Only the Moon

Hello,

I’m Amy and this is my newsletter Why Sing Goodbye Songs where I share stories and songs from the archive of my dad, the late singer-songwriter Pete Scott.

If you just want to hear the song without reading the story, click here.

I’ve had a few new subscribers recently, so for anyone who doesn’t know: so far I’ve shared the songs Armageddon, California, Emily’s Eyes, and Twilight is The Time. I was also on the Folk My Life podcast back in July talking about Pete’s music, which is still available to listen to here.

As many of you will no doubt have noticed over the years, Pete was very modest about his talents. For someone with such ability, he was surprisingly hard on himself, and had a real tendency to look back on past projects with a critical eye, pointing out the things he wished he had done differently. I knew this about him and would laugh at him about it, especially when he did it with Songs To Sing & Jokes to Tell, which I believe to be the best album he ever made.

For some reason, even though I knew about his tendency to be overly critical about his past work, I always believed him when he told me that the songs from his younger days weren’t very good. I know a lot of subscribers to this newsletter have been fans since the 1970s and might be offended by this revelation! But Pete always told me his first two albums weren’t very good and that he didn’t get into his stride as a songwriter until he was older. And, foolishly, I believed him.

Looking back, there was a moment where I got a glimpse of what would happen to me after Pete passed away, although I didn’t know it at the time. Back in 2010, Pete played a gig called The Polite Room in the bar at the Tyneside Cinema. It was run by Ben Holland, who did the artwork for Brand New Smile. That night during the set someone called out a request. They asked Pete if he ever played “Wallpaper” anymore. I had never heard of this song before. Pete laughed, and truthfully looked a little panicked, before revealing that he hadn’t played that song in about thirty years. Then he surprised the audience, me, and probably also himself, by saying he would give it a go. He played the whole song.

For those of you who are familiar with Wallpaper, you can imagine how flabbergasted I was when he just pulled it out of nowhere like that. I couldn’t believe he’d managed to play something note and word perfect (I’m sure he would tell us he’d made lots of mistakes) when he hadn’t played it in decades. But more than that, I couldn’t believe he’d written such a brilliant song, never released it, and let it fall out of his set and be completely forgotten. As anyone who has been following this project for a while knows: it turns out he did this a lot.

The song received so much enthusiasm that night that Pete brought it back into his set and released it for the first time on his final album, Sweet Dreams of Contentment in 2016. We were really pleased when, a few years later, footage of Pete playing the song in 1980 was included on the DVD extras of the Jake Thackray TV show.

Back in 2010, I thought that he’d written one great song that had accidentally fallen out of his rotation and been forgotten and that it had been revived by a request at a gig. What I know now (and what many of you have known all along!) is that he was a truly superb songwriter in his youth and a huge number of amazing songs from those days had been forgotten. Forgotten by Pete, at least, if not by some of you.

Now that I’ve uncovered so many recordings, I can see that Pete’s negativity about his early work was just the same modesty and perfectionism that I witnessed in relation to his later albums. It’s such a pleasure for me to hear them and to be able to share them with you all now.

Today I’m sharing one of my favourites of the songs I’ve found so far: Only the Moon. This was recorded in 1980. Click play below to listen (opens in a new window if you’re reading this on email)

You can stream the song here for free or download it for £1 (or more, if you’re feeling generous!)

Thanks for reading and see you next time,

Amy

P.S. We have Ben Holland to thank for bringing Wallpaper back because he organised the gig where the request was made. If you’re not familiar with Ben’s work, he’s an artist who makes hand drawn designs depicting Northern England, which you can find here. He’s also in a band called The Hightowns who might be up your street if you’re the sort of person who likes Pete Scott, which I presume you are! You can check them out by clicking here.