This was my first opportunity to write lyrics for Triumvirat and in truth I might have claimed at least a co-write of the music as well. We were doing a photo shoot at an old railway station on a bleak winter morning as we stood around in various poses try to look cool and trendy. Jürgen’s girlfriend Sondra commented that he looked an old worried lady and I piped up with “a cold old worried lady” and even as I said it I thought it sounded like a song title so I made a bold statement to Jürgen that I would write a song with that title as soon as we were back home. “Oh great, do it” he said with the air of a parent humoring a small child.
Later in the hotel I got started with the opening line which was the title. It was one of those songs that just unfolded as I wrote it and seemed to build itself in a way. It tells the story of a gypsy woman reading the palm of a man already full of self doubt and anxiety who then gets carried away with her warnings of doom and gloom and finally takes his own life. It’s really about the power of suggestion and how a single thought can take on a life of it’s own if you’re not careful.
I took it to Jürgen in the studio to see if he would use it and he asked me to sing it and he would play along. I said that the melody I was singing was probably too simple to use but maybe he could posh it up a bit. As I sang he latched on to it so quickly that it was easy for me and it’s no exaggeration to say that by the time we had run through it three times, it was all there... piano and vocals. We both knew that it was good and he wanted to record it straight away so we did.
I know there are a couple of moments when the singing is slightly off key but we thought that the feeling was more important and I’m glad we went with it and I still think it’s a good song. It’s a shame we never did a video of it though. that could have been very interesting.