Jumping Ship
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These seven heavy seas are wearing me down.
I’ve bust a bottle loose from the aft caboose
Let’s see if we can’t run this thing aground.
Someone wake the captain, there’s a storm ahead,
but no-one breathe a word of what the doctor said.
Let’s jump the ship tonight!
What are we waiting for?
Can’t you hear the singing on the shore?
Let’s jump the ship tonight
What are we waiting for?
Can’t you hear it?
I’ve had a word with the chef…
there’s a lifeboat waiting.
Bring those velvet shoes
you like to dance in.
They’ve promised me a beach, a bar,
a secret wooden shack
where the locals trade their souls
in games of chance.
Someone hold this pistol while I find a star
and work out where the Devil these blue islands are…
CHORUS
On the count of three let’s pull clear
but careful not to drift beyond the bay.
There’s a wild rip tide
on the starboard side
and a thousand miles of ocean lie that way.
Someone haul this cable
while I fix the oars…
is it just me…
or is that water coming through the floor?
CHORUS
Steve: I sent Maurice a “stream of consciousness” in the early days of the process of writing the album. It included these lines:
On the count of three let’s jump the ship
All this cabaret is wearing me down
I’ve had a word with the chef
There’s a life-raft waiting
Bring your velvet dress
Let’s hit the town
Shortly after that, I programmed a Prince-esque loop on my Oberheim DMX drum machine, a bit like the vibe from Let’s Go Crazy which remains one of the best Prince grooves there is, in my opinion.
That felt pretty good. I was just jamming over it with my acoustic guitar tuned to DADGAD and the lyrics above trying some finger-picking and came up with the main loop, so the beginnings of the track were there.
Maurice made some tweaks to what I had sent, and stepped in with some brilliant stuff later when we were working on it in his kitchen one evening in late autumn. He had some lyrics floating around which just seemed to fit, particularly:
Someone wake the captain, there’s a storm ahead…
but no-one breathe a word of what the doctor said
Someone hold this pistol while I find a star
and work out where the devil these blue islands are
These seemed to be perfect bridge sections for some of my stream of consciousness stuff and it all just fell together. We had a narrative about the protagonists escaping some cruise ship, tempted by the “singing on the shore”, which of course could be the archetypal song of the siren. We don’t know by the end of the track whether they made it or not. Best left that way… I’m hopeful that they did.
I am a huge fan of the Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis. It truly is an extraordinary piece of music. One of the most beautiful works on it is called Rachel’s Song featuring a haunting vocal line sung by Mary Hopkin. I really wanted to evoke that spirit, and luckily know a singer called Gabi Froden who has the most stunning, haunting voice. She agreed to sing on it, and the result is exactly what I heard in my head when imagining the production. I also went a bit Vangelis with the Juno arpeggios in the middle section of the song.
I was starting to program a crunchy loop on my Sequential Drumtraks for the middle section, and went off for a cup of tea. My son – 6 years old at the time – commandeered the machine and ended up creating a really cool groove with the snare on the first beat of the bar and all sorts of other randomness. I just loved it and felt it had to be used.
Here’s a little sound snippet of these bits together:
Anyway, somehow or other I managed to glue it together into what it has become.
