The Making of ‘This Is Not The End’ (the soundtrack)

The first book I had published was ‘Capturing the Wry’, a musical memoir of my first band The Irony Board. It came with a free 15-song CD of our studio recordings. It seemed a logical idea, the reader being able to hear the songs that were being described in the story. They wouldn’t have any other way of hearing them, unless the reader had known me when I was 22 and bought the demo tapes.

However, for me the soundtrack idea maybe has its roots a bit further back in time. My family used to go camping in Alderney. It’s a small island, with very little to do. That was largely the joy of it, there being very little to do. Looking for some new musical ideas to keep me busy, I created a compilation CD of fictional artists, signed to a fictional record label based on the very real island. I posted copies to the various family addresses, with a fictional press release, anonymously. I waited for the copies to arrive, and then the ruse to be rumbled. For some it was rumbled sooner than others… And then I wrote the story of the search for the fictional record label and its fictional artists. And posted copies through their doors on Christmas Eve.

You might get to read it at some point.

The curation of songs to accompany stories is nothing new. Nick Hornby’s ‘31 songs’ had a CD with it. I’m sure that wasn’t the first, but it was the first time I’d considered it. Magnus Mills’ ‘The Forensic Records Society’ did similar, but again they were  other people’s songs.

I’m not naive enough to think I’m the only writer to have created a soundtrack to a novel, but it’s certainly not a routine thing. When ‘The Broken Bottle’ was published I enjoyed writing and recording the fictional demo tape from the story. For ‘This Is Not The End’ though I wanted to go further.

The soundtrack contains ten separate pieces of music. Two of these have lyrics, eight do not. I took inspiration from songs I wrote either at the time Wilf finds himself at University, or that I wrote about that time. The lead track ‘Scotswood Terrace’ is about any of the streets that lead down to the river Tyne from the old Roman Road in the west of Newcastle. I lived on one of them. An instrumental variation of the song appears later. The last song also has words; ‘This Is Not The End’ is an outlier, originally recorded in 2009ish and nothing to do with the time or location, but definitely in keeping with the narrative. Again, an instrumental variation appears elsewhere.

For the remaining instrumentals, some are based on the first song I wrote for The Irony Board, very much in keeping with the time and place. Indeed, one of the events in the story features in the lyrics. Another couple are based on the song ‘TLLS’, an early Broken Down Lorry recording whose initials stand for Tender Little Love Song. It’s a song Wilf could have written. One of the tracks meanwhile features the inimitable and much-loved voice of Mike Neville, local newsreader on both BBC and ITV regional broadcasts.

It’s very much the intention that the soundtrack adds to the reading experience of ‘This Is Not The End’, although I suppose that should go without saying…

You can get the soundtrack free with purchases of physical and digital copies of the book from www.brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com

You can also listen to it on streaming services like Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/1BKGuKSiDsKzeYZdIrHgpD?si=XjzN0f0vTzOs4dOfheBywg

(The Making of) This Is Not The End

 

The ringing of an unanswered telephone. The clink of a dropped spanner. The muffle of footsteps, unidentified in the dark. The flapping of a letterbox. The unsolicited door knock, close to midnight. The wailing sirens closing in on the park. The thud of a back, thrust against a wall.

We started Wilf's journey with the awkward, spotty teenager from Lancashire falling in love for the first time, beginning to dream about pop superstardom and having his first real awakening to the harsh unfairness of the real world. That was 'The Broken Bottle'.

A year or so later he was enjoying his first taste of parent-free adulthood in the deep south of Eire. Admittedly, it was still under the watchful eye of his aunt but that didn't stop him from getting unwittingly mixed up in the messy complexities of other people's lives. That was 'How Green Are Your Eyes'.

Now we find Wilf in the North East of England, without any responsible adults to guide him along his way and, frankly, life doesn't ever get easier, does it? This is 'This Is Not The End'.
All three stories are very loosely based on some sort of reality. It's hard to write about things without having at least some semblance of fact upon which to base things.

Let's get this clear from the start though: I am not Wilf, nor is Wilf me. However I did grow up in Lancashire, spend a summer in Cork, and go to Polytechnic in Newcastle. That much is true. Indeed, some of the things that happen in 'This Is Not The End' are very much based on my experiences in the north east; others, meanwhile, are definitely forged in the mind. Which are which? I'll let you decide.

The cover is designed once again by Ruby Hartley, and captures many cameos from within the book - see how many you can find once you've read it. Various shots of the cover provide the visual content for the song 'Scotswood Terrace', the video for which is below. I wrote 'Scotswood Terrace' a few years after leaving the North East behind, with my late teens and early twenties very much in mind. It could be a great place to be when things were going well; when they weren't it was far from ideal.

Since completing 'This Is Not The End' I have found myself, in idle moments, wondering what will become of Wilf when he becomes a fully-fledged adult. 'The Broken Bottle' was always supposed to be the first book in a trilogy. Now I'm not so sure ...