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James - Hey Ma

A number of songs on Hey Ma seem furiously personal. The Lou Reed-esque Waterfall (surely a single) recalls an occasion when Booth, during his time working with composer Angelo Badalmenti, bathed naked at Snoqualmie Falls - the spectacular waterfall complex near Seattle featured in the television drama Twin Peaks - and felt a special energy connected with the place. There's an interesting theme running through the song, of a man with too much junk in his attic and a fear that his average dream of a life may contain too much television. In Whiteboy, the lyrics appear autobiographical:

"My mum says I look like Yul Brynner, Too old for Hamlet, too young for Lear" - as Booth imagines a teenage boy, stoned at the kitchen table, listening to his mother prattle on about her fears and dreams whilst in the background TV images interject. And Bubbles is surely inspired by the birth of Booth's son: 'Wash the boy in the stream, so tenderly, Press his lips to your lips, Give him your breath, He awakes with the weight, Of the vision he holds, Sees the rent in time, Through which he must fold'. Booth admits that he wrote this song whilst "half asleep" at 5 am - aware that "the more unconscious the words are the deeper they are" - and that when the band performed the song in Edinburgh for the first time they'd only just heard of the death of Tony Wilson. It had been Tony that had given James their first break all those years ago and the song and performance felt all the more poignant and emotional because of it.
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