I've always been interested and enjoyed some of the 80's works of Genesis and their alumni, usually involving records with an equal distribution of fantasticly brooding and sinister songs and absolute wank in the form of endless ballad crap.

This one, falls under the former. From Mike Rutherford and his Mechanic's first album, is indeed Silent Running. The other hit from that record "All I need is a Miracle" was a definite "miss" with me. This however, is fantastic.

For my cover of it, I elected to swap out a lot of the keyboard elements to guitar. Truth be told, in the original Mike basically plays the guitar solo and that's about it. Everything else is keyboard, bass synth and drum machine. I put the main melody onto guitar and the bass synth to be on a bass guitar. Sadly, the MIDI I used as reference didn't include the long keyboard intro the studio cut has, so that's absent here. I elected to make the bass guitar run through a distortion peddle as well, to help support the bottom end with what is otherwise a very lacklustre bassline in the song, as well as because it sounded very nifty.

This is mix is also the one I'm calling the "Contemporary Hard Rock" mix, as I removed the bulk of the keyboards from the song except for the chorus part (a technique I pinched from Michael Bolton). It's the mix I prefer since the verses are softer and harder, and the choruses and main melody is more potent. In the original mix, I had a second drum track, played by Walter on the Simmonds, accompanying Tommy's drums, in this mix, only Tommy's drums are in it. There is an AOR mix with just Walter's, more keys and less guitars and the "album" mix which has everything.

This was recorded long before "Two Thousand And Eighteen" was worked on and is thus part of "Esters of Wood Rosins".

I hope you like it!

Song composed by Mike Rutherford and B. A. Robertson. Origionally recorded by Mike + The Mechanics in 1985