I was preparing for my return to Los Angeles in the early summer of 2001 when the bass line for "Bridges Burning" came to me. It was one of the first times I found myself implementing a ballad feel into bass driven music, and I remember how intimate I felt playing the song alone in my bedroom studio during those last few evenings of my stay in Santa Cruz.
Before long, that bass line had become the soundtrack for my early experiences back in Los Angeles. I spent several nights consumed by lyrical possibilities for the song, filling pages of verses as I pounded them out of my head before the sun would rise. I kept only the lines I felt flowing from somewhere quiet and delicate, and "Bridges Burning" crystallized into something simple and fragile.
I remember taking the original recording of it over to my music publisher at the time for some feedback. He couldn't stand the song and wanted me to scrap it completely. I almost did, but Chris stepped in and saved it from fading into obscurity by making it his first pick for the final cuts of "High Noon." Chris also re-named the song (I had originally called it "The Day The Twilight Broke The Rain").
My work with Chris on "Bridges" was special in the sense that it is the only song on "High Noon" we didn't dramatically alter in some way or shape. Out of the songs that made it onto the record, it was the last one we worked on, and finishing it gave us a refreshing sense of completion to the project. |
