Stiff Little Fingers "Flags & Emblems"
1991 （Castle Music CMRCD871 2004）|
01 (It's A) Long Way To Paradise (From Here) (Jake Burns) 02 Stand Up And Shout (Jake Burns / Dolfin Taylor) 03 Each Dollar A Bullet (Jake Burns) 04 The 'Cosh' (Jake Burns) 05 Beirut Moon (Jake Burns) 06 The Game Of Life (Jake Burns) 07 Human Shield (Jake Burns) 08 Johnny 7 (Henry Cluney) 09 Die And Burn (Jake Burns) 10 No Surrender (Jake Burns) -- Bonus Tracks -- 11 The 'Cosh' (Remix) (Jake Burns) 12 Interview with Jake (by John Oxley, BBC Newcastle) |
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Jake Burns - Vocals / Guitar
Henry Cluney - Guitar / Vocals
Dolphin Taylor - Drums / Vocals
Bruce Foxton - Bass / Vocals
Rory Gallagher - slide guitar on "Human Shield"
Lee Brilleaux - harmonica on "Long Way To Paradise"
from
Jake Burns and Alan Parker "STIFF LITTLE FINGERS song by song"
(Sanctuary Publishing , 2003, ISBN: 1-86074-513-X9 )
"Human Shield"
.......
The other big highlight on this track for me was actually getting my all-time guitar hero to come and play on it. Originally the idea was that Henry was going to play a guitar solo on the track, but he tried and tried and tried and didn't come up with anything. It was Dolph who came up with the idea because he said to me, "Look, can you do it?"
And I said, " Well, I haven't actually mapped anything out and I really don't like trying to play guitar solos spontaneously on records. " It's not a thing that I'm particularly adept at doing - I'd rather work out some form of counter melody or whatever before I go in and then I can do it and, " There you go, that works, that's great. "
So, I didn't actually have anything in mind and he said, " Well, how about we try and get a legend to play on it? "
I said, " Well, who do you have in mind? "
And to be honest that was as far as his thinking went. He said," Well, I don't know. "
I said, " Oh yeah, I just happen to have Jimmy Page's phone number in my back pocket! "
Anyway the whole thing got put to one side and we had a think about it and got on with other stuff. I was staying on a rented flat in London at the time, while we were making the album, and I tiik a tape of it back and kept playing it over and over while I was doing the unual things, lying in a bath, brushing my teeth, whatever. I just had this going in the background to try and see if I could come up with any ideas and I kept hearing a slide guitar on it and my slide guitar playing is marginally worse than my bagpipe playing - it just doesn't exist.
So I went back into the studio and said, "Look, I keep hearing slide guitar on this."
They said, "Oh , that's good idea What's your slide playing like?"
I said, "Lamentable, but I know a man who can, or rather, I know his brother" So, I phoned Donal Gallagher and said, "Look, we're in the studio doing an album, we've got this track and I think it would sound fucking great with slide guitar on. For my money, the best slide guitar player on the planet is your brother - is there any chance he'd be interested?"
So he said, "Send us a tape across and I'll play him it and we'll see what he thinks."
So we sent him a tape across and he phoned back almost within a day or so and said, "Year, Rory would love to have a shot at it."
And after that, I was like, "Great! Rory Gallagher is going to play on my fucking record!"
Anyway, we arranged for him to tune up. There was a little bar attached to the studio we recorded in that had golf machines and that sort of nonsense in there, so I was standing playing on this slot machine and Russell, who by this stage was running the thing, came across behind me and said, "What the fuck have you done?"
I said, "What do you mean, what the fuck have I done?"
And he said, "Well, Rory's roadie has just turned up with a fucking van full of equipment." He brought the whole lot turned up and Rory pitched up about an hour later and did it in one take.
It was just astonishing - he tuned the guitar on and hit a tone. I just thought, "Fuck me, that's Rory Gallagher!"
And we all sort of looked at each other and went, "Well, that will do won't it?"
So I went, "Thanks very much. Can I buy you a drink?"