Chapter 13 – Will she, won’t she?

After we finished recording ‘Did you see her’ and ‘Good for nothing‘ we recorded one more song, called ‘No Sun Shines.’ This song became a favourite of Muff’s later down the line. I wrote and recorded this song at home with Andy; we recorded a basic version before roping in our super talented pianist friend Jon Pickup to record a piano part over the top of mine. We kept it simple and stripped down, allowing the vocals and song to shine through.

Once I had finished this particular trio of songs, it was time to go back and play them for Muff. He had sent me away to record some of my own songs – so he could hear the kind of music I wrote alone, and the style of music in which I gravitated towards. At this stage my focus wasn’t on writing ‘hits songs,’ I just needed to give him a good indication of where I wanted to go musically.

‘No Sun Shines’

I was more nervous about this second meeting that I had been of the first. If he didn’t like these songs, or indeed the style of them, then there was a good chance he’d tell me to pack my bags and the whole opportunity would be lost to me; all because I wouldn’t play nice with the pop direction. I didn’t want to avoid pop music all together – I just wanted to approach it from a slightly edgier, alternative angle. So the day finally came and I went to meet Muff at the office.

“Oh I’m nervous!” I exclaimed to him as I sat down, clutching hold of my CD with white knuckles.

“Ah don’t be daft, give it here” … he took the CD from my clammy hands and fed it into the stereo. I lit a ciggie, swivelled on my chair and tried to remain composed – what I really wanted to do was roll into a ball and rock back and forth in the corner of the room.

He didn’t even pick up a magazine this time. While ‘Good for nothing’ was exploding out of the system, I could see Muff out of the corner of my eye – he looked a little gobsmacked, though in a good or bad way, I couldn’t quite tell. “Is that you??” he pointed to the system “the same girl that sang ‘Footsteps’? ”

“Uh huh” I nodded, and wondered if it was a too much of a jump, too soon.

When ‘No sun shines’ had faded out, Muff sat back in his chair “Well, they’re certainly different, but they’re great! I can see how you might have been feeling conflicted if this is the kind of music you want to make.” I felt a flood of relief, I hadn’t blown it.

Muff swivelled round to face me, “OK well the offer still stands, we’d love to sign you. You can keep writing on your own at home, and we can also find some great writers for you to collaborate with. I’d still like to keep ‘Footsteps’ and ‘Raw’ on the table, but in order to move forward we will need to get you out of your contract with Jud … we can put you in touch with a good lawyer to get that ball rolling but we can’t sign you until that’s all sorted.”

I had already called Jud after that first meeting with Muff, and I had told him about the Sony terms. Jud was gutted, understandably so. He had worked just as hard as I had for this – the only saving grace here being that at this stage Sony still wanted to use the material we wrote together, but our partnership, and him being my producer would have to come to an end. Initially I thought we could resolve all this with a simple conversation – perhaps that was naive, though knowing what I know now, I wish we had tried –  because as soon as lawyers get involved you’re looking at a whole other beast. I won’t be going to go into detail in regards to our contract as that is between Jud and I, but the following 9 months were going to be incredibly costly and draining for us both – enter, my new floppy-haired lawyer, Stephen.