From John Howard's E.P., 'Front Room Fables', this track - like all the others on the E.P. - was recorded in the early '70s on an old Grundig tape recorder at John's parents' home in Lancashire. It has been restored, having been discovered on a reel-to-reel tape which was falling apart, and cleaned up as much as possible for commercial release. "I have a trunk-full of reel-to-reel tapes, all recorded in the early '70s, most of them demos I recorded shortly after arriving in London in 1973/4. They are all mostly released now, on the album 'Sketching The Landscape'. But there are a a couple of tapes which I made some very rough demos on back in '70 - '72, before I left Lancashire to settle in London. I recorded them at my parents' house on an ancient upright piano, many of the strings broken - hardly any bass notes left in fact - and simply propped up a mike on the music stand in front of me and sang into it. These were all songs I had written to perform at the various folk clubs where I was regularly performing around the Manchester area at that time. By the time I got to London in 1973 I had several newer songs which I concentrated on and forgot about the ones I'd written in the earlier '70s, such as this one. "I've had all the reel-to-reels transferred to CD, to prevent the songs being lost as the tapes decay through the ravages of time - many of them were in pieces in the tape box. And having gone through them all, I've found five songs which I thought were a. good enough to release, and b. in good enough condition to put them out there. "Three of the songs on those tapes I did re-write, re-arrange, re-record and release the new versions, namely A Kind of Aching, a 1971 song which, remade and remodelled, is now featured on my 2005 album As I Was Saying, plus 'A 1970 Song' and 'A 1970 Song 2 (Pauline's Song)' which I re-did for the 2009 E.P. Songs For A Lifetime. Those were songs which still needed creative work in my opinion, they weren't quite finished. Whereas the songs I'm releasing on 'Front Room Fables', while sonically they are a little 'challenged' through wear and tear over 40-plus years, sounded complete as compositions. I would have been performing them as such in the folk clubs and Uni's around Manchester at the time. I also liked the performances on these demo recordings too, and don't feel I can re-create whatever it was that happened during those afternoon sessions at my parents' house in Ramsbottom. Sometimes something gels, something sparks, which one can never re-create, no matter how hi-tech one's recording equipment is now. "There's also the fact that I was 16 going on 17 going on 18 when I wrote and demo'd these songs, and, again, with all the best will in the world, at 60 years of age one can never get that vocal naivety, the sound of a teenager with stars in his eyes, which I can hear all over these recordings. "At that time, I had discovered Bob Dylan in a big way. I had bought all his L.P.s in 1970/1971 as well as a couple of Dylan bootlegs. The two songs I listened to all the time then were Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands, and a track from the bootleg 'Seems Like A Freeze-Out', called She's Your Lover Now. It was recorded in early '66 for the Blonde On Blonde album but the session obviously broke down at the end, and for some reason Bob didn't attempt another take. You can hear both those songs influencing 'My Time Will be No Others', the descending chords in the opening are right out of Sad Eyed Lady and the overall feel of the song is a combination of that and She's Your Lover. I was what I think of now a 'fledgling songwriter' back then, finding my own style through listening and interpreting others, out of which eventually comes one's own style. Like learning to walk or talk as a young child, we need something or someone to show us the way. There are also touches of Roy Harper in this song too, and he was another singer-songwriter I had fallen in love with in 1970. "Within a year of recording this demo I was writing things like Kid In A Big World and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, both of which display a much more individual style, the Dylan influence is virtually gone by then, I see songs like 'My Time Will Ne No Others' as my starting point, my early steps, for songs like Kid In A Big World, it was a process I had to go through. I hope those who hear this and the other tracks on the E.P. will enjoy this 'fledgling songwriter's' tentative steps!" - JH 'Front Room Fables' was released in the summer of 2013 is available to download from iTunes, eMusic, Amazon and all other good download stores.

• published: 21 May 2013
• views: 250