I played a 1977 or '78 MusicMan Stingray bass, recorded
straight through. Our guitarist, Assi, used an early '80s Fender
Telecaster, played through a Marshall 100W tube amp.
Singer/guitarist Valli used a Washburn Lyon guitar and
a 50W Marshall AVT50 amp.
No effects were used on any instruments. Our drummer,
Stefan, used a Pearl drumkit. Singer Valli and backing
vocalists Idunn, Kristin and Brynja used the studio's Shure
microphones.
The song was recorded by Hreinn Valdimarsson at the
Icelandic State Radio Station.
The song is played in standard tuning and fast 4/4 rhythm.
The G major scale is used in the verses, but substituting
F#m for F#dim. The chorus is in D major.
This song started with the verse, a fast moving riff or
chord progression that I was messing about with:
[ G ] [ Bm ] [ F#m ] [ G ]
[ G ] [ Bm ] [ F#m ] [ G A]
[ G ] [ Bm ] [ F#m ] [ G ]
[ D ] [ D ] [ D ] [ D ]
The bass line is more or less the same, but with the
odd open string for smoother transition.
When I turned this over to the band for evaluation,
we felt that the guitar was too busy and intrusive
to sing over, though we liked the riff. After a few
experiments, eventually we simplified the guitar down to:
[ G ] [ G ] [G ] [ G ]
[ G ] [ G ] [G ] [ G A ]
[ G ] [ G ] [G ] [ G ]
[ D ] [ D ] [ D] [ D ]
but keeping the bass line.
For the chorus, I went to my stack of notebooks
and picked out a romantic, jazzy little chord
progression that I had scribbled down once
and seemed related to my original chord
progression:
[ Dmaj7 ] [ Dmaj7 ] [ Dmaj7 ] [ Dmaj7]
[ Bm7 ] [Bm7 ] [F#m7 ] [ G ]
[ Dmaj7 ] [ Dmaj7 ] [ Dmaj7 ] [ Dmaj7]
[ G ] [ G ] [A7 ] [A7 ]
Again, we felt this was too busy (and jazzy)
so we dropped the 7ths and came up with:
[ D ] [ D ] [ D] [ D ]
[ Bm] [ Bm] [ F#m] [ G ]
[ D ] [ D ] [ D] [ D ]
[ G ] [ G ] [ A] [ A ]
At one point we felt that the long ending D
of the verse lacked a smooth transition into
the long starting D of the chorus, so we merged
them.
We decided that I would play the song's bassline
an octave higher for the intro and outro. It turns
out to have slightly different notes too because I
use the open strings as passing tones. I liked
both versions, so I decided not to change the
intro to become the exact same melody as the
verse.
The lyrics are a reflection on the use and abuse
of power and influence in the modern world.
