The Psychedelic Thread

NIGHT LEAD ME ASTRAY: After playing a few shows in the USA, we were cooped up in a hotel in Philadelphia. Late at evening , feeling restless and isolated, Ruu and Simon were ruminating about the labyrinth of temptations, endless exciting possibilities and traps that lay in wait for a stranger in a foreign city. Sat underneath the white fluorescent hum of the Exit sign, they ignored all these distractions and channeled them into a song instead. The following day, we rented a studio to exorcise those demons. Joe Russo arrived with his mouth bleeding like a vampire and jaw like a hamster eating a football, having just had his wisdom teeth removed. After a trip to the pharmacy to stock up on medications, we returned to the studio to try and capture the song. While Simon was playing the guitar riff (originally in 4/4) Joe was listening to a 9/8 beat on his laptop. They seemed to go so well together that we changed the verses to 9/8. Whilst counting down the minutes until Joe's painkillers wore off, we decided to record him alone, in the studio without the band. He memorised the whole arrangement in a haze of Vicodin and played it to perfection while listening only to a click track in the wrong time signature. When we returned to England to complete the song, we realised how thankful we were to have a true genius behind the drums.