Forever Tuesday Morning
Each week we ask an artist or performer how their most famous work happened. This week, Andrew Fagan recalls making The Mocker’s 1993 hit, Forever Tuesday Morning.
t’s a love song but it’s a bit nebulous, really. It was written in different segments, with different inspiration in mind. ‘‘The chorus was written by Gareth Curtis. It was written more about a situation as opposed to a specific person or event. The thing that always makes me smile now though is the almost self-prophetic line ‘I’m not the kind that likes to be the clown in the rain for the world who must sing’.
‘‘I remember having a joke with Chris Knox in the 80s, who asked me what I was going to be doing in 30 years’ time and I said probably still being the clown and playing Forever Tuesday Morning in a pub in Katikati.
"I think we had written better songs that came out on our first album." Andrew Fagan
‘‘The title of the song comes from the chorus Curtis wrote – ‘without you my life’s gonna be forever Tuesday morning’ – and takes its inspiration from when he was working at Radio New Zealand in Bowen St, Wellington where the office clock had stopped on a Tuesday morning.
‘‘At the time we wrote it, we had lots of songs that ended up on our second album The Culprit and the King. It was just one of many. It was a bit of a lottery in terms of what songs might get through the net.
‘‘You had no idea what would appeal to radio programmers, who back then, had the power to make or break a song. In a lot of respects, everything sort of came together for that song. I think we had written better songs that came out on our first album Swear It’s True but never made it on commercial radio. Forever Tuesday Morning was a long time coming. Swear It’s True was released in 1983 and we played a lot of gigs and schools to promote the album. We needed a new single. We were signed to producer Glyn Tucker’s Reaction Records.
‘‘Trevor Reekie, who owned Pagan Records, again helped to co-produce. He was the kind of cooler side of Glynn, who has the nuts and bolts and mechanics, but not Trevor’s flair. Glyn got in Dave McCartney to do some backing vocals and he also tweaked a few of the arrangements. Glyn also got in an American whose name I forget, who had a very high voice and sang backing vocals. There were a lot of different contributors on that one song. It was classic pop and everyone was quite happy to make it such. It wasn’t meant to be anything more, stylistically.’’ – As told to Mike Alexander
The Mockers start their New Zealand tour celebrating the release of on DVD on March 1.
❚ Mockers Live