Midnight Rain

Music : Peter Nuttall

Lyrics : Douglas Hunter

Date Written : 15th July 1994

Album : Fear (Released September 1994)

When Douglas gave me the lyrics for Midnight Rain, I could see the world he'd created straight away.  Dark city streets lit with neon and street lamps; in Newcastle it was often raining too so it wasn't hard to 'climb inside' so to speak. In the early years (92-95) I used to spend a lot of time sat at my aging upright piano which was a little out of tune. This almost discordant resonance gave much of what I played a bit more depth than I intended and so it was with the first three notes of Midnight Rain. You can hear that piano above in the 1995 recording. I dangled a £2.99 microphone in front of the bit where you put your music and connected it to a portable tape recorder. The sound quality is terrible but you get the atmosphere of the thing oozing through.

I've always felt that the lyrics are imbued with that early relationship feeling where you're nervous, excited, terrified and like nothing else will ever matter more. Add in the atmosphere of a rainy dark city centre buzzing with nightlife and happy people staggering about and you've got a song with a landscape. A cogent backdrop. Something with substance.

Originally, the song (which was just music at the time) started with those three notes but later that week I'd been to a 'construction of Jazz' class at university which deconstructed the modes, scales and inversions of well known Jazz standards. Armed with some brand new information, I slapped a 2 minute introduction to the start, intending it to be the 12" or something - a bit of an epic piano rumble before the light sometimes airy play of the verses.

I had a collection of bits of music and ideas which I committed to tape and sent to Douglas who was at the time, studying in Ilkley in Yorkshire.  Doug takes up the tale...

"Midnight Rain started life for me as some music Peter sent to me in Ilkley when I was living and studying there. The song it generated was "Tinsel Town" and the lyrics were written to be sung to the piano riff...

When lights go down, in Tinsel town, I'm gonna have one more for the road; When lights go down, in Tinsel town, we all gotta struggle with our load

.... or something like that. When exactly Midnight rain hit, I am not sure, but the lyrics are quite upbeat when you look at them and not my usual grimy ones. It is a love song to remembering a time my now-wife and I were out at night at some point, missed a bus or a taxi (another recurring theme of mine) but unlike Neon City which is a little down, or at least observational of what is around, the rain started pouring and we started dancing with no music."

In 1995, we'd written and recorded around 40-odd songs in less than 12 months and I remember Ian put a cassette together of the best ones and called the compilation 'Bright Lights, Big City'. The ethos of the Urban Fox character in the suit against the city sky line fitted this title perfectly. It was the second line in the song... 'Light a candle and say a prayer, bright lights, big city, I'll meet you there'.

When I first recorded the song, I realised I wasn't going to be able to fit all the lyrics in. I remember Doug's solution to this was to 'sing faster', however, I had to chop the words around quite a bit to get them to scan (see the original lyrics below with scribblings-out and edits). I regret that a bit now because the original lyrics have so much more heart than the abridged ones. I think the message still comes over, so it's not all tears and regrets.

There's a lyric in there which gets me every time - moreso now that I'm not 19 years old any more, which I was when I wrote it - 'When this night's a memory, the bottom line is you can look back and say you had a good time'. It really makes you want to Carpe the sh*t out of this Diem doesn't it?

And painting more than a picture could :

...Love songs sung with passion and blue played with pain

Echoes of her laughter fall like the rain...

The song has been recorded in many guises over the years since it was first put to tape on 15/07/94 but it's best incarnation was probably the version recorded specially for the 'Blue Star/Black Diamond (OST)' which you can hear above.

... I wish I could live it over, like Sam did, "Play it again" ...