| Neil
That day we both came into the studio with an idea for a song and Chris
wrote the music for 'Suburbia', I wrote most of the music for this. I had
the PPG synthesiser at home, and you could play chords on it.
I'm
sure I nicked the chord change from some old song. It's about kids going
to Heaven, the nightclub. The title occurred to me in a nightclub once.
The idea that you can make a belt transitory excitement - fancying someone
in a nightclub - into your whole life. It was written in 1985 when the
club scene was changing; gay and straight clubs were being mixed. I like
the contrast between 'tonight is forever', which sounds like something
you'd see Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald singing in some old film,
and my favourite lines: 'I haven't got a job to pay/but I could stay in
bed all day'.
The idea that you can just stays in bed and have sex all day. It's, 'Don't
think, and do’. I mean, I'm not like that myself. It was one of the things
I admired about Chris
when I first met him was that he was a much more hedonistic person than
I was. I would like to like that sort of thing. Like, I like dance records
but I can't really dance. In the song, by the end, it's not '...if we
fall in love' but.... when we fall in love', and it's really corny because
they do fall in love. It's a total fantasy. We were always Fascinated
by kids going out clubbing.
Chris
In the early Eighties everyone I knew sort of didn't work. Just got dressed
up, lived on the dole, and got into clubs cheap - a life of living at
night.
Neil
We have always had a slightly romantic idea of the street. The song is
meant to be very filmic. The top French horn line, which is played on
the Emulator, is very John Barry. There’s an orchestral percussion -tubular
bell. Real ones. On day we came in and there was a tubular bell player.
Chris
and I were very very against having real instruments brought in the studio.
We weren't happy about it at all. We said, 'Can't you just get a tubular
bells sample?' That's probably why they're turned down in the mix. This
was so nearly the follow-up to 'West End girls'.
Chris
We did it on The Tube and it didn't work.
Neil
That’s why it wasn't a single. We got a real downer. It was the worst
television appearance we ever did in our entire life. It was The Euro
The.
We
opened the whole show with 'West End girls' and I had to sing live, and
it was fine. We then had to wait two hours, dung which time I drank four
pints of beer, then I had to sing 'Tonight is forever'. You have never
heard anything worse in your entire life. You know when someone sings
on the television and you say, 'Wow, she really can't sing'. This was
my, 'Wow, he really really can't sing'.
And
during the drum break in the middle I couldn't think of anything to do,
sol just turned my back on the camera. I thought they could film Chris.
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