The Peace Song Project - Featuring Darth Vader (True Story)

Five years ago, I had one of my best ideas ever – even better than my previous best idea ever, which was the genius fusion of blackcurrant jam and Dijon mustard, in a sandwich… though I was drunk when I thought of that one.

I was a freelance journalist at the time (after bizarrely stumbling into the industry a year earlier – which I’ll probably blog about someday) and most of my articles were music based… interviews with bands and artist that were visiting my local area, but some of them were real legends with international clout.

This experience brought up the opportunity to write the press releases and local news articles for a UK tour by 80s British pop icon turned Celtic soul diva, Hazel O’Connor – also the star of a film called Breaking Glass – and, obviously, I had to conduct an interview with her to get the material for the copy.

On a quick tangent… just before she called me, I managed to break the cable that allowed phone-to-laptop recording and I had to improvise by taping the phone handset to my head, so I could use both hands to type. I looked like a mentalist.

Around that time, Israel and Lebanon were at war, again, and Hazel told me that she’d lived in the Lebanon in the late 1970s – surviving an Israeli air-strike on her birthday. It lead on to her questioning why there were no contemporary bands writing peace songs, as had been so popular in the past, when it was all fields and the policemen looked older.

After the interview, in the early hours of the next morning, the idea came… Why not make a peace song?

I’d interviewed a dozen or so incredible musicians and singers, some of them genuinely world-class, and I had their contact details, so it seemed like perfect sense that I should at least ask if they’d like to do a little good for the species.

I composed a speculative email, sending it out in the early hours, and, over the course of the next day, got a steady stream of replies, all saying… yes… they’d help.

Gosh!

These people included a guy called John Jorgenson – literally one of the best guitarists on the planet, though he also plays a dozen or so other instruments to concert standard. He’s won Grammys with his Desert Rose Band in the US and was lead guitarist in The Elton John Band (not a tribute band), playing to 200,000 people in Rio.

Also, the incredible saxophonist Snake Davis, who was a member of Brit-Pop band, M-People, and toured with the Eurythmics… though he’s recorded for everyone from Take That and Tom Jones to Ray Charles and Ruby Turner.

There were others, too, and with their backing and my enthusiasm, I quickly set up a MySpace page and set about building some momentum up with the idea.

Originally, the plan was to get a loads of top-class singers and musicians together (including some AAA names) and release the song ‘incognito’… just put it out into the world and see what happened.

But as things fermented in my brain… I came up with the ‘big idea’ – the ‘one of my best ideas ever’ I mentioned at the beginning of the blog.

I thought… if I could get the backing of not just more musicians, but also actors and celebrities, businessfolk and politicians, and then make enough noise…

… we could approach Google and ask them to put the finished song on their homepage, as a free download.

I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet, here (I wish! I wouldn’t even be typing this right now if I could – sadly, my back isn’t that supple), but this is a genius idea that, to this day, still hasn’t been done.

Imagine, a peace song with an inspiring message of peace available for free to everyone on the Interland?

It would almost instantly become the most widely dispersed song in the history of Earth, including the time when the dinosaurs existed.

Armed with nothing but passion and determination (there wasn’t a song, or even a note to work with as leverage, then), I pushed and pushed and pushed to get this off the ground. I sank my whole life into trying to contact as many people as I possibly could, to ask them to lend their support.

Soon after setting up a MySpace page, I was very fortunate to meet a producer called Ben Henderson, who offered to produce the song as well as play about a zillion instruments, where needed. He’s a very talented man and could see where I wanted to go with the project, giving me his full support and enthusiasm.

Now that Ben was onboard and the project had the ability to add notes and stuff to the concept (important, for a song), I told him an idea I had for a ‘cinematic opening’… of a nuclear attack… which would lead into the song itself.

A few days later, he sent me a sound file with that sequence… I was astonished by how good it was. Ben had really come up with the goods. It was so creepy to hear the cacophony of human chaos leading towards a huge, hissing explosion – and much better than I had imagined.

I posted that sound file out to the artists who had agreed to help…

His location totally unbeknownst to me, Snake Davis opened the file on his laptop on the evening of his arrival for a performance in… Hiroshima, Japan…

He’d spent the afternoon visiting the memorial gardens, came back and heard the sequence and he wrote to me saying that he began shaking and immediately set up a makeshift recording booth in the hotel shower, so he could get his feelings out there and then.

It seemed such a poignant omen… like it was all meant to happen…

… and the sax he recorded – which kicks in straight after the cinematic opening on the song – is the most beautiful, haunting sax playing I’ve ever heard. The guy’s an undisputed master and he put so much passion into it.

I was also very lucky to make the cyber-acquaintance of an astonishing Scottish singer called Andi Neate… you only have to listen to the song to hear how wonderful her voice is.

Although other support didn’t materialise, Ben, Snake and Andi’s collaboration gave the project this ‘rough’ version of the song, linked in the YouTube vid, above.

Sadly, despite contacting nearly every famous person on the planet (and that’s probably not much of an exaggeration), nobody would ‘step forward’, so to speak, to help take it to the level it needed to bring in the AAA names we’d need to garner all the other support and snowball it all the way to Google.

One very kind gent who did offer his support was David Prowse… who played the physical role of Darth Vader… DARTH VADER! Being a lifelong Star Wars fan, that was massive news to me.

He phoned me up one morning and said that not only did he want to support the project in a morale capacity, but also that he was a classically trained baritone, and he offered to sing on the track!

Here's the link to the article in my local newspaper:

STAR WARS ACTOR JOINS PEACE SONG PROJECT

A couple of hours later, I was attending the local doctors’ surgery – for a pre-arranged appointment - to pick up a new prescription of anti-depressants…

(Bear in mind that this was a little after the incident mentioned in ‘The Curious Incident of the Cat in the Daytime’, and I’d recently been featured in the local newspaper, declaring myself a reformed mentalist.)

… and I said to my doctor:

“Yeah, so Darth Vader phoned me up this morning, and he’s offered to sing on the peace song I’m organising, which I’m hoping will become the biggest song on Earth.”

The look on his face…

I’m surprised I didn’t spend that night – and every night since – in a room with bouncy walls.

~

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Peace Song Project - We Can Make A Difference

You don’t have to volunteer to a medical camp in Darfur or chain yourself to the gates of Buckingham Palace to promote a little more peace in this world. You can make a difference today, starting with yourself.

Be kind to yourself and others. Compliment instead of criticise. Listen. Show your love to those who deserve it, and offer friendship to those who don’t. Give someone a hug. Spread smiles around your friends.

If you do any of those things – or anything else positive you can think of - you are part of making the world a better place for all of us.

The Peace Song Project is about bringing individuals together to strengthen and unify a simple message of understanding, friendship, tolerance, forgiveness and peace. 

And we can make a difference, if we want to.

“A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” - Mohandas Gandhi

“Peace of mind is attained not by ignoring problems, but by solving them.” - Raymond Hull

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.” - John Lennon 

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