[John Taylor goes track by track on the band's new release "All You Need is Now"; this is his last installment ]
Track nine: 'Before The Rain'.
The only song on the session delivered by Simon as a 'fait accompli'. Late one night he had written it, and presented it to us as voice and accompanying acoustic guitar. Blimey, it's another drinking song, I thought. It's unusual for us to ever get to simply 'arrange' songs, unless we are covering a song of someone else's, such as our recent versioning of Bowie's 'Boys Keep Swinging'. Getting to do this with Simon's song was quite a treat. Having said that, we went through an enormous amount of layers and variables to get to the finished track you hear on the album.
The acoustic guitar was quickly drowned out by bass and drums. Roger came up with a fantastic snare part that (once again) reminded me of Russia - I see images from 'Battleship Potemkin' when I hear him play it - Nick added layers of electronics on top of that, and the trusted Roland 808 from 'The Chauffeur' was summoned. Simon had particular ideas for cello (or celli, as we learned that multiple cellos are called) which brought a gorgeous depth of feeling to the song and worked well against the electronics. The banging middle section became the bass and drums entrance. The overall effect packs quite an emotional punch. Once we started sequencing the album it became clear that this song had to be the final track.