06. No Other Blue

S.Rhatigan/C.Charles circa 1991/92

I cycled through a tropical Dublin city last week to meet my friend Simon for coffee. Way back in the day when I had the dubious credit of background singer ie ‘Ghost Vocalist’ for an ‘Artist’ (apologies for the abundance of ‘ironic’ inverted commas in this article but I can’t think of any other way of telling this story..) produced by the legendary 80s hit makers Stock Aitken and Waterman, I needed the service of a lawyer to look over the ‘contract’ I was offered setting out the terms of re-enumeration for my service and ‘ironically’ my silence! A friend recommended Simon Long and he became a valued counsel and friend helping navigate me to my first publishing deal and beyond. I was a fledgling writer and Simon connected me with many great co-writers with whom I eventually gained enough confidence to call my self a ‘singer songwriter’ and not ‘just a singer’… I was telling him about the blog and my intention to upload 50 songs through out my ‘Golden Jubilee’ year and he reminded me of ‘No Other Blue’…

One of the good days, a blissed out summer afternoon beautifully captured in a poem written by Craig Charles while he lazed around on the floor of my flat. I was tinkering with a melody on the piano and without realising it or trying at all the two fell together and the song was complete. Neither words nor music were edited from the moment of composition to the one and only recording or public performance to my knowledge ever made… This 8 track demo is one of the earliest I made in my little studio in South London with some of the musicians I had the pleasure of working with through that period; Matt Backer, Martyn Swain and accordionist Graham Henderson who I think also played Bodhran, but it may in fact have been Mark Nevin, who was just embarking on a solo career after Fairground Attraction… Although the sound quality suffers a little from the amount of bouncing down it required to get the multi tracked bv’s with my friend Beverly Craven’s beautiful falsetto in evidence, it had a nice atmosphere only enhanced, I think, by the lovely analogue hiss…..

Vocals keyboards Suzanne Rhatigan
Electric Guitar Matt Backer
Bass Martyn Swain
Piano/Accordian/Bodhran Graham Henderson
Acoustic guitar / Bodhran Mark Nevin ?
BV’s Beverly Craven, Suzanne

Ps… It’s fair to say as I have written many songs in various and disparate styles, pop, country, folk, funk noise etc etc, there will be some people who get some tunes and not others. That’s not an excuse, it’s simply the result of 30 odd years making music with many different writers, musicians and producers all of them playing their part informing the music I’ve made and continue to make, and to whom I am eternally grateful. If you are or know any musicians or engineers and producers who worked on any of these recordings and who haven’t been credited, please let me know…. Some of the memories are a bit hazy don’t you know!