Question and Answer

Hi Pat,

Firstly thank you so much for all the life enhancing music and amazing gigs which have meant so much to me over the last 25 years.

I hope you can clear up something that has always bugged me. I’m reasonably musically aware, but I have never figured out whilst watching videos who is playing the main riff that cuts through "Are you going with me?" for the first few minutes of the song. It doesn’t seem to corresponed with what Steve or Lyle are playing and you seem to be filling in with almost percussive effects on the guitar.

thanks Martin

ps "We Live Here" gig in Buenos Aires in 1996 was the best gig of my life - end of tour vibe from you guys and incredible atmosphere from the Argentine fans, will never forget it.

Hi Martin. During that period, I was writing just about everything on the Synclavier which had one of the first sequencers. This would have been 1980 - so at the time, something like a sequencer was really revolutionary! (as funny as that seems now) The basic part that you are talking about was me actually improvising the form for the first time when I wrote it. This is not to make it sound impressive - it was just that you couldn't edit anything on it after you played it at that point! (Editing came in around 1983) So, we carried the Synclav around for all those years to play that part (and a few others that I built on top of that basic one) which we heard through the monitors. At the time and for many years there were very few bands doing things like that, certainly not in more improvised formats and in a lot of ways we had to develop a way to do it as a band that was quite challenging - like most things worth doing, it is actually hard to do well. But that made it all the more appealing to me. Many of the pieces that followed used a similar approach and many of the first things that I laid down while writing the tunes became the bed that we all played along with both live and in the studio on subsequent recordings and tours. Thanks from Pat.