There Are Two Paths

Performance/installation work for purpose built stage and two five piece bands, 40 mins, 2003.

Two groups of musicians alternate two verses from ‘Stairway to Heaven’. The verses are played normally by one band, then repeated by the other band but played backwards. Then the verses are played forwards again… and so on. The ‘Satanic’ phonetic accidents of the reversed song make lines such as “there is power in Satan” audible. Following the initial performance of the piece in the Shropshire countryside, the work was next performed in a Birmingham city centre square. The popular myths of guitarists selling their souls to the devil in order to play the blues like no-one else. The English need to obsess about a rural ideal to pretend that the selling of their souls to the ‘dark satanic mills’ of industrialisation never happened. Thanks to Nowhere Near the Garden, Sarah Wilson, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, John Smith, Mark Goodchild, Malcolm Garrett, Freddie Thomas, and Dave Lee. Commissioned by Meadow Gallery/Ikon Gallery.