Jimmy. The Story...

The Debut Single. This song has followed me around everywhere!!! It was written across a 6 month period (like most of my tracks) and started around Summer 2008. I still have the original phone recordings, about 15 of them, titled 'jimmy what', 'jimmywhat14' 'jimmywhatusethisbit'. haha this drove one of my best mates crazy at the time, i was stood in the kitchen with the guitar, which I definitely couldn't play in 2008. I remember bouncing up and down on the first B chord, thinking this sounds quite fun and weirdly summery. upto this point i was all about the piano, everything was very dark and melodic and ballady. The guitar felt like an amazing new tool with energy in it. after the B chord thing I then jumped down to the low E chord, and it felt really dramatic. I was thinking, these 2 chords i can play, and if i do this little reggae jumpy thing it sounds cool. literally then i just burst into an early version of the chorus. who knows where that came from, I just sang the melody to 'Jimmy what Jimmy what Jimmy what you got for me'...it wasn't Jimmy tho. cos I can still see the minute i was searching for a name in my head, and i remembered my dad always called me Jimmy as a kid, he'd say 'alrite wee jimmy', him being Glaswegian and all. so that's where i got Jimmy from. I thought it fit pretty well with my lala melody, and i knew it could be quite strong for a title. So now i had a chorus. this is the point where my mate wanted to kill me. I must have gone round the chorus 100 times in my kitchen. I thought I was in on my own though, until she came down an hour after and said that F***** song is stuck in my head! Result!!!!! it was in mine too!

Then i needed versus, and a story. I knew i wanted to make it bigger than anything else i had ever done. i wanted descriptive words and scenes. something that would play like a film in your head. The first verse happened shortly after and i had half a song, to be honest i hadnt grasped the concept yet. I find that the ideas are easy, but to write them straight into a song format is impossible!! So i left it. not on purpose. i tend to leave most songs for a while, which is stupid in a way!

6 months on, id moved flat upto Highgate via a 2 month stint in Holloway with my mate. I was now working with a studio on Berwick Street in Soho to record my first ever demo. We decided on 2 songs...1. Our Song, which id just written at the flat in Holloway, and they loved, and this half written 6 month old 'Jimmy What' song that they hadn't heard. so we perfected Our Song, and all the focus was on that. I was writing every night in the week leading to the last session on Jimmy, and was desperately trying to finish it!! I was stuck!! big time! and trying not to panic!! i was paying £500 quid per song and the sessions were pretty rigid, so I had to turn up with something finished. Which is strange cos now it doesn't work like that at all.

So, i'd managed to add a pre chorus bit, which at the time i wasn't too sure about...it was the 'oh, what would you like to say and he said oh what do you like about me'... That's the only extra bit i had. I'm thinking i have this half written song about this dude in a doorway and i just cant finish it. It makes no sense at all!

Anyway, its now the day of the recording and I got the tube to the studio, 30 minutes and i started to write. under the pressure there was no time to rationalise everything! it poured out. Luckily. looking back now i realise how much that journey influenced the song! the second verse reflects so much of how i could see the London stress and grime affecting everyone. I also figured out who Jimmy needed to be in my head. The penny dropped, its not one man, its all of these sad moody faces. Everyday doing the same old depressive thing because they 'have to'.... fuck that!! JIMMY is now a situation, and its frustrating me that all these people think that they are stuck in it. I hate that!

Anyway it had worked, the producers loved it. not that that would have stopped me recording it but i always like to leave abit of space to reflect before committing. I had ten minutes. I had words propped up against the mic and was trying to get the faster bits down without messing up. i felt like an mc. haha. I remember seeing 'Dont struggle and buckle under the trouble no more' on my page, i was like what the hell does that say. haha. funny thinking back. I managed to do it. the producers helped me make the track sound huge. I remember i kept shouting at him saying dynamic contrasts, we need it light and dark, this is too pale, too nice!! haha, he could have killed me. He was great actually, loved Music to the bone. That was it, a week later i had it. It was huge and i loved it. Its not really changed, more bits have been added by my band and we play it a certain way now and I love it even more :)

Look out for 'Jimmy', the debut single, Out 2011, By JONPAUL PALOMBO. Distributed by Genepool/ Universal Music.