Homeward Bound is said to have been written on Wigan station. Have you ever been to Wigan station? Which Wigan station I hear you cry?
Wigan has the strangest station arrangement of any town I have ever visited - well, except from Mansfield, which doesn't have a station at all!. There are two Wigan stations, Noth Western and Wallgate. North Western serves the Inter Citys and Cross-Countries, Wallgate the locals. They are highly visible from each other. Indeed, they are just down the stairs, negotiate the drop-off layby, cross the road and Bob's your uncle. Wigan North Western is a high level station exposed entirely to all the winds that rush from the Irish Sea to the Pennines and back again. Wallbank has no station indicator. The trains display only the final destination, and run entirely randomly, not to a timetable. So it is not uncommon to see a queue forming on the platform of people asking the driver "Is this train going to X?"
America mentions the New Jersey Turnpike. Actually, I think lyrically it's a great song, the way they describe the other people on the bus and make up stories about them. I have been on the New Jersey turnpike twice. The first time was on a coach tour setting out from Bayonne, NJ to Niagara Falls (NY and Canada), Washington DC, and Philadelphia PA, so very evocative as we had gone to look for America.
The second time was in a limo from Staten Island to Newark airport to catch a plane to Buffalo-Niagara (we then caught another plane to Boston, and a train to Washington DC, and a plane to New Orleans via Atlanta GA and another plane back to La Guardia to spen a final day in NY before catching a plane from JFK to Heathrow or Geneva via Frankfurt - so we'd all gone to look for America)
Keep the Cutomer Satisfied is a fairly mediocre song, but the rass arrangement in it is something special. It has a sound that is somewhere between big-band and jazz, sweet music to the ears...
Of course, the toppest track is Bridge Over Troubled Water. When I really really like a piece a music that is really really popular, I feel slightly embarrassed. It sort of goes again the grain, knowing that, often, universal popularity is the product of the unthinking minds of tasteless people. So, with songs like this I keep listening sceptically and critically. But in the end, there is no escaping the fact that the tune is brilliant, and the way it works up to a crescendo at the gae is just fab.
