Hunting Humans

 

For most of the time when we were at the studio it was snowing. Well, for at least 3 months. I set up the portastudio, reverb and mic at the window over looking the frozen lake and evergreen trees down the sweeping valley.

From this window I saw a UFO and Paul Morris actually recorded the event on his new video camera but that’s another story.

The first morning I woke up and my bed and room and all the gear was covered in a thin blanket of snow. Leaky windows you see!! The wind was whipping up from the valley and coming into my room. The warming glow of red wine from the previous night had obviously left me unable to feel the cold.

The snow fell constantly for days on end and the engineers at the studio had at one time to ski into work from the main road (about 1 and ½ miles) until the locals got the ploughs onto their pickup trucks and cleared the way. Pat Reagan the producer from LA had never driven in snow and wrote off his hire car in ditch, much to our amusement.

 

Hunting Humans was written the day I found out that Fred West (Evil serial killer) had hanged himself. It was probably a week or 10 days after the event but the news papers I ordered from the UK took that long to come through.

It’s weird how we have instant news now anywhere anytime. Its kinda weird to imagine how it was without the mobile phones and laptops we all rely on now.

America being American did the whole world news in 30 seconds and Dear Old Fred (Nasty Fellow) did not make the 30 seconds. Of course OJ was hogging all the limelight back then.

 

Ritchie started playing the riff and Greg and John laid down the groove that really carries the song, the melody and lyrics just fell into place. It took all of 45 mins to do it and it never changed. I thought at the time that it would have been a good Ozzy song.

I had written a song previously called Hunting Humans that never got finished; it had a sinister waltz like feel. I took the title and a little of the story of Dennis Neilsen ( Evil Scottish serial killer) and added my own embellishments lyrically.

It is not a love song per sae but a dark tale of obsession, lust and ultimately slaughter. It certainly left its mark as one of the more different songs Rainbow ever did.

I remember doing an interview and the interviewer claimed that his child was conceived while listening to Hunting Humans…that as they say is too much information. I wonder how that child is doing now?  

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