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| Pride Of Lions The Destiny Stone | Frontiers Records FRCD 216 |
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Behind The Songs: Pride Of Lions - The Destiny Stone. The Courage To Love Somebody - This was one of the last songs I wrote for the new Pride Of Lions album. I wanted a rocker to lead off the record. I thought about the real barn-burners from my Survivor days - Feels Like Love, First Night, Can't Give It Up - even Chevy Nights (although that one is in a class by itself!). One morning just before a session I opened my notebook and a phrase that I had recently written down leapt off the page. I started working at my jacked up Les Paul much to my family's chagrin (it was like 7 in the morning - oh well!) the music and words just all fell together. I have long thought that love is a lot harder than people think. At least staying in love after the initial rush. Especially if we have loved and lost, it takes courage to want to take the plunge again. That is what this lead off track is all about. Parallel Lines - another uptempo song. The record label was telling me - "we need another "It's Criminal" as if I could pull one out of my hat! That just doesn't happen. But fortunately I found the inspiration in a fairly simple concept - parallel lines never cross. I thought about various relationships l've had throughout my life that for one reason or another that never quite jelled. It's usually because of pride, ego and stubbornness of one or both parties. Whether it's with a girlfriend or a band mate or a would be friend - you may be going in the some direction but not realizing that your goals are really the same. Musically the music follows the words. There is one wacky chord change in the chorus that I think kind of sets it apart. It's the chord underneath "never cross". It's a strange one that my hands messed up and found when I was working of it on the piano. Sometimes the mistakes are the best part! Back To Camelot - This is a big ballad in the man against the world mode. Very few singers could have pulled this one off but I think you'll agree that Toby came to the mark. Ever since I was 18 and saw the movie Camelot with my future wife Karen I have been inspired by the myth, legend and reality of Camelot. It was a day underscored by romance and chivalry, intense rivalries and loyalties. It really made an impact on me. I watched this movie again on DVD recently and it motivated me to write this song about going back to this noble age when "men were brave and honest and honored their promise - in the spirit of all for one". Born To Believe In You - this uptempo rocker echoes with the energy of Eye Of The Tiger. It features the double bass drum work of Hilary Jones. This tiny female is a literal powerhouse on the kit. She plays with some of the hottest musicians in Los Angeles including Lee Ritenour and Robbin Ford. Anyway - this tune was inspired by a track on the latest Glenn Hughes album. It's fast, fast fast. And we cut it fast - one take to be exact. If it's right - don't mess with it! It's another of my odes to stick together and not lose sight of what 2 people have together. It's easy to forget, believe me. What Kind Of Fool - this is easily one of my favorites on the Destiny Stone album. I love the melody I found for the verse and the big chorus. I would have to acknowledge my debt to the wonderful songwriting of Jonathan Cain with this song. It probably couldn't have existed with out his influence. Talk about a great and somewhat under appreciated writer! I used the synths the way Journey would use them also and the big tom toms of mighty Ed Breckenfeld's kit. The fool theme seemed to go with the whole somehow medieval overtones of the Destiny Stone album. And oh yeah - Toby sounds like a dead ringer for Jamison in the verse! Man Behind The Mask - One of my faves. The seeds of this song I found buried in my cassette slag heap in the basement - countless black tapes - some labeled – some not - with pieces of songs for the dark and light ages. This was a seed I had to find. I started it in '83 as I was writing material for Caught In The Game by Survivor. I remember the moment back then when I fell on a very Supertramp kind of piano progression. My wife walked in and on the tape you can hear "What is that? It's really cool!" With that encouragement I started writing a tune about living in the spotlight as I had been recently and realizing that many people were more interested in a person's celebrity status than who they were as a person. The grand illusion if you will of being onstage. I came up with the title "Man Behind The Mask". As I continued working on it I was driving in my car and the new one by Styx came on the radio - in the lyric of "Mr Roboto" - Dennis referred to the "Man Behind The Mask" - I was devastated. I figured the originality of the idea had been compromised and people would assume I borrowed Dennis's idea. I shelved the tune and played it for no one. Flash forward to '04. I figured enough time had elapsed (!) so I made it my mission on a trip to Michigan to find that cassette. I must have brought about a thousand cassettes form that general time period. Late one night - there was one tape left in the box - guess what I found. By the way - by this time the song had totally escaped my memory - only the vibe remained. When I found the seed, it didn't disappoint. I discovered the elements that had captivated me at the time and I set about finishing the lyric, writing a musical bridge and arranging it in my head. Hope you like it! Light From A Distant Shore - this is a very new song written in Saugatuck Michigan at my summer place. I had gone there with my family to write some songs for the Destiny Stone - but I must say I had come up dry. I resigned myself that it just wasn't the weekend to write a new song. So my family is in the car waiting for me to get to the car to drive home when I sat down at the piano just one last time. I turned on the tape recorder just in case and this song just happened. I thought about the turmoil in our daily lives and the anchor point that true love can be. As I drove home down I-196 I worked on the lyric (God has protected me for years in my driving habits - thanks!) writing down phrases as I drove along in the notebook I keep on the console. By the Burr Ridge exit I pretty much had the whole thing finished. I saw this as kind of the heir apparent to Survivor's "Across The Miles" from Too Hot To Sleep - so I called a friend of mine, Kurt Howell, to program the track (as opposed to using a live drummer) to get that late 80's feel. I handled the piano and live guitar and Kurt did all the keyboard sweetening. And Toby - well you can't program soul - he blew me away on this one! Letter To The Future - I need one more track for the record. My label, Frontiers, is very tough on me - and I like that. They will accept only the best songs from me. So it makes me work harder. They had just rejected a few songs that I felt were very strong - but they felt they were out of the mainstream of what Pride Of Lions was all about. And I guess they were right in retrospect. Anyway - I needed that last upbeat positive track. That day I received a letter from some good friends of mine - Lannie and Leigh Cates. He is my music attorney and a really good guy. He and his wife just had a baby girl named Cameron and the letter they sent was a "letter to the future". It's a custom here in America for good friends of the family to create a time capsule for the young child to open up at his or her 18th birthday. In the letter you give your life philosophy, a little advice, lessons you've learned, and a little about yourself and you connection with the parents. The title on the page "letter to the future" just leapt out at me. I knew I had found the title to the song I had been looking for. I decided to take the approach that this song is my letter to the next generation. I think the track has a great energy to it - kind of like the feeling I get from Rebel Son which Frankie me and Jaimo wrote for When Seconds Count. Hopefully there is a little wisdom in this song that anyone can hang onto. The Destiny Stone - This song is really the touchstone of the whole record. With out it, I don't think I would have found the motivation to write and record a whole album in basically a 3 month period. It became my gasline because finally I decided to verbalize and share an experience that I am still trying to figure out. When I was about 3 or 4 years old I had a series of terrifying yet intriguing visions in the middle of the night. They were not at all like nightmares - they were far more intense. In the visions I seemed to sense infinity - I was falling though a void endlessly. It's as if I was sensing my own mortality or perhaps seeing God. As I matured I wondered if I could have been seeing glimpses into past lives - normally shielded to our consciousness. As I was gathering material for this record I came across a book that told the legend of the stone of destiny - a sacred rock that now resides in Edinburgh Castle that has been around since the time of Christ. For centuries kings and rulers and common folk would sit on this stone and receive messages for go about their future and their past. I decided that someday I too would visit this stone to try and unravel these early experiences. The music of this song came to me on the plane on the way to Spain for a promo tour with Toby. As I wandered the dark and colorful back alleys of Barcelona I worked on the lyrics. The Spanish guitar which Mike Aquino plays on the record was definitely inspired by some of the sounds I heard in Spain. The song captured the feeling I was searching for - a man searching for his ultimate destiny. Secondhand Life - This was the first song I wrote in this song cycle which became the Destiny Stone album. The title and initial idea came from a conversation I had with Joe Lynn Turner in '91 when we were writing for a Deep Purple album. We discussed how often times we adopt our parents vision as our own without questioning if it is right for us. In other words - we live a second hand life. That idea stuck with me all these years because I believe it to be true. On Jan 1 of 04 it was time to set the idea to music. It is a very melodic song with a driving beat but I think the lyric has something to say for anyone who has found themselves unquestioning the mold that they have been cast in their life. Falling Back To Then - This guitar started as the guitar riff that you hear in the intro and underneath the verses. The song flowed from there. The original title "every now and them" just didn't cut it. It said it right but it had no vibe. I kept scratching my head until I came on "Falling Back To Then" - same idea but much better. Now with some mojo going for me I got excited and decided the song needed a Pink Floyd section where the guy is drifting in a memory induced reverie reflecting on a love gone by. When he come out of it - it's such a shock - that's my favorite part of the song - coming out of the dream. It reminds my of magic carpet ride by Steppenwolf - I was 15 years old. I used to listen myself to sleep to the top 40 radio station. Magic Carpet was playing and in the psychedelic section I started drifting to sleep. When the verse came back in I was mercilessly jarred back to reality. That's how I planned this section on falling back to then. The Gift Of Song - What can I say? This is my love song to music and how it's saved my life a thousand times. Musically and melodically it was inspired by John Miles and his epic "Music". When I first heard that song in the 70's it literally changed my life and stayed on my turntable for months. My song started life in '87 in Tokyo on tour with Survivor. I had just gotten I and I was totally jet lagged. I couldn't sleep and even the pill the hotel gave me was doing no good. I decided to get out my guitar and see what would happen. I started singing "I place my gift upon the altar". It was a beautiful melody - very Catholic. I worked on the idea for a while and finally went to sleep. Over the next few years I worked on this song. I have countless incarnations of it on tape - one version that I actually sent to Michael Jackson's engineer - Bruce Swedien. He played what was then called "my gift" for Michael. He said "he wrote that song about me - that is my life". He carried that cassette around with him for weeks but never recorded it. It just wasn't meant to be - perhaps because it's actually my story. But it wasn't until this record that I finally got it right. It became "the gift of song" and my vision of it was finally realized. When Toby did the final take there wasn't a dry eye in the control room - he made it his own. To me the defining line of the song - and one of the recent additions is, "just let me leave you with one melody the world can sing when I am gone". If I can do that then I've lived my dream. Reckless Love (bonus track) - I love the energy of this track. When I played the God's Festival in 2001 with Kevin Chalfant, Kelly Keagy and friends, I got off on the energy at the venue the night before we played. The dance floor exploded when a song by one of my faves thunder cranked through the mega sound system. I went back to the tiny hotel room and got out my acoustic and tried to harness some of that raw sexual energy. The result is "Reckless Love". My dream would be to hear it cranked at a similar club and see the people getting off on this one! Dark Angel - I set out to write something really different for Pride Of Lions - something heavier - something darker. It was a song where the chorus came first - that chord progression that I stumbled on haunted me. It sounded very gothic somehow - almost medieval. I knew the theme had to be dark. I played around with "fallen angel"- that was the working title for about a week- when I came up with "Dark Angel". The verse came automatically one evening when I was watching TV! I just heard it in my head and stormed over to my trusty Sony recorder and started humming. Thank God I did - cuz in the morning i couldn't remember it at all. I wrote the heavy guitar riff and decided to cut it the following day. I wanted a vehicle for Toby to show off his harder side. One thing I learned over the last couple of years working with Toby is that he has a harder side that I didn't know about at first - he can be both choir boy and demon in one song! In "Dark Angel" I told him to go for the jugular on the chorus. To me his voice is a bit reminiscent of the guy with Scorpions or the dude on that one Yngwie Malmsteen record. Of course that's me on the verses. Because the song was a little too out of the mainstream of the rest of the Destiny Stone album - we left it off. We are thrilled that it is included here and will get heard after all. Hope you enjoy it and we look forward to your comments. Keep rocking!...Jim. |
