Interviews Bilingual Metamorphosis
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Neil  'Metamorphosis' had been around for ages. It started as an instrumental Chris and I wrote in about 1989 when we were in Scotland writing songs for Behaviour We gave it to Mark and Trevor, two of the dancers on the Performance tour; and they did a rap on it. It was Trevor's title, 'Metamorphosis', though I wrote the chorus for their version: 'you grow up and experience this! a total metamorphosis'. It was a positive song about not getting into trouble with the police and stuff like that. But then they became the group Ignorant and they didn't like it-they thought ii was too uncool. Then we did a version based on that original backing track, and that didn't really work either.

ChrisIt sounded great in the studio but when we took it home it sounded crap.

Neil  It was too slow. It was irritating -we were stuck with the original tempo. Trevor rapped at twice the speed and, unfortunately, I can't do that. I tried, in the privacy of my own home - at one point I was going to do Trevor's rap - but I eventually realised that I would never be able to do it. We asked Jam & Spoon to work with us on it, but they didn't like the song. We'd been approached to work with K-Klass and so we got them to produce it. They cam~ down to London from Manchester and spent a week or so doing it. They really did it all -they had their own programmer; keyboard player; engineer. They changed the music of the verse and I worked out how to get from that into the chorus. Sylvia Mason-James sings the chorus, and Chris does a bit at the end of most of the choruses, and at the end of the last verse. I like those bits.

ChrisI never like my bits. I've got a terrible voice.

Neil  It was very difficult thinking of all the words for this, and also thinking of the voice to do it in. Me rapping is a difficult issue in a way, because you always think of rapping in an American accent. I couldn't think of what to write the lyrics about if it was called 'Metamorphosis', and then I wrote the first two lines - 'please allow metro try and explain! I'm living proof that man can change' - and I suddenly thought, 'Oh, it can be about coming out - about not wanting to be gay and then being gay and all the rest of it'. And that's what it is. It's pretty much autobiographical. I like 'the long term suppression of an adolescent urge'. There's a quotation from the Beatles in it:

'somebody spoke and I went into a dream'. I thought it was good to say these things in a form of music which is considered rather macho. The thing about a rap song which I had never realised, which has given me a lot of respect for people who rap, is that they eat up an incredible amount of words.

ChrisMaybe this came a bit too soon on the album, but it's good.

Neil  Hidden in this album there's a New York dance album as well: 'Metamorphosis', 'Before', 'Saturday night forever', 'Electricity'.


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