Cathedral Wall

Introduction: During a period of insomnia, Steve Hogarth would imagine himself lying at the foot of a giant church or cathedral. Somehow, he found the building comforting, and was able to sleep there. The following extract is from an interview with Steph Perry for Rock Notes On-Line.

"It's a song about insomnia. Quite a lot of what's on this album consists of words that have come out of quite a painful period in my life, which I'm coming through now but I'm nearly there. I had a bad couple of years, and I went through a point where I wasn't sleeping at all. Cathedral Wall is about insomnia and that also turns up in These Chains and Now She'll Never Know. I guess all those three songs are inspired by the same kind of pain.

"Cathedral Wall came about on one particular night. I was lying there in the small hours of the morning, still having not managed to sleep, and I suppose more out of exhaustion than anything else my mind wandered off. And I found myself in this place, and I was lying on the soil outside with my head touching the wall of this enormous church, and I was looking up at the stones, and up beyond them into the sky of this building that stretched up into the moonlight. I don't know where it came from, you know, I wasn't dreaming it. I was just imagining it, but it was very vivid. I could actually feel the dampness of the stones and smell the soil. And then gradually I began to feel removed from everything and I went to sleep.

"So then the following night and on subsequent nights I would go there on purpose to find some kind of peace. I haven't had to resort to it in a while but it's always there for emergencies. So I wrote the song about that experience and about being able to escape from everything. It's interesting that it's a cathedral which is traditionally a place of sanctuary, because it wasn't actually a conscience thought process that took me to it. And yet, it's quite apt so maybe it was a subconscious place to go and find peace."

Lyrics: Steve Hogarth & John Helmer

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