The SPELLBOUND Story

In the summer of 1991 I was running a small studio called ‘The Sunday School’ which was at the Elephant and Castle in South London. It was there that Moth became a band. I had written some fabulous songs like Good Time and Slip and Slide and with a re-worked cover of Speed Queen by Deep Purple. I had the basis of our first recording session. I had asked a friend of mine called Rick to record the drum tracks for me, Rick was at that time playing for an artist called Q-Lazarus but liked my stuff so with Jon Brooder the ex Bass player from Lightning Strike a Late 80’s Clashesque Punk band and Cecelia who was at the time married to Dave from Lightning Strike for passport reasons. Cecelia who worked at the famous ‘Intrepid Fox’ in Soho as a 6 foot Swedish bar maid in a rubber dress asked me to write some songs and make her the Female Axl Rose. I duly obliged with Good Time and Slip and Slide our first tunes. Me and Rick went in to the studio and we laid down drum tracks for the aforementioned tunes which I had written with Cecelia in mind and had collaborated with her on the lyrics and Melodies of our fledgling Rock enterprise. The three track demo we recorded was Fab and we were up and running. Soon after our session and then in Rehearsals Jon started to play the riff from Spellbound on his Bass, which I thought was great, and having learnt to play the complicated riff components and got it up to speed, me and Jon agreed I should write a song based around that Riff. At the time I would record all my song ideas on to a Dictaphone something I took everywhere, although I can’t be sure but I used to create the Title and chorus or ‘Hook’ first and so I would have come up with ‘Spellbound’ sitting on a toilet somewhere, I would then go to my studio and work with the Title and it’s scanning components and start to add a chord progression to it hence the Chorus “Spellbound the shapes fly sucked up in my mind” Spellbound we race through the last glimpse of time” Saved by the breath that you lick from my cup” “Space gave the card as the Joker shot up” “Shot up!! With the chorus in place I needed a Verse and Middle section to put it all together so using the pace of the main riff I found some descending chords that fitted in nicely at the same tempo as the riff. The chords would dictate the rhythm of the lyrics and the melody, which fell nicely in place with the Chorus. I had the song nailed but needed an instrumental section so I set about figuring out an upward section on the guitar that complimented the decending chords of the verse and chorus and created the punctuated rhythm section for an 8 bar section until we burst into another power riff of demonic proportions that linked up with the main riff again and into the last verse which leads into the extended Spellbound outro and The heavily accented Finale. Spellbound is a fabulous song with loads of Great riffs and a powerful vocal that gets everybody shouting “Shut Up” instead of “Shot Up” It was the first song we had written from a Bass riff idea and playing it live was an unbelievable Buzz and gave us all a great sense of achievement. We recorded Spellbound late summer 1991 and it is the recording that is going to appear on our album ‘The Moth Prophecies’