Suggested to Trevor Horn that he recorded it with this girl harmony group he was working with at the time, The Mint Juleps. And he started to do it with them.

Chris They didn't like it, did they?

Neil When we started working on Introspective and were working with Trevor on 'Left to my own devices' we listened to what he'd done on 'It's Alright', and decided to do it ourselves. This first version, which appeared on the album, was very much based on the original Sterling Void record.

Chris Trevor Horn was very concerned with what the song was about. He went on and on about it. That's why Neil sings 'I hope it's going to be alright'. I've always preferred the original Sterling Void lyrics. The original line was 'it's going to be alright' and Neil added an element of doubt.

Neil I did, but then halfway through the song I throw the doubt out of the window in a flurry of optimism.

Chris I remember Neil and Trevor talking about it forages.

Neil We were never quite happy with the album version - it's got a much more of a raw sound than the rest of the album and I think it's the weakest track-so we re-recorded it with Trevor Horn for a single. I wrote some new lyrics - Trevor asked me to write another verse, which I did, setting up more problems. The original lyric was more political, and I brought in ecology in the second verse. My understanding is that the song goes from uncertainty to optimism. In fact, we re-recorded 'It's Alright' twice. The first attempt [CD2, track 12] has got the same start as the eventual single version-that's all we kept, though we did let this version slip out later on twelve-inch single. It's got a really pretentious bit in the middle: 'There's a boy standing by a river/There's a girl lying with her lover/There's a statesman standing at a crossroads/ There's a soldier polishing his gun'. I was saying that people were standing at a crossroads and there could be war or it could be peace. We took it out because it was fantastically pretentious and not very good. Though there was a feeling at the time -this was early

1989-that the worried was somehow changing, because of Gorbachev and South Africa and the rest of it. Trevor mostly did the third version [CD2, track 14], which became the single version, without us, because we were busy making Liza Minnelli album. The third version was great. He had a new programmer; George De Angelis, who had been working at PWL. Trevor had the idea of Chris saying, 'It's going to be alright', so you can hear that too.

Chris I hate it. It spoils the record