When Arthur was released from prison in Dec. 2001, he had some melodies, ideas, and a load of lyrics kicking around in his head and in notebooks. In Jan and Feb 2002, I initially sat down at my home and worked out musical ideas with Arthur on 7 or 8 things. I knew the job was too much for me so when Rusty got involved it made things easier to bounce ideas (the Finished songs were “Love me Again”, “All I want is You” and “Rainbow In The Storm.”)

“Love me Again” really didn’t take much, as it’s fairly a Desmond Decker-eque type of thing and Arthur’s melody and lyrics are both endearing and believable. I think he meant every word. Arthur pretty much did that tune on his own, we more or less initiated the key change and arranged it.

“All I want Is You” was completely arranged by Baby Lemonade and musically written by Rusty and I. It sounds nothing like Love and we never understood why Arthur wanted a tune like that but he did. We knew who it was written about and I think he wanted to write something for that person. We never liked playing it live and when we did it always sounded like sh*t!

“Rainbow In The Storm” is the only song I feel proud of that we wrote together. It didn’t really come together until I wrote the bridge, which the band loved, but we had to wait to see what Arthur felt about it. Arthur was really inspired and changed most of his lyrics to the song. The song shaped up and the story apparently became one of Arthur and Bryan and all they went through and shared and accomplished. Chapple and Daddyo held the groove together so well, it was just a magical moment. And I have all the tapes of us working on all these (and other) songs over Arthur’s house and/or over my house and I never gave it much thought but it really gives you a bit of insight into how he worked his ideas out.

The song we never finished, “Love on Earth Must Be” (a song with loads of potential but too many bad ideas being tossed around. I own the only real quasi-finished decent demo, which was recorded at my house with me and Arthur, just guitar and voice.), “Seperate The Men From The Boys” ( a solid funny-ass disco tune about a dancing midget) and “It Can Happen to You”, which was a Velvet Underground-type of tune. A driving beat in F# to B, the refrain was, “It can happen to you like it happened to me.” Again, this song had potential and it was a shame we never finished it. As Love (and Arthur’s) popularity rose again, Arthur lost some of his creative focus IMHO.

Ohm there was ONE OTHER SONG, which Arthur completely wrote on his own called “BYE, BYE, BYE”, which was later changed to “MY ANTHEM.” I have a monitor mix of this from Royal festival hall. i know we did it twice at Colston hall in Bristol. I remember Caryne wondering if we were taking the piss. I also remember MOJO writing that, when we played MY ANTHEM at the end of FOREVER CHANGES at Royal Festival Hall. The writer opined that, “For Love to Play MY ANTHEM after Forever Changes is akin to Pink Floyd playing PIPERS AT THE GATES OF DAWN and then launching into ‘Snooker Loopy.’

After Gene showed Arthur that review, the song mysteriously disappeared from the set list. In true Derek Smalls/Spinal Tap fashion (“are we doing Stonehenge Tonight?” “NO WE AREN’T DOING BLOODY STOENHENGE TONIGHT!!!!”) , David Chapple asked before one of our shows, “Are we doing MY ANTHEM tonight?” His mouth was immediately taped up!

Ah…the fun we had…

Mike Randle