"Faster" - The song and how it came about

Most of the time, writing songs for me is just picking up a guitar and waiting for something to come out of the soundhole. However, sometimes songs come out of a desire to write a very specific kind of tune, or a song in a certain chosen genre. The push may come from instrumentation, rhythm, or just from the basic inspiration to melt faces live.


Even from this wider perspective, "Faster" was a freak of a song to write. It came about from a surprisingly persistent desire to convey a very specific mood through music; the feverish feel of driving in a car at high speeds on empty roads at night. Don't ask me why, this probably comes from my lifelong fascination with a bevy of 80's soft rock bands and early MTV music videos.

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If this gets Chris Rea going, it's good enough for me too.

Anyway, at first I didn't have anything but this basic feel I was going for - no melodies, no rhythms, no nothing. Then came the basic bass pattern, quickly followed by a very Billy Idolish guitar bridge chorus. Like is typical for me with these kinds of things, the first reaction was laughter, next came embarrassment, and then the quiet resignation that this silly little riff was actually quite necessary. And awesome in its own way.


With these couple of parts floating about, I let the song brew in its own juices for a very long time. It was maybe five years altogether in the making, making "Faster" probably our second oldest new song after "Devil May Care". I was in no hurry to get it done; actually, I went back and forth with regarding the basic ideas and melodies ridiculous or worthwhile.

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Fittingly, the chorus vocal melody came to me when I was driving, although admittedly during the daytime and at conservative speeds. I was coming back from visiting my grandmother at a hospital, which was the last time I ever saw her. The chorus chords, that had recently been going through various transformations in my head, took their final shape as I sat down in the car and came up with a bit of an unusual staccato vocal line. (Which later on would prove to be a bitch to write words to).


Again, much to the confusion of my beloved bandmates, the song was far from finished when I brought it to rehearsals. It had maybe two guitar parts, and the rest was just humming, rhythms and making a lot of unsettling gestures to try to let everyone know what I had in mind. Fortunately, they grasped the tune pretty fast and turned into something much better. Instead of keeping the pulse throughout the chorus, they made it driving and heavy at the same time, which suited the vocals perfectly.

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In the end, I'm happy to say the song ended up being very close to the mood and feel I initially was going for, even though the incubation period laster forever. 


Never resist ideas, my friends. Especially the persistent ones.


~Markus


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Token background music. Yet again:

Radiohead - King of Limbs

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