play Sapphire. The music would be by Budd and Guthrie, ‘How Close Your Soul’ specifically. And who would write the main theme? Me of course, and Dubstar would play it.
That’s what Face The Music is, not a tune to chill out to as the sun sets into the Mediterranean, but the theme to a romantic remake of an obscure 1980s Science Fiction TV show. You don’t get more Dubstar than that. Seriously, think about it… you don’t.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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The Last Song
WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER
WHEN JANUARY 2000
WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX
ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD
FEATURES ROLAND S-760
“What's our future, where are we going, who'll pay for us now?” In the winter of 1999/2000 Dubstar felt like it was going to end soon, well before Make It Better was even released.
I loved the idea of closing the act, a dramatic flourish, leaving the trio I’d worked in for the previous seven years with a song. My way of saying goodbye to the fans and meaning it this time. Swansong had been my first attempt at this, but even in the turmoil of the turn of the millennium it felt way too spiteful for me. Maybe I should have another go, write a song that could have come from the Disgraceful sessions. Something more conciliatory?
So in January 2000 I wrote ‘The Last Song’ as part of the duets idea for the Self Same Thing EP, hoping Holly Johnson would sing it with Sarah. He rang me up, was the very personification of politeness and consideration and told me it was too camp for him, have we considered Marc Almond? This has become one of my favourite moments of my entire career, to be turned down by one of the biggest voices of the 20th Century because my work was too dramatic (or overly emotional? I’ve never been sure what camp is…). Quite an honour.
Sarah sang it solo round at my place in Hove. One take, and there it is, a true account of how it feels when the curtain finally closes. Maybe it was the knowledge that this act was going to end, and pondering the question of ‘where do you go when the music finally stops?’
It wasn’t my intention when I wrote it, but revisiting ‘the Last Song’ yesterday I imagined it as from a musical, a finale for the supporting characters who are having to leave the play as the rest of show continues. More Brectian tragedy than Andrew Lloyd Webber.
I particularly like the way the song closes, lyrically the door is left ever so slightly ajar…it’s only the year 2000, we’re just turning thirty, this might not be the end, maybe we’re freaking out and there are more songs ‘yet to come’? Little did I know there would be around fifty of them…
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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We Still Belong
WRITTEN BY STEPHEN HILLIER
WHEN NOVEMBER 2005
WHERE HOVE, EAST SUSSEX
ORIGINALLY SUNG BY SARAH BLACKWOOD
FEATURES ROLAND S-760, YAMAHA CP-70B, FENDER RHODES, KORG MS-20
“We never lied” There was talk of Sarah doing more Dubstar. We’d stayed in regular contact over the years and our vapour trails probably crossed on her way to Slovakia to play gigs with Client and me on my songwriting trips to Stockholm. I was excited, it felt right. I had an ongoing sense of Dubstar having more to say, we were cutoff too soon.
So I started writing songs specifically for the return. But given the heartache and drama from the 1990s which were constantly nagging in the back of my mind, I needed to reassure myself that this was a good idea…
I wrote this song to prove to myself it could be done, that it should be done. Initially We Still Belong was a statement: ‘hey, we’re back!’ Did you forget about us? Well we’re here, now please move over and make space’. Hooray!
But that’s simply not the kind of song I write. Also, I’d spent the previous three years listening to nordic heroes such as Sigur Rós and Mew in the villa in Spain. That was the music I wanted to make, huge melodic and dramatic expressions of joy and angst. Isn’t that what Dubstar always was anyway?
So I changed my song. ‘We Still Belong’ became a lyrical development on the theme that Human League explored in their classic ‘Dreams Of Leaving’ from Travelogue. It concerns that feeling of having to get away…and not knowing whether leaving will make things better. An expression of fear. It’s my favourite Human League song by far.
And ‘We StIll Belong’ is one of my favourites of those mid-00s compositions because I felt I’d hit the balance right on every level. The melody, the words, the structure, the pianos, the direction. And, crucially for me, it sounded like 2005, not 1995. This song was pointing the direction ahead and the space we could occupy. We still belonged.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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DUBSTAR: Lost & Foundland Volume 1
Dubstar’s first album ‘Disgraceful’ is twenty five today
To celebrate, I’m releasing a solo album ‘Dubstar: Lost & Foundland Volume 1', a collection of piano reimaginings of thirteen songs I wrote for the act plus a piano version of Billy Bragg’s ‘St Swithin’s Day’.
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Back in July, someone tweeted me that Dubstar’s Stars was twenty five years old that day. I’d forgotten, completely, thought I’d missed the opportunity to mark the anniversary. No one else was doing anything, maybe I should?
Over the years since its release, many have told me I should do a new version of the song, maybe as a Marks & Spencers’ style piano ballad. I’d shied away from this idea because, well, I’ve never been that good at spotting a musical opportunity. And yet it WAS twenty five years, I should do something. So I quickly recorded a piano version on my old Yamaha CP-70B electric grand piano and put it up on YouTube to mark the anniversary of the day the song made the UK Top 40.
Later that day, Claire said ‘oh, that’s good, you should do another twenty five’. She meant write another twenty five blog posts, the writing notes I’d included on www.dubstar.com. The explanation I’d given for Stars had caught the imagination of Dubstar fans on social media, so why not do some more?
But I thought she meant do piano versions of another twenty five songs I’d written for the act. Er…ok, that’s a huge amount of work, a crazy amount of work. By the time I’d realised my misunderstanding, I was too excited by the idea to turn back.
So everyday for twenty five days I spent an hour playing & recording an old Dubstar song, then immediately put it up on YouTube with writing notes, explaining the providence & inspiration being the song. It was an extraordinary experience…many of these songs I hadn’t played since they were written, some I’d not thought about in years, decades. And with every song I found a melody that I could fall in love with again. So I did. And when the ‘Dubstar 25’ project came to a close with Day I See You Again, I kept going…
Today fourteen of these recordings see their official worldwide release. From ‘The Gender We Lose’ that Chris & I included on our cassette album “Gear” as The Joans back in 1992, through to ‘So Say We All’, the song that should have closed our 4th (or 5th) album as Dubstar. I hope you enjoy them.
I must also give a big thank you once again to Roger Newbrook for his fantastic photography that accompanies this release.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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Disgraceful, the beginnings
The original artwork for the Dubstar album ‘Disgraceful’
“The most exciting moment for me was discovering that Food Records wanted a Dubstar album, not just singles.
I’d heard stories of how acts would be signed for a couple of releases… then record an album if their singles had done well. They’d only be taken seriously or invested in properly once they’d proven themselves in the market. I’d seen in my days at Pinnacle Records that this absence of money was the kiss of death for most new acts.
Even worse would be if an act was put into a ‘development’ phase. This meant the record company thought the act was promising, but not promising enough to actually release any music. So they’d sign them, hold on to them for years, release nothing, drop them…and through this process the artists couldn’t sign with anyone else. Another kiss of death. And I won’t even mention ‘production deals’ <shudder>.
But that wasn’t the situation with Food Records. Andy Ross wanted an album. That meant a proper advance, a proper publishing deal with a bit of luck, proper time in a recording studio with a real producer (for a change). This was the real thing.
And when the news broke on Tyneside, there was a tangible reaction of ‘what the fuck?’ among the bands we hung out with. Although we’d been familiar faces on the Newcastle scene, especially through my club nights, Dubstar had transformed from The Joans in secret. We had all this great material but had stopped playing live, no one outside of the three of us, our management and Food Records knew about it. That ‘The Joans’ would be signed out of all the hopefuls on Tyneside was…a surprise. To put it mildly.“
”I realised we were a ‘priority act’ when EMI was ferrying us to meetings around London in Black Cabs. I’d grown up in South London, regularly visited Camden Town and the West End as a teenager with nothing but a fiver in my pocket… the idea of jumping into taxis was alien to me. Why spend all that money to sit in traffic when you could use your Red Bus Rover or a Capitalcard to get around for free? Seemed like incredible profligacy.
Yet this was how the music industry worked in 1990s, cash was thrown around in a way that I would observe but not understand for years. There was money, it had to be spent…and in the 1990s it was being spent on us.
Being based in Newcastle was a stroke of financial good luck for Dubstar. It meant that the record company would pay for our meals, drinks and accommodation every time we came down South for a marketing meeting. If we’d had made the classic mistake of moving to London, like so many bands in the 90s, that wouldn’t have happened. We would have been expected to pay our own rent, transport, to feed and water ourselves at huge personal expense. And be broke as a consequence.
EMI must have paid well over £100,000 just putting us up in superb hotels across the land. A priority indeed, and a luxury too. To say I’m grateful for the experience is an understatement.”
”The recording studios were superb too. Disgraceful had begun its life in my humble Tyneside flat in Jesmond. Most of my programming was completed there almost a year before finishing the work in London. I’d already completed the writing**, programmed the drums, keys and bass to all of the songs in the early days of 1994: the next step was making demos with our new manager Graeme Robinson. He’d run a studio in Darlington, but this had closed for some reason, so he’d setup equipment in his back room.
We spent a month or so down there making the recordings that enabled us to be signed. They also formed the basis of the Disgraceful sessions.
Then in 1994 we met Stephen Hague at RAK studios and saw how proper records were made: slowly, carefully, diligently, with a budget and a lot of money spent on food and, yes, accommodation. Chris, Sarah and I lived in the house next door to the studio for the best part of a month in the winter of 1995 in platonic wedded bliss, broken only by the regular appearance of our management. The RAK studio house had the biggest TV I’d ever seen, a bath the size of a small swimming pool (which took nearly an hour to fill) and a sauna on the top floor, ideal for hangover days.
And what did we do in this house? I’d like to say we partied, but we weren’t really sure how to. RAK is in St John’s Wood next to Regents Park..it’s not a party kind of place. So we spent the first few nights commuting to Camden Town in the rain trying to find the party over there. Funnily enough, even at the height of Britpop there wasn’t that much going at the Good Mixer on a Sunday night.
So inevitably we spent a lot of nights in the house, entertaining visitors and basically having a hell of a time in between long bouts of hanging around, waiting to be called in to record our parts next door. We became regulars at the Duke of York, we never did find out what went on beyond the closed doors of the Lyndhurst Club…
The three completed songs were Stars, Anywhere and Disgraceful. I was stunned hearing Anywhere for the first time. It was our song, but… it felt like I was hearing a hit record pouring out of the radio. That was a new feeling. Wow!”
**except Day I See You Again, which was written as Disgraceful was being recorded
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news
DUBSTAR Preludes Volume 1
There are demos of songs. There are live recordings. There are ‘works in progress’ and first drafts of songs that appear on collectors’ editions of classic albums.
But what do you call it when you complete a song, forget about it…then it re-emerges somehow, years later when you think you’re writing something new? That’s what you’ll find in the Dubstar preludes, the precursors. The original songs that were the unconscious starting points for new, often completely different songs.
Most of these tunes didn’t have titles, there wasn’t time. They only survive on cassettes, scraps of notebooks, sometimes even Minidisks (I LOVED Minidisks). Luckily, what I lack in photos and diaries I can more than make up for with a huge archive of my writing that stretches back to the 1970s, covers the entire Dubstar era and much more. There are a lot of these tunes.
So the Dubstar Preludes are a curio, a minor release, a glimpse at a different road that a songwriter could have pursued.
I often visualise writing as a spider’s web of possibilities, many of which can lead to a positive outcome, a good song. But no matter how much you practice, study, how often you write, you simply have to pick a creative thread and hope for the best. That’s how songwriting works.
Many of the completed Dubstar tunes are what happens when you get a second chance to pick a thread. The preludes are the original silk. I hope you enjoy them.
It’s Raining in my Mind
Prelude to ‘Disgraceful’
This melody and the lyrics that accompany it were a precursor to Disgraceful, as I think you can hear clearly in the chorus section. Disgraceful had a rather sad birth in a house on Windsor Terrace, South Gosforth. This precursor was the last song I wrote on my piano back in Jesmond before temporarily moving out. It was hugely influenced by Franz Liszt, I think that’s clear. It’s funny, but hearing it in this form, it seems obvious to me that this isn’t a Dubstar song at all. Little did I know that a rewrite would be the title track of the act I’d formed with Chris earlier that year and go on to be an international success.
The title is a something Chris said to me as we were driving over the Tyne Bridge during one of the United States of Being sessions…
After the Valentines
Prelude to ‘Everything’s Alright’
I’ve been a Shoegaze fan since before the term was invented (By Andy Ross who singed Dubstar…I don’t think it was supposed to be a compliment). So it was an incredible treat to see the reformed My Bloody Valentine play at the Roundhouse in Camden, sixteen years since I’d seen them at Whitley Bay Ice Rink. And they haven’t mellowed, that’s for sure. The gig was so loud that despite my aviation quality ear protectors I had to put my fingers in my ears lest they bleed. And when I took them out, it was like someone had smacked me on the side of the head. Or what I imagine it would be like to accidentally open the door of a submarine on the sea bed.
Anyway, this tune was written a couple of days after on the train back from meeting Stephen Hague in Hastings. I was still shaking, actually physically shaking from the gig, it was more of an experience than a joy really. I’d had the chord sequence in the back of my mind since a very young age. My grandfather had bought me an organ with single keys for chords on the left hand and I loved playing a succession of majors or of minors, no regard to key, I was too young. I think these early experiences with harmony have hugely influenced my writing.
I used the tune as the basis of ‘Everything’s Alright’, the song I wrote with Cat.
Just a Woman
Prelude to ‘Just a Girl She Said’
I’ve mentioned before that ‘Just a Girl’ was a combination of my composition submission for my O’ Level music and one of Sarah’s poems. It was the discovery of this piece, one of the easy drafts of that work that was the inspiration of this entire prelude series. I was looking through my scrapbook in my loft down here in Brighton when I came across a piece of manuscript that I must have put in the encyclopaedia of music that my parents had given me for my studies for O’ level. It was very rough, my manuscript writing has never been that great frankly. My reading’s not much better, but I played it on the CP-70B and remembered from way back that this was the original doodle for Just A Girl. It might be a bit of a stretch but I think you can just about hear the Dubstar themes, especially towards the end.
A Stranger to Everyone
Prelude to ‘When You Say Goodbye’
This is the only piece on this volume that had a title before its inclusion. Again, it had a rather sad origin, written in the days before Dubstar’s headline appearance at the NME tent at Reading 1996, when my relationship was ending. I enjoyed the way the music is very simple, cheerful, it could be an exercise by J. S. Bach…but the mood in my head was one of utter bleakness. Isn’t it curious how sometimes the most cheerful of compositions arrive in the midst of serious upset?
As the final writing sessions for Goodbye got underway in late 1996 and early 1997, this was the perfect starting point for another Dubstar tune in 6:8, the best time signature. After 5:4 of course.
Oh, and I played this piece as part of the GGGGHOST sets in 2015/16. It was always one of my faves, and sounds gorgeous on a Yamaha DX7.
Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for up to be the first to hear new releases and up to the minute news
Day I See You Again
Songwriter Steve Hillier
Date Written March 1995
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne & RAK Studios, London
Released When October 1995
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760
Spotify Link
“If the man you’ve grown to be’s more Morrison than Morrissey…”This lyric went down well in the music press of the mid 90s. I’m not sure how it would go down if I’d presented it to them in 2020.
Day I See You Again, which really should start with a ‘The’, is the last song to be written for Disgraceful, and another example of a melody that had been hanging around in my head for years before being incorporated into a song for Dubstar. Like so many others, this was written in 3/4 time and changed to 4/4 for the album. It was conceived as a Viennese Waltz, as you can hear in my piano version (replete with the original middle eight section…I think I prefer what we did for the album but thought it would be interesting to include here). On the Disgraceful version you can still hear the triplet rhythm in the vocal performance, with Sarah sounding slightly unsure of where the beats are supposed to fall, especially in the first two verses. This undoubtedly adds to the charm of the released version, a vulnerability that resonates with the emotional centre of the song.
The lyric recounts a real situation. I’d met my ex-girlfriend at London’s Royal Festival Hall during the first recording session for Disgraceful in early 1995. The situation was gently tense, like a scene from a rom-com, so on returning to RAK studios I wrote how I felt, a lyric that said what I wanted to say but hadn’t. Earlier in these sessions, Graeme Robinson had told me that there were two types of Steve Hillier songs, the jolly ones you could dance to and the daggers through the heart. Day I See You Again is definitely the latter, the hope and the fear as the blade pierces your chest for the final time.
Stars and Day I See You Again are my most successful songs from this era, a superb opening statement of intent from a new writer, a new act. And this is the only Dubstar song where neither I nor Chris appear! If I recall correctly Sarah did a vocal session with Graeme Robinson and Jon Kirby in Darlington where they’d put together a new arrangement of my song and played it to Food Records without our knowledge. The record company loved it so much there was no chance we could go back to my original orchestral arrangement (some of it does remain though, such as the brass and pizzicato strings). We had no choice but to go with theirs, and although that was probably for the best…
I can’t imagine I’d be so relaxed about an arrangement of mine being nearly totally removed today. At least I’d written it and Sarah sang it, so it still qualifies as Dubstar.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
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:
Ghost
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written January 1997
Place Written Real World Studios, Box, Somerset
Released When July 1997
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Roland S-760, EMU Drumulator
Spotify Link
“Who could understand me now you’re gone?”The last song that was written for Goodbye and completed in the producer’s cottage at Real World studios. The demo was recorded in the eaves onto a Roland VS-880 hard disk recorder. That version is lost to time, I’ve no idea where it went, and I really have looked for it. But I do know that Sarah cried when she sang it. I thought that was a good thing.
When we played the comeback show in London in 2013, Sarah hadn’t been able to get through the rehearsals without crying so I told her that rather than being flattered that I’d written a song about us splitting up, my ex-girlfried had told me she was annoyed (see also Say The Worst Thing First). I was stunned, it’s such a nice song, what could the problem be? I understand completely now. This was my side of the story, my sorrow put out there with no opportunity for her to comment. I had a platform for my sadness and there was none available to her. I know I’d be annoyed if the tables were turned.
‘Ghost’ is the seminal Dubstar song, and like Song No.9 it has everything that was good about the act. Maybe Ghost is the major key sibling to 9’s minor key? Sarah sang it beautifully and hearing Stephen Hague’s finished mix in the enormous main room at Real World was an incredible moment. Heartbroken lyric, simple drum machine beat, chiming guitars, modal borrowing in the chord sequence and written in a major key. Perfect.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Song No.9
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written January 1991, Refined January 1995
Place Written Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Released When January 1996
Originally Sung By Steve Hillier
Features Roland S-760, EMU Drumulator, Korg M3R
“…You can’t face me, I’m just your flatmate’s girlfriend, and Monday I’ll be gone”Student life, another song inspired by real events. I’m particularly pleased with this lyric, every time I hear it I’m taken back to Shortridge Terrace in Jesmond, a shared house I stayed in with my girlfriend before eventually moving north in 1998:
I came to this town, a weekend with my boyfriend, his final year away this time, but..
Remember how we sneaked around the last time?
And without a sound, we knew that New Year's just around the corner, somehow
I should be somebody's partner, but we know he's working late, a barman at the Union… and left me in the house…
You were there
Remember your alarm clock on his bedside and thinking we'd be heard?
No one came
Christmas seemed so far behind me, we know New Year couldn't be the same
You can't face me
I'm just your flatmate's girlfriend
And Monday I'll be gone , and until then
I won't touch you, I won't smile, I won't try,
You will laugh and be the same,
And I won't cry , because
New Year's going to be the same
Song No.9 was part of The Joans’ live set, although the Dubstar version was a significant update. The drums were supplied by my Drumulator drum machine in an overt homage to Robin Guthrie’s unique style of programming. There’s also a reference to Frazier Chorus’s Forgetful in the intro of this song. Their album Sue had been one of my favourites in my first year in Newcastle when the events set out in this song occurred.
This is one of the rare Dubstar songs that began life as a chord sequence, and I think you can tell. There are three distinct melodies that fit under the main sequence (the first you hear on the piano version above). They don’t work together, you have to hear them separately. So you begin with the string melody, then the vocal melody, then the dulcimer melody. I simply don’t write like that, but it happened on this occasion because I wanted to refine this song from the Joans live set to fit into the Dubstar set. In its original incarnation, it was mainly instrumental, with a middle section where I would sing almost entirely unaccompanied. That’s the vocal melody you hear in the verse in the Dubstar version. But it wouldn’t make sense to have Sarah standing there on stage with nothing to do for four minutes, so I rewrote the song to include a lot more singing, and an entirely new lyric. Trying to avoid Sarah having nothing to do onstage explains why on Make It Better there’s hardly a pause from the singing at all. Take a listen, there’s hardly time to take a breath.
I am aware that I’ve enthused about so many of the songs in this series… and I’m going to do it again now. Not only do I think that Song No.9 is the best Dubstar song, I think it’s the best song I’ve written. It has everything that I love about music. A soaring melody, drama, the lyric is concerned with something real between two people. Something that actually happened. And when it’s over, you feel like you’ve been taken somewhere.
I even like the fact that it was tucked away on a B-Side so very few people ever heard it. Funny like that.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Not So Manic Now
Written by Brick Supply
Place Written Wakefield, Yorkshire
Released When January 1996
Originally Sung By Brick Supply
Features EMU Proteus, Roland W-30
“I was making myself the usual cup of tea when the doorbell strangely rang”
Did the doorbell ring in a strange manner, or was the fact that the bell was ringing strange in itself? No one will ever know.
Graeme Robinson, who would later become Dubstar’s first manager, gave me a cassette when I was DJing at the Arena in Middlesbrough. It was a collection of artists he had recorded at his studio in Darlington under his Circulation Recordings label. The first song was Not So Manic Now by Brick Supply, total unknowns from Wakefield. I fell in love with the song driving home up the A19 in my Lada, the only Russian car on Tyneside without heating. It didn’t feel significant at the time, I fall in love with a lot of songs. But this was the moment that would transform The Joans into Dubstar.
I made an arrangement for Not So Manic Now on my Roland W-30 that weekend, Sarah popped round to Jesmond to sing it and Chris played some funky guitar. The original arrangement sounded a lot like Wear Your Love Like Heaven by Definition of Sound (who by total coincidence toured with us on the first Dubstar UK tour). This was a classic example of me trying to marry two ideas that should never have met, let alone wedded. It didn’t survive. I have a DAT of it around here somewhere.
A few weeks later Graeme was at a show we were playing at The Riverside in Newcastle, heard us perform this tune, and couldn’t believe his ears (or his luck). Later he approached us to make some demos in his house in Darlington. Between him and Jon Kirby, his musical partner, they changed much of my arrangement back towards the original Brick Supply version of Manic, which annoyed me enormously at the time. I can see now that this was the right approach, and a defining moment for Dubstar emerged. Funnily enough, Manic was not a contender as a single until the mixes came back from Stephen Hague, working at RAK. We heard them for the first time up at Chappel Studios in Lincolnshire where we were finishing off the Disgraceful album. We were excited, it sounded like a hit. It was.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now:
Gemini
Written by Steve Hillier
Date Written September 2007
Originally Sung By Sarah Blackwood
Features Yamaha CP-70B, Boss Dimension-C Pedal
“Newcastle stone”At the heart of every Dubstar song is the lyric, it’s the reason the song exists. The lyric within Gemini was inspired by Frog Prince by Keane, although you’d never guess that from hearing it. It’s one of my favourite Keane songs (and they have two others that come close, why do I never like the hits???). What appeals is that sense of story telling, but without actually telling a story. Just hinting at what’s going on.
Gemini is the tale of a man trapped in the past, a metaphorical castle that his love created, long gone, from which that he could never escape. This song was inspired by many conversations I’d had with men of my age. There seemed a creeping bitterness among them, cynicism, a sense of defeat in their voices. Their youth had evaporated and they no longer had a role in the world. They’d even stopped trying to find one and resented the rest of the world for carrying on. And so often this sense of being forgotten began in relationships where they had been ‘done wrong’ by a woman…although whenever I listened carefully it was obvious that the women in question had done nothing of the kind. It was the men who’d messed it all up by being reliably useless (at best), reliably destructive (at worse) or unreliable (most commonly).
Gemini is seeing someone stranded in their life, trapped in a past that’s receding into the distance every day. Where they don’t realise it, but they’ve spent years blaming others for their own mistakes, blaming others for how disappointing their lives have turned out to be. I think this is one of the best songs Dubstar ever recorded, definitely in the top ten.
It’s unusual for a song of mine as there’s no chorus of any kind, just verses. Another reason why I love it so much.
INSIDE OUTLINES, the first collection of solo piano pieces by Stephen Hillier is out now: