Behind Closed Doors
In November 2021, Big Big Train vocalist David Longdon was nearing the end of recording his second solo album, Door One, when he died unexpectedly. His friends, family and colleagues fulfilled his final wishes to finish and release the record posthumously and it’s become a fitting epitaph to the talented singer-songwriter and instrumentalist. We look back on the creation of one of 2022’s finest albums.
Words: Grant Moon Images: Sophocles Alexiou
By May 2021 David Longdon’s second solo album was coming together nicely. “The first sessions went well,” Longdon enthused to this writer at the time. “It buoyed me up. One of the songs is a rocker called Watch It Burn, which is up-tempo and heavy in places. Another one’s called There’s No Ghost Like An Old Ghost and, again, it’s a much darker thing. It’s not like Big Big Train, not ‘optimistic, we can get through this’, you know? It’s more realistic, more me I suppose, as a solo album should be. It’s more reflective of my personal tastes. It’s embryonic at the moment but it’s moving along the way.”
Theo Travis had just sent him the smokey sax parts for There’s No Ghost Like An Old Ghost and Longdon was delighted with them. He’d suggested that Travis channel Dick
Parry’s horn work on The Dark Side Of The Moon, and Travis had totally nailed it. Already in the can was a lush, John Barry-like string part bound for the classy tune Sangfroid, the players recorded at Abbey Road during a BBT orchestral session a few years earlier.
He said the album took its enigmatic title, Door One, “from a wooded area with grass and a hill where I’d meet my mates [in Nottingham, where he grew up]. I’ve no idea why it’s called that. But I like the idea of calling the album Door One because, as it’s numbered, that implies there are other doors…”