Spaniard

Martin's notes: I fell in love with London the first time I visited and one of the initial reasons was the Spaniards Inn in Hampstead. I couldn’t afford to buy a drink in there and have actually never set foot in the place but the first time I passed it in a car I was smitten. I wanted to write a song called ‘Spaniard’ immediately. The lyrics are inspired by Richard Brautigan. I wanted to write simple direct lines that had a conversational tone. There is a dedication in the front of one of his books (It might be ‘The Abortion’) and it says something like ‘come on in - read novel - it’s on the table’. I really liked that and tried to write the song as if it were a note left on a kitchen table. That’s the form; the content is the usual angst. We recorded some kids playing in the yard outside Protocol studios for the guitar intro; which is basically me trying to play a riff that Hendrix plays during his last song at Woodstock. The producer, Ed Bueller, had the idea of adding a trumpet over the end, an idea that would prove very significant over the following years. A guy called Roddy Lorimer played it. We thought he was the coolest man we had ever met.