In Held 'Twas in I

Who really wrote what ?

This extended suite has generally (not always!) been ascribed globally to Brooker / Fisher / Reid, but fans have long pondered the exact distribution of musical credits. Marcelo Pereira e-mailed this question to Matthew Fisher:

Which parts of In Held 'Twas In I are yours? I presume you wrote the music of In The Autumn Of My Madness and Grand Finale, but maybe it wasn't just that.

Fisher
I wrote the bit that comes immediately after 'Life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?'. The next bit I wrote was a bit of Teatime At The Circus. After the words, ' ... beat down upon his cloak ...' there's a little riff which I wrote, as well as the last line. I think probably the chimes were my idea, since I was always keen on Tchaikovsky's Hamlet Overture and the way the clock chimes twelve when the ghost appears.

After Autumn there's that weird guitar riff, which as far as I know was Rob's idea. Then Gary’s tune comes in again (previously played on a sitar) with some weird chords which I devised (but had forgotten by the time we did the Redhill gig! Fortunately Gary had them written down somewhere!). The way the tune ends and goes into Look to Your Soul I couldn't say who wrote. Probably not me.

Then there's the Grand Finale which, as Roland Clare says, was ripped off from a Haydn piece. The chords under the guitar solo, however, were not mine – they're a repeat of the chords that accompany Keith's monologue ('Held close by that ...')

Thanks, Marcelo and Matthew

Marcelo writes for the Uruguayan weekly, Brecha, on politics and occasionally music. Read his wonderful Procol Harum feature, A Romance at a Distance, written specially for 'Beyond the Pale'

More Features at BtP