Brian Gill - Lionsongs: Music

*The History Behind This Song *


Orange Tree Hill is my private place. It probably exists only in my mind and I can visit it only when I dream. It is a dark place, full of historical incongruities, where nothing is quite what it seems. It is my 'Alice in Wonderland' place; my 'Boomland', where unlike in the T2 album, nothing ever works out.

The ambiance and feel of Orange Tree Hill is peculiarly 40's London. It is a timeless place, where the War is still going on and where my Mum and Dad and my entire family are now seemingly frozen for eternity in an old sepia photograph. It is probably where I'll go home to myself one day.

In reality, if there is such a thing, there is another Orange Tree Hill in Havering, Essex where Lloyd Courtenay used to live. Lloyd was and still is a drummer, he's with The Barron Knights now, I think.

I used to know Lloyd and played in several bands with him years ago, in another life. I got to know him when he rung me up one day and asked if I wanted to come to Germany with his band, The Impact, and back Helen Shapiro, who had a gig playing the cabaret clubs and the US bases around Mainz. He needed a bass player and I played guitar, but I went anyway.

About the only things I remember about this trip were that a US Army van picked us up from the airport and it was like something from outer space! It was a huge Chevy van and it must have had something like a 5 liter V8 engine, because it gurgled and burbled menacingly like a hot-rod waiting at the traffic lights and it went like a rocket!

Being from England, the only vans that I had ever been in were Bedford Dormobiles and Commers, which only had 1.6 or 2.0 liter 4 cylinder engines in them that left them fatally under-powered, especially when going uphill with a full load.

The van ride in this extraordinary vehicle from Frankfurt airport was thus my first introduction to the US Army and for the next week I found the Americans to be the most charming, most generous and friendly bunch of guys in the World! They couldn't do enough for us.

The other memorable event for me was the first time we actually met a US supplies sergeant. We walked in the door of the base and this huge man; 6' 6'' and 300 lbs of American muscle called Sgt. Bill Armstrong (what else?) immediately went into his Sgt Bilko routine as he greeted us with...

'What the?...Who the?...Son-of-a-..... Not today, Jose! We're closed! We got zip, nicht, nada, zilch! Uh…Looks to me like we got us a weird bunch of Limey long-haired subversives here! Well, that's tough! 'Cause we got nuttin'! No food, no beer, no beds - NUTTIN'! Ok, ok, enough already, wad d’ya want? Beer? Jack Coke? Food? I got some chicken or T-bone steak? Wad d'ya want?'

We settled for the steaks, whereupon he procured four enormous oblong shaped mess-trays, made of aluminium or possibly stainless steel with compartments set in them to accommodate the 'vegetables'. The T-bone steaks actually stretched from end to end and the remaining room on the trays was piled high with sweet-corn and enough chips (sorry, fries) to sink a battleship! We were also given a brand new bottle of Heinz ketchup – each!

Later on, when we'd come back to England after Helen had charmed the pants off the Yanks, we went up North to back Adam Faith, the other act that The Impact backed. I was very impressed with Adam Faith. The first gig we did, which I think may have been in a Burnley cinema or a theatre, as soon as we had started to play the first number and had got only a few bars into, the PA amplifier, an old iron-clad type well past it's demolition date, blew itself up into a million bits with a huge 'bang' and showered us all with tiny fragments of paper (which is a sure sign that a mains rectifier had blown).

It was rather reminiscent of those '60's films about nuclear war where in the immediate aftermath everybody just stands in the street in the deathly hush as the radio-active fallout descends like flakes of snow.
I started panicking, because I'd not played with Adam Faith before and had only had one rehearsal with his numbers. Whatever would happen now..?
Tel (everybody called Adam Faith Tel because his real name was Terry Nelhams) just carried on without a microphone, told jokes, fooled around and organized a sing-song in the audience and so saved the day. It was a privilege to watch a real pro at work.

I went round to Lloyd’s house several times afterwards and was fascinated by it. Because Orange Tree Hill is quiet steep, the house was a bit of a rambling, split level affair and in my mind the whole place took on a mystical quality and the tell-tale stillness and timelessness began to manifest itself.

Eventually, that image took over from the reality in my mind and my own Orange Tree Hill came to be. This was many, many years ago. Lloyd has long gone; the house is still there and Orange Tree Hill is still a quiet, leafy road in semi-rural Essex, but I was already making my own Orange Tree Hill a different place, the generator of my dreams and the home of my own peculiar other world-ness.

The Coppermill Lane in verse three is Coppermill Lane E17., an old street in Walthamstow off of Blackhorse Rd, which forms the northern boundary of an area consisting of small Victorian terraced houses and cottages. My Mum and Dad used to live at 29 Rensburg Rd, one of the streets in the area, and my granddad, William Herbert Harrington Gill used to live at 99 Salop Rd, where my Dad was born. My auntie Nell on my Mum’s side lived at 9 Elmfield Rd and my cousin Doreen took over Mum and Dad’s old house in Rensburg Rd.

At the bottom end of Coppermill Lane, the road leads to and continues to run across open land, which is home to the water works and reservoirs. About a half mile down the road, which now resembles a country lane, there is an old iron bridge, dating from the 19th century. I sometimes go back there when I’m in England and sit for a few hours in the stillness and listen to the gentle sound of the stream lapping and gurgling and the birds singing.

I saw a family of herons there once and sat there fascinated for ages watching them enjoying their lives being in Coppermill Lane with me. I wonder if it's the mill stream where the name Coppermill Lane comes from?


* The Lyrics To This Song *

Orange Tree Hill

Verse 1

On Orange Tree Hill, the children play,
It's all a game, it's all a game,
De-railing trains the easy way,
On Orange Tree Hill.

Verse 2

Did anyone see the clouds go by?
More rain today, more rain today,
Just the kind of weather for getting high,
On Orange Tree Hill.

Middle 8

Look at all those…

Aeroplanes up in the sky fly overhead...
They catch my eye so slowly,
The wailing of the siren is a,
Wake-up call for everyone,
Don't you think it's very strange that,
No-one on the bus has even noticed?
People eat the oranges and,
Burn the trees now most of these,
Have gone, have gone, have gone.

Verse 3

Down Coppermill Lane, my Mum and Dad played,
On the old iron bridge across the stream,
Scratched both their names on a rusty beam,
Down Coppermill Lane...

Verse 4

Down Honey Pot Lane, the songbirds sing,
It's just an old familiar song,
Would you believe the words are wrong?
Down Honey Pot Lane.

Verse 5

On Orange Tree Hill, there's pie in the sky,
The weather here's not what it seems,
Only going back there in my dreams,
To Orange Tree Hill.