Tell us, Tony, what the song is about...
This is a song about a once very famous kind of night club singer, and it's just... It's quite a sad song, actually. It's a very fickle industry, this. And one minute you're up there and everyone loves you. And they think you're the most wonderful person, and they wanna come and see you, and they buy your records. And then on the other hand, you know, the good life comes, you get into the booze a little bit, you know. Things don't go quite so well: before you know it, you're out in the streets.
'Beneath the shadows', 'she stands alone'... What sort of picture are you painting with these words?
The thinking behind it was, it was more like a sort of Parisian type, sort of. She's probably gone from some very grand kind of theatre - opera house. And some of the streets round there are obviously incredibly old, narrow. And there are little clubs. Paris has always been associated with jazz clubs and stuff. And it's just sort of painting the picture, you know: she's standing in the doorway and, you know, she was just wandering, wandering the sort of streets, wondering about where... where her life went. She's probably about 58, somewhere around there. Probably wears too much make-up.
How much of you is there in the song, Tony? Do you think you've paid the price for your fame?
I think everybody does to a certain extent. You know, from the age of 19 up until the age of 30 it was full on all the time. But then you come out of that. And I took about a year or so off to just try and think about what I wanted to do. But you do start to worry about - is that, was that it? What do I do now?
'Oh how the stars can sometimes fall'... What exactly did you mean by this line, Tony?
Stars have a habit of falling sometimes, whether they be in the sky or whether they be pop stars or movie stars. She loves the business. She loved it when she was getting all this attention and stuff. And then obviously, you know, nobody really wants her anymore. You know, the love affair that maybe the public had with her is now completely over. And she probably plays her old CD's - well, it wouldn't be CD's, they're old albums, they're vinyl albums - and probably plays them over and over again and thinks, 'Why don't they love me anymore? 'Cos I'm still great, I'm still great', you know.