Russell Watson & Helen Jane Long collab on new album, “Shine”
Introduction
Every now and again, in music, we encounter partnerships that create art and sounds that are truly extraordinary. The unexpected collaboration between classical tenor Russell Watson and writer, composer, Helen Jane Long is one such moment. The pair have collaborated on a new album, “Shine”, a 7 song piece representing more than just music. “Shine”, as an album, is a deeply personal narrative woven through intricate melodies, live instrumentation, and raw, emotional storytelling.
“Shine” is a an intimate but equally universal album. There’s many ‘pop’ tones across the album as a whole, which contrasts greatly with arguably the focus release here, “Unremember”, which is reflective and has an incredible amount of depth. The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. A masterclass in creativity from both Watson & Long, blending classical training, pop sensibilities and of course, life experience. “Shine” is a journey of resilience and transformation and it was a joy for us to cover.
Interview
TTM: Why haven’t you guys got together before? Who was the genius that came up with the concept? But there wasn’t a genius, there’s a story behind it somewhere, isn’t there?
HELEN JANE LONG: In 2001 I was watching the telly, and I was watching Star Trek Enterprise, somebody singing a theme tune, which was amazing. So I stopped and thought, who be this?
And so I watched the credits, and Russell Watson’s name came up. Fast forward another 23-24 years, I’d written a song. I was in a recording studio with my audio engineer Simon, and I said about Russel’s voice, I still loved it, and I thought that, that particular style, because it wasn’t his classical style… this was more of a husky pop tones of voice. And he said, I’m working with Russell this weekend. Shall I introduce you?
RUSSELL WATSON: Simon was working the front of house at one of my concerts, and he came over to me and he said, Do you know Helen Jane Long? And to be honest with you, at the time, I said, “No, I don’t.” And then he rattled off this long list of amazing achievements that Helen has had and been involved with, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS WIZARD.” From the Mercedes Benz F1 teams, all the way through to British Airways as well. She’s wrote the theme tune for the British Airways TV commercial. It doesn’t get any better than that.
RUSSELL WATSON: So I said to Simon, “Yes, I would like to meet this very clever, very clever lady.”. Helen, turned up a few weeks later, and she had a couple of demo tracks which were sort of like just basically piano backings, and I had a listen to them. She’d wrote some lyrics, and I had a little sing to them, and I really, really liked them. Then a couple of weeks later, Helen rang me, and she said, “I’ve got another song that I think you might like. I’m going to send it you.”. It just carried on for it snowballed from there. And by the time we’d finished, we had an album’s worth of material. So off we toddled to the legendary… where did we go?
HELEN JANE LONG: We went to Abbey Road.
TTM: Was that the first time you’ve used the studios?
RUSSELL WATSON: It’s not the first time that I’ve used the studios. I’ve used studios before. It’s one of those places every time you walk through the wooden doors of Abbey Road. It’s just got history and and so much energy oozing out of the woodwork. I mean, you walk down the hallway, and the first thing you see is the picture frames with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and David Bowie, all these great British superstars everywhere that you look. It’s quite it’s an incredible place. And if you’re not motivated by that, then you’re never going to get most of it.
TTM: It obviously worked, because the album is amazing. Yeah… I think this is going to be an interview or a review where I just say nice things about you and to you!
Each song works in its own right, but it works as an album, because you can hear a story. You can hear the personalities, individually and collectively of you two coming together. Let’s talk about track one “Shine”, it’s a pop song, and it’s going back to your roots, I suppose Russell.
RUSSELL WATSON: Yeah, very much so, I mean for me “Shine” out of the whole album, is the singularly most uplifting piece of music. I think it’s a great way to kick it off as well. When we first started working on it in its embryonic stages. I absolutely loved it as soon as Helen started to layer it up and we used the London Gospel Community Choir for backing vocals. As soon as all that started to happen, the song came to light. We got into the studios, I put my headphones on, and I hadn’t really thought about how I was going to approach the song. I put my headphones on, and I just started to sing, and Helen went, “That’s it.”
TTM: It was commercial and professional, you know in terms of production values. And in fact, I must say, going through the whole album, crisp, clear, beautiful, really nice overall, it’s an almost sneaky album and I’ll tell you why I say that a bit later…
HELEN JANE LONG: A lot of thought went into that, you’re saying about the shape of the album, it wasn’t throw the tracks on in any order, we really thought about it. I missed the days where you have an album, it brings you in, it brings you up, and it brings you down, and you’re out. So you can just listen to the whole thing, rather than go back say for just “track six.” We wanted it to feel like, how we remember the old school days, exactly that feeling, and the production. We were very particular and always have been, in having live instruments, live stuff. There’s amazing, talented artists out there and musicians, use them, have them on the albums. And that’s what we did!
TTM: Following up with “Blue Skies”, we weren’t expecting that!
RUSSELL WATSON: That was one of Helen’s choices. And, I mean, it’s a song, coincidentally, that I’ve always loved as well. So it was one of those where I didn’t need convincing. You know, often when you’re working with people, and particularly record companies, you’ll get approached with a whole host of different suggestions. And a lot of the time, you know, most of the stuff kind of goes by the wayside and doesn’t ever get off the chalkboard. But with that one, straight away, Helen says, “What do you think of this?”. And she played me kind of again, a rough idea of what the arrangement was and how it was going to play out. And again, it’s in that very low, base baritone register of my voice. You’ve gone from that sort of really uplifting, very, clear pop song, and all of a sudden you sort of slide right back down into easy, smooth light feeling jazz.
I think on that track in particular for me, the music in itself is lovely, but what makes it for me, is that choral section. My word, it’s just phenomenal. It literally lifts everything. When Helen played me the first passes of what the choir had done, I was like, “Oh my god.”. This is tremendous. It really does sound absolutely fantastic.
HELEN JANE LONG: I‘m like a baby, when I hear instruments, I just cry a lot, as Russell knows. Suddenly you have, the London Community Gospel Choir doing their thing. They are so detailed and precise about everything. They love music. They want everything to be right. So they bring their own elements to it as well.
RUSSELL WATSON: Absolutely, totally in agreement with you. I mean, they did really bring something very, very special in particular for me to that track.
TTM: You two are at the top of your game, it’s like a marriage of music. “Unremembered”, you’re starting to pull at heartstrings now, aren’t you?
RUSSELL WATSON: Very much so, I think it’s a song of reflection. And I think Helen describes this really well, when she talks about what she wanted, what the essence of the song was. It’s more of a kind of retrospective look at certain things that may have happened to you at specific points in your life. Why? Why me? Why has this happened to me? Maybe a breakdown of a relationship, maybe ill health, whatever it may be, it’s a situation where you can look back retrospectively and say, “I realise why that kind of happened now I understand it”, and maybe now can be a little more flippant about it.
Particularly, I took a lot from that song because I related to it. Lot’s of different points and periods in my life, my ill health, and other different situations that I’ve been in where certain situations, I was thinking, I wish that never happened. I didn’t have to remember it. But then I think back now all these years later, and I feel that if certain things hadn’t occurred in my life, layers that have built over the years, I wouldn’t be the person that I am now.
TTM: That’s why this works as an album because it’s about your personal journey. Your background that’s brought you to this point. But there’s so many people with their own personal stories that can use this music.
RUSSELL WATSON: Exactly. A friend of mine listened to it, she was in tears. I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “Oh God.” It just reminds me of my relationship with my dad. That’s the amazing thing about music. It kind of invokes these emotions in us that I don’t think anything else, very few things in life do.
TTM: I think that’s what I meant by the word sneaky. Because you start off with this upbeat track, and slowly you descend into this reflective mood that has taken you there unexpectedly, you know, and then it doesn’t let you off the hook.
And what about the remix? That’s the single. What do you think about the remix?
HELEN JANE LONG: So that was more about where I can’t let things be. My creative brain just keeps exploding, and I felt it’d be a really lovely idea, because it’s come from having the acoustic, having Russell’s voice, having the strings, to then go, “Let’s have some fun with the electric side of it.”
So to bring the other the tracks to life in a different way, with drums, with bass, again. Ralph Salmons on the drums has played with absolutely everybody you know. He is, the golden boy of the drum world. Don Richardson on bass. We have Justin Quinn on the guitars. These are, huge figures in the music industry, but they just bring another different fun element. Having the originals, as we have on the album, but also having the electric mixes of the album tracks, you’ve got a choice. And I think they both support each other really well.
TTM: How you two are working together? How does this process happen? Are you in the studio creating the music? And then Russell comes in and joins in, adding his creative input. Or does Russell do just the vocals?
HELEN JANE LONG: We started with just a kind of an idea, a concept. We chatted lots, came up with an idea for a song. I would go away and then bury my head in ideas for piano, for strings, and then do a sort of pretty dodgy demo for Russell. We then get together at his house, and we’d play around with his vocals, we’d play around with the lyrics, really kind of settle it down, and then I go back away again. We layer it all then add his sort of demo voice for me to go away and do stuff. And that was the process.
TTM: Let’s go on to “Waiting” and “Grow Old”, because those two are the ones that finish me off.
RUSSELL WATSON: They’re the two that are meant to finish you off. I mean, “Waiting”, I found that a very difficult thing. Actually, when we’re in the studio, we’re recording it, I found it for me personally, singing the song was tough. I kind of related it to that period. I don’t like to over talk about what I went through all those years ago, but that period of time for me, was difficult.
The most difficult period during that turbulence, was my children and what they were going through with me, and how it would have been if things could have turned out different. And “Waiting”, the lyrics really epitomise that sentiment of what could have happened, and that’s why I found it so difficult.
TTM: Do you feel like you’re on a mission now because of that within your career?
RUSSELL WATSON: Since all that I’ve kind of taken stock of my time and slowed down a little bit. Previously, prior to all that, literally anything that would come through the door, I took, got to stay relevant. Got to stay relevant. Then after that, I realised I don’t need to do this. I mean, when I was ill, I was away for nearly two years, and I came back, and to my surprise, people hadn’t forgotten about me.
TTM: I’ve got to touch on the album cover. What’s going on there?
RUSSELL WATSON: The album cover represents, that movement from what would very clearly be classical and the wearing of the suit and the shirt and the tie and the shiny shoes, it represents that move from that genre to what I’m doing now, which is much more relaxed, much more easy going, and it’s very much the feel of a pop record.
HELEN JANE LONG: That was a very long thought process. It wasn’t just, let’s do that, because if you see me on stage, I never wear a ball gown, which is you’re fusing two styles together. I wear jeans on stage. So that’s, an explosion of a ball gown, because that’s not me, but it’s the combination of the two coming together.
TTM: You’re on tour later this year Russell?
RUSSELL WATSON: Yes, I am, yes, the 25th Anniversary Tour with AEG (Tickets available below).
TTM: Helen what’s in store for you?
HELEN JANE LONG: I am doing lot’s more writing. I might be making a few cheeky appearances at some of Russell’s concerts when we do some of the new stuff.