The Waterboys - This Is the Sea
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 16.09.1985
"Music passes, music prevails, makes the string tremble; music storms, music remains, and the singer with it."
Or, as The Waterboys frontman Mike Scott sang: "I have heard the big music, And I’ll never be the same."
This was the spirit of music that rested upon the Scottish folk-rock band "The Waterboys", whose third album, "This Is the Sea", was released on 16.09.1985, the same day as Kate Bush’s fifth album, which I also wrote about.
The band’s leader, Mike Scott, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His mother, an English teacher who raised him alone from the age of ten, introduced him to the qualities of English literature at an early age, a detail that probably helped him write songs that are ambiguous, sometimes difficult to decipher, and often written in the second person.
Scott was interested in music from an early age and began learning guitar at twelve. Listening to Hank Williams planted in him the desire to become a musician.
The first band he formed was "Karma", influenced by the music of "The Beatles", Bob Dylan and David Bowie. Speaking of Bowie, anyone who has heard the band’s great hit "The Whole of the Moon" many times may feel certain that Bowie’s voice can be heard during the final half-minute. It is not Bowie, but Karl Wallinger, then a member of the band and later the founder of "World Party".
After beginning studies in English literature and philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, Scott became interested in the emerging British punk scene, particularly "The Clash" and Patti Smith. Scott and guitarist Allan McConnell formed "The Bootlegs", which later changed its name to "Another Pretty Face".
All these musical incarnations brought Scott to the realization that he wanted a band shaped in his own image, and so "The Waterboys" came into being in 1983. Over the years, he was joined in shifting lineups by Steve Wickham, Anthony Thistlethwaite, Karl Wallinger, and many other musicians.
They took the term "Big Music" from the title of a song on their second album, "A Pagan Place". After two early albums centered on post-punk and new wave, work began on the third. Scott started writing its songs in the spring of 1984.
Over roughly two months, between 35 and 40 songs poured out of him. Alongside the writing, Scott created the guitar and piano arrangements. On 10.04.1984, the first song intended for the album was performed live: "Trumpets", a direct love song containing one of its most romantic lines: "I want to be with you, when to be with you is the same as being you."
Here Scott expresses uncompromising love and the desire to unite with his partner as though the two were a single being. It reminded me of the famous verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
Scott entered "Park Gates" Studios in Hastings with producer and recording engineer John Brand, joined by Anthony Thistlethwaite, Karl Wallinger, Chris Whitten, and Roddy Lorimer. For Wallinger, this would be his final recording with "The Waterboys". He left afterward to form "World Party".
Scott spoke of Wallinger with great admiration, saying that without his ability to play so many instruments, the album might still have existed, but it would have sounded far less impressive. On several songs Scott added a drum machine, using the Wall of Sound technique associated with Phil Spector.
On the album, Scott writes about love, spirituality, British politics, renewal and rebirth, as well as consideration for those around us, as heard in "Don’t Bang the Drum".
Scott wrote the great hit "The Whole of the Moon" at the age of 26. According to him, it was not written about one particular person, but intended to illustrate how much more there is to learn beyond anything we can imagine. He chose to address, in the second person, a figure possessing greater knowledge or wisdom.
Scott was thinking of people whose stars shone brightly and then faded quickly, such as Syd Barrett and Jimi Hendrix, who displayed extraordinary talent but burned out and left us too soon. He made it clear that the song was not written about C. S. Lewis, although Lewis had been an important spiritual inspiration from his childhood and throughout his life.
In the song, Scott pays tribute to musician Roddy Lorimer, whom he described as sunlight breaking through the clouds. Anthony Thistlethwaite lifts the piece even higher with an eruptive saxophone solo, reinforced by the sound of fireworks passed through an echo machine.
Scott said the song began with his youth and the playful spirit he carried at the time. In his twenties, wanting to impress a new girlfriend, he told her that writing a song was easy. Spotting a crescent moon in the sky, he pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote the contrast between one person seeing the crescent and another seeing the whole moon. She was impressed, and he continued developing the lyrics at a hotel and later at his London home, where he also composed the piano part.
On "The Pan Within", Scott is once again ambiguous and not entirely clear. The song is based on the Greek god Pan, functioning partly as a form of meditation and partly as a sensual invitation to sex.
In 1980s England, it was almost impossible not to take a swipe at the prime minister and her Thatcherism, as well as at drug addiction. On "Old England", Scott turns national decline into a bleak portrait of a sick country and refuses to separate the political, the social, and the personal.
On the closing title track, "This Is the Sea", Scott leaves the past behind and seeks to choose action over passivity, allowing the long-awaited change to arrive.
For Mike Scott, this album represented the fulfillment of the purpose for which he had become a musician. He achieved what he had set out to accomplish with the Big Music sound, while the next album would already take a different direction, turning toward the Irish traditional influences that would shape "Fisherman’s Blues".
For listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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