Martin Page - The First And Last Freedom (2025)

This album took a long time to complete; over seven years, in fact. But there are numerous reasons for this. When I started these songs, I had no intention, or even a thought, of composing them for a potential album, but rather as a means of getting material together for a “working” collaboration with drummer and great friend, Jimmy Copley. Jimmy was suffering from leukemia in England and, at the time, his girlfriend suggested I send him some new songs via email to lift his spirits and encourage him to fight on, get out of hospital … and maybe even play on these four new songs I would send him. Jimmy was the drummer on my 1994 first solo album, “In The House of Stone and Light”, and we’d promised each other over the years that one day we’d do it all again. So, the first four songs of this album were written initially for a compassionate cause: to inspire, encourage and heal the spirit of a friend with a terminal illness.

Jimmy loved the tracks. It just so happened that these first four songs had something special about them; a spirit, a freedom, a soul - hard to put into words. People close to me who heard them felt it too, and told me they believed I’d begun (without meaning to) composing a new album.

Usually, my albums are “one man shows” with me playing all the instruments myself, but amazingly, some of the musicians that had played on my first album, “House”, became available to me. Particularly, Jack Hues was in Los Angeles around this time and recovering from the grief of recently losing his wife, Mel, to cancer. I suggested Jack should come over to my home studio and play/jam on the tracks I had prepared for Jimmy - to get his mind on music. It now seemed that these songs were written for a reason - recovery.

Within a week after Jack had played, Neil Taylor was in town from London, on tour. He had a free day and came to visit and play on the same tracks, adding his special unique flair. Suddenly, I was making an album with my favorite musicians that had accompanied me in the past. It seemed it was just meant to be.

Because all my initial lead vocals were phonetic (just sounds and melody), it took a great deal of labor and time to write the lyrics to fit the organic phonetic sounds … and then to match new lead vocals to the original spontaneous “gut” vocals, as I call them. As always with me, the songs on this album developed from the original rough demos written to inspire Jimmy and Jack - and evolved into the masters they are now.

Once it became obvious to me that I was developing a proper live album, with guest musicians that had also played on “House”, I began to think about getting performances from other players, including those who weren’t located in L.A. So, many of the musicians’ performances on this album were recorded away from me - in different studios, in different countries - and sent to me via Dropbox files, which added to the “walk up the mountain”, as I would have to compile the best performances of their parts into the arrangement. Because of the extraordinary contributions by these super players over the ensuing years, I meticulously pieced this record together, studying their performances and arranging them into the songs - slowly, carefully, with great respect and reverence.