The Waterboys 'Book Of Lightning' album

A funny thing happened as Mike Scott was compiling the songs that comprise the new Waterboys disc, Book of Lightning: Without really intending to, he made a Waterboys album that is sort of everything to every fan, somewhat of a best of both worlds disc. Yes, Book of Lightning is indeed a new Waterboys album, full of new recordings, but it’s sort of an elixir of Mike Scott compositions, a combination of new songs, recent songs and a group of finally realized songs and ideas/fragments from the groups fabled Fisherman’s Blues era of two decades ago. It’s a collection of music that has coalesced in all sorts of curious and interesting ways, some even through the admiration of adoring peers in the U.K. and Canada.

What unifies the disc is that, save for one track, all the songs were recorded live in the studio, with minimal overdubs and Scott recording his vocals as the band members recorded their parts. It’s a practice that has become sadly old-fashioned in an era when home recording technology has made leaps and bounds. But it routinely is one that pays off. How do you make a classic record? Record it in a classic manner. It’s why Book of Lightning breathes the same spirit as the Waterboys seminal recordings. Scott feeds off the musicians: his voice is uplifted, as is the playing of those around him.

“I love the magic of performance in the studio,” he says. “For me, that’s my favorite way of making a record. In 2005, we put out a two-CD, remastered version of Fisherman’s Blues, and the second disc was all unreleased songs from that session. As I was working on that, listening to all those songs, I was struck by how great it is to play live in the studio.”

The bulk of Book of Lightning was recorded at the former Island Records studio (renamed Sarm West) in London, birthplace of iconic recordings by Bob Marley and Led Zeppelin. “When we were in this studio, you can feel it. It’s a bit like the old Power Station in New York: You walk into the room and you can feel it in the bones of the building that magic has been made there.”

Indeed, critics have agreed thus far in the U.K., where the album was released earlier this year. The Sun called the disc “breathtaking,” while The Observer called it “uncommonly beautiful music filled brimful with poetry, melody and humanity.” Uncut: “The soul and the fury of Dylan combined with the unabashed lyricism of Patti Smith to make a big rock noise that is powerful, prescient and timeless.”

As with each recent Waterboys record, Scott began the album-making process by turning to his binder of unused songs, a book that has amassed some 150 titles over the years: “Every time I make a record, I check out that book, and I go through what I’ve got and think, ‘Will this fit? Will that fit?’ Does this one want to be recorded?’ And I generally get a couple of songs from that book for every record that I make.”

From that binder came “Strange Arrangement,” one of several poetic cause and effect songs on the record that charts the impact that the choices one man has made have made on his life. “It’s Gonna Rain,” another page from the songbook brought to life, charts Western capitalist culture: “I think it has its own doom built in it,” says Scott. “So when I sing in the song, ‘It’s gonna tumble, crumble/Wasn’t built to last at all,’ that’s what I’m addressing. It’s a culture based on acquisition, and the individual, but we humans are spiritual beings, and we need spiritual fruit, spiritual sustenance.”

Like “It’s Gonna Rain,” the stark, confrontational “Sustain” (an acoustic highlight of the band’s recent shows) began taking shape some seven years ago, but was only recently finished, in a rather unusual manner: Having struggled to get a proper studio recording in years past, Scott finally finished the song with help from a group of fans and fellow musicians in Vancouver, Great Aunt Ida. After hearing and falling in love with their take on his classic “Fisherman’s Blues,” Scott turned to Great Aunt Ida’s driving force, singer/arranger Ida Nilsen, for a new arrangement of the song, and eventually flew from his home in Scotland to Vancouver to record the Book of Lightning version with Great Aunt Ida.

“I sent the song off to Ida, and I said, you can do anything you like with the music, but don’t change the lyric. She followed that guidance. And by the miracle of MP3, she sent me the song back in an email a week later, and she had done a really clever job of just subtly changing the arrangement and some of the chords and she added an instrumental middle eight, and I really loved it. And I thought, ‘Instead of me copying what she’s done and trying to do it with my own musicians here, why not go to Vancouver where they’re based and record it with her band.’ So that’s what I did, and they definitely brought something very different and unique to it.”

Book of Lightning’s opener, “The Crash of Angel Wings,” also came about through collaboration with a fan and peer. After British singer/songwriter Thea Gilmore, contacted Scott about possibly writing together, Scott wrote the song for her. “It didn’t work for her, so I did it myself. Perhaps I wouldn’t have written it, if I had been writing it for myself. The process of writing for another artist frees something.”

“She Tried to Hold Me,” and “Nobody’s Baby Anymore” were each older song fragments that finally blossomed into finished songs. That fragment of the former, and the final three tracks on the record, were all written during the Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues sessions in Ireland in the mid 1980s. In the spiritual “You in the Sky,” Scott asks “You alone of all/You in the sky/I wanna know why clouds come in between you and I.” Says Scott, “I believe there’s a god, but why do I feel separate from God? Why is there distance between me and spirit, why is there suffering in the world?”

“You in the Sky” was first recorded twenty years ago (and even issued on the expanded, remastered version of Fisherman’s Blues), yet he yearned for the song to be recorded in a more humble fashion. (“The original was too bombastic, even triumphalist,” he says.)

Twenty years ago he passed on the song “Everyone Takes a Tumble,” as it was too similar sounding to “Fisherman’s Blues.” “It’s a song that has privately evolved over the years, and, finally, I began playing it live with the Waterboys in 2006. I just fancied playing it and it worked out so well and [fiddle player] Steve [Wickham] and [organist] Richard [Naiff] developed this wonderful arrangement. It’s very much an old Waterboys sound, the Fisherman’s Blues sound, but I figure if I’m gonna rip off a band, it might as well be my own band.”

Lastly, the “The Man With the Wind at His Heels”—the title of which was inspired by a term the poet Paul Verlaine used to describe Arthur Rimbaud—is from the same era. What was originally a 10-minute epic has cut by two-thirds into a humble recording that Scott did at home, using Apple’s Garageband software. It’s another cause and effect song about how people’s choices affect the outcome of their lives. It’s a very simple, little miniature of a song. And I really like how it came out.”

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1958, Scott was a just nine when he began falling in love with radio singles by the likes of the Beatles, Tommy James and the Shondells and the Hollies. He began writing songs at the age of 13, and formed his first band two years later. By 1979, he was a full-time musician. Four years later, the Waterboys would issue their self-titled debut, earning a growing fanbase and critical respect with a trio of albums released in as many years: The Waterboys, A Pagan Place and This is the Sea, all of which culminated in an epic songwriting and record period in Ireland that yielded the then-sprawling group’s breakthrough, Fisherman’s Blues, a beloved group of songs heralded for their blend of traditional folk, Irish and Celtic music with rock. Room to Roam followed in 1990 and Dream Harder three years later.

In 1995, Scott released Bring Em All In, the first of two humble, spiritually centered solo albums (followed in 1997 by Still Burning) that charted his journey as a man and as a songwriter. “Because I was going through these spiritual experiences, it felt appropriate to stand under my own name, just on my own, onstage, and really showing myself. I enjoyed that. That was a powerful time for me. But I can’t imagine going back to doing Mike Scott records. I tried it out for a few years and it was okay, but I much prefer working under the Waterboys name. It’s gotten something bigger than me in it. There’s an extra aura around the name, an extra magic.”

Scott resurrected the Waterboys in 2000 with A Rock in the Weary Land, followed in 2003 by Universal Hall. Through the years, Scott says he’s become a better singer and performer, but the very core of his writing has never shifted: “When I sit down and write, I want to make something that turns me on. I want to get somewhere I never got before. I want to make something that I consider to be magic. That’s always been the same.

“In terms of Book of Lightning, to me, I consider it like a songbook, a Mike Scott songbook. I could almost have called it Songbook, because it’s a couple of new songs and then old songs I consider best from the stuff that I haven’t used before. And I think it’s one of my strongest ever collections of songs, I’m very proud of it.”

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The Waterboys - Book Of Lightning