“I only have three minutes now, to say all that I can, and I’ll still be in the beginning, when I hear I’m at the end”
Inspiration:
It was the late 80s, and I had really long hair and on one particular day I was blow drying my hair when out of the blue the words and the melody came to me and are pretty much as they were since that day.
History:
Always a fan favourite, perhaps LBS’s most requested song after Desperate Measures, with it’s high energy and dramatics. Wish That You Were Here remains one of my favourite songs to play unplugged. All the various lineups of LBS performed the song and it was selected for the first album. When we decided to record a 3rd album, we spent a lot of time pulling apart any of the songs previously recorded as a 4 piece band and creating a new feel and a new sound as a 3 piece. I am not entirely sure when and why the slow intro came to being, but I had been adding it to the unplugged version. I also punched up the melody as my vocal range had improved (if you can imagine there was a range)
Producer’s Note:
“For sure, all of the drums, from the second Lisa rolls in, the song just takes off, you can’t help but tap your feet, and the ride cymbal work in the choruses is like a fresh stick of gum in your mouth. All of this song has interesting pieces and sections and there is this desperation in the vocals”
Recording Notes:
In the first go round of recording the album, a click track was recorded so as to ground the song to the tempo. However, after the song was finished, it meant that a valuable mono track was free, and I cleared this track to copy the kick drum to in order punch up the recording. The copying had a glitch and the result was the double track lead vocals were out of sync, but they were out of sync by exactly 4 beats, I simply had to take that as a sign and left it in and mixed around it. To take the song in a different direction, I pulled the recorded Gibby and left just the acoustic and clean Tele in. Lisa had a fabulous roll leading into verse 2 so I left the drums muted for Verse 1 and let the song kick in at that time. I am really pleased with all the little tricks and oddities that made the final mix of Wish, so much so that I felt it was the required ending to the album of which so much time, energy and love had been spent.
I am very proud of this song, perhaps because the lyrics are the most true and genuine to my life and I really do wish that you were here.