Millbrook is a definite contender for âmy favourite song Iâve ever writtenâ. The title is short for Millbrook Walk, a little street in Kirkby, where I spent the first part of my childhood, and the song is for my sister, with whom I spent a lot of time playing and imagining.
The tune came first. In fact, it came as I was having a bath.Â
The first few words came next; I knew almost immediately it would be addressed to my sister, and about our childhood.Â
The trouble was, the tune veered between 3/4 and 4/4 and wouldnât be pinned down; for the layperson, that means that part of the tune was like a waltz, with three beats to the bar, and part like a march, with four.Â
I would have been happy writing a song that changed time signature throughout (and in fact, there is a song Iâve written where that exact thing happens) but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I wanted it to be a waltz. This meant I had to cram four beats into three-beat bars at some point. I knew that if I cycled around the four beats three times (because three and four are both factors of twelve) Iâd end up with the first beat of the bar in the right place, but I knew that this would leave me with a far too long first line. In the end I settled for this:
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 (waltz beat)
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 (melody)
In the second and third bars of each line, the melody and waltz part company briefly; the melody sings a bar of 4/4, then one of 2/4, while the waltz continues, relentless, underneath. Iâm not sure if this is apparent from the song or not, mind you!Â
The next stage was to get Marc to arrange it for piano. I knew - mostly - what chords I wanted to underpin the melody, but I wanted the piano for this song, and luckily enough, the other member of Moss & Jones is an amazing pianist. He came up with exactly what I was looking for for the verses!
The lyrics took me the longest time to write of any song Iâve written; itâs a very wordy song and incorporates a lot of ideas; old fireplace tiles used as imaginary money, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (again), Halleyâs Comet, popular 1980s childrenâs hymn âThink of a World without any Flowers,â a next door neighbour (âAuntieâ Barbara, who was a lovely woman and never forgot a birthday) and more.Â
Then thereâs the chorus. Now, Iâd wanted for ages to do something with Greensleeves, possibly something a little tongue-in-cheek, to do with the ice cream vans that drove around Kirkby in the middle of winter selling... well, who knows; rumours certainly abounded! This song seemed like the ideal opportunity to add this, and the chorus was born. However, although itâs a silly chorus, thereâs nothing - I think - quite so poignant as the sound of an old ice-cream van chime, especially for those of us who grew up in the days when children had a bit more freedom to roam (before cars started whizzing around terraced streets at ridiculous miles an hour), when the ice cream van sound was the anthem of a good summer.
Live, we tend to play this on ukulele and glockenspiel, with lots of plucking and finger-picking, which always sounds lovely, but in the studio, we really managed to create magic with Marcâs piano arrangement and layer upon layer upon layer of harmonies, during which I really tested my voice (some of the harmonies are right at the bottom of my range, and some right at the top). We even threw in a little sample, and it works so well I actually welled up the first time I heard it all together.
I was so anxious to get the harmonies perfect that I kept changing them around and around; the night before we went into the studio, I was still working on an arrangement, my nose buried in manuscript paper, when Marc arrived home from a night out and offered to do them for me. (Heâd had a pint or two, so I answered in the negative!)
In the studio, I ummed and ahhed over whether to add another instrument to the mix, but it worked so beautifully with piano, glockenspiel and voice that we stuck with it.Â
We hope you like it as much as we do.
We dug in the garden and found little tiles there in the soil, turquoise and blue
The turquoise tiles had gold round the edges, so we played with them as if they were magic money.
And do you remember that later that year we dug further under the soil bank?
We found an ancient fireplace denuded of its tiles; that was our magic money.
The ice van on that old estate drove around and around in the winter months
Iâm not sure what it was selling then, but it probably wasnât ice cream.
We stood in that garden as dusk turned to nightfall, wearing our nighties, two little girls.
If we had had lanterns we would look like âcarnation lily lily roseâ the painting.
And did you stand with me as I saw the comet blazing its trail across the sky?
I was just eight years old; you were turning seven in two weeks; did you see Halleyâs comet?
The ice van on that old estate drove around and around in the winter months
Iâm not sure what it was selling then, but it probably wasnât ice cream.
Dramatis personae: the boy learning ballet, sunbathing Sandra, Aunt Barbara
And so many more: that petty woman who put the bollards up for her personal car park.
Perpetual sunshine is what I remember from holidays when let loose from school
Where we sang about worlds without flowers, air without breeze and skies without any sunshine.
The ice cream van on that old estate drove around and around in the winter months
Iâm not sure what it was selling then, but it probably wasnât ice cream
Oh sister, sister mine so much time has passed; too much to unwind
When Halley comes again, will you watch with me in the garden?
We dug in the garden and found little tiles there in the soil, turquoise and blue
The turquoise tiles had gold round the edges, so we played with them as if they were magic money.
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