I think it took me over ten years to write this song. I know I started on the verses in 1980 after the demise of Negative Theatre. I’d read an interview with Steely Dan where they talked about mu major chords and I played the A, E, A, D, C#m, D, A, E, A pattern fingering inversions on the middle notes of all them.

Face down in a shallow bath I can feel the world and its warm and wet

Is there more to life or is that enough then the lights go out and I start to fret

And I know you’re there because I can hear you laugh and you take my head and you pull me up

Then you lead me down like an usherette you say the movie hasn’t finished yet

I had that first verse kicking around for years and may have even had a chorus of some kind but have forgotten it now. There didn’t seem to be a place for it in the Spines’ 80’s repertoire – too slow and folky maybe

And I poke around in your things a bit and you know I’m there but you pretend you don’t

And its fine at first then it starts to spit but the music doesn’t stop at that

And I’m closing in on a shallow thought that I fell in love with the girl next door

But she’s married now and got a kid and you’re the one, you’re the one I’m with

Towards the end of the decade when I lived in Holloway Road  there was a neighbour who I found very attractive and I fished out the song and wrote the lyric to the second verse. It was always going to be a song about sex and death but I still didn’t have a worthy chorus

Stop the world don’t let it pass you can hold that thought for the rest of the day

Hold your horses make them stop till the moment splits us into different waves

Then in the 90s when the Spines kicked off again and we went to record the album A Snakelike Life, I finally had the idea of using the Carlos Castaneda image of “stopping the world” as the basis for the refrain and I had put together a chord sequence – E, Am, A, E, Bm. Kind of Beatles-like and it all fitted together.

Lie down and you better wait till there’s someone kissing on your back

And its fine at first then he starts to lick but the movement doesn’t stop at that

I’m closing in on a narrow spot that you know is there but you pretend you don’t

Then the feeling’s gone before it starts better stop the world don’t let it pass

We recorded a “watered-down” version for that album. The roof of the warehouse we were using had a massive leak and we captured the sound of the waterfall for the background of the track. I sang it in a whisper, which was a mistake in hindsight.

Stop the world don’t let it pass you can hold that thought for the rest of the day

Hold your horses make them stop till the moment splits us into different waves

It’s one of the most melodic and carefully written songs I’ve ever come up with and deserves to be more than a footnote, so I’m hoping to record it again with a bigger production this time and give it the Sgt Pepper treatment it cries out for…

The Ghost of Electricity – War Stories by Jon McLeary is a new initiative at Off The Tracks, a series of stories and reflections from painter, writer and musician Jon McLeary