Sept 10 - The Story of “Miss Illusion"
What’s up everyone?! For this Camaro Thursday, I thought I would head
back a few months and talk a little bit about how “Miss Illusion” came
together.
It all started with a riff in E that I wrote that kind of
reminded me of “Still of the Night” by Whitesnake. I played it for
the guys at practice one night, and they seemed to dig it. The main
guitar part is a bit of a finger bender since it has some strange
interval jumps and slides. I also had a general idea for the verse,
chorus, and bridge parts so the song came together pretty quickly.
That’s when we left on tour. We worked quite a bit on the song in the
van, and worked out vocal harmonies and melodies for most of it while
driving between gigs. (This really annoyed Maclaine because he wanted
to read his fantasy novels. He left the band soon after.) The verse
was twice as long as it is now and sounded more like a church choir.
We desperately needed a song, and I wasn’t coming up with any good
lyrics. So, to help out one night, Nick Given and Nate Wells dropped
by. None of us had any good ideas. Then Nate had an idea. Why don’t
we buy a bottle of vodka. After that, the lyrics were flowing like…
well… vodka. We finished up, and celebrated by going to a local bar
called Bukowski’s. That night we met a cool girl that works there
that still wears her Bang Camaro shirt. I think Nate hit on her as
well as every other girl in the place. It was epic.
We originally recorded the song during the same sessions as “Can’t
Stop the Night.” Unfortunately, I hated it. It hadn’t come together
how I was envisioned, and I wanted to scrap it. Alex saw some hope in
it, and he talked me out of dropping the song.
I thought about the song over the next few weeks and eventually
decided that with different guitar parts in the bridges and a new
verse, the song would be cool. So, we kept the words in the verse but
made them a lot angrier and half as long. Pete and Doz also changed
their parts up to simplify the rhythm section which gave it a
completely new groove. Alex added an awesome guitar solo.
We headed back into the studio and cut the new version that you hear
today. I hope you like it. It’s probably the “wordiest” BC song to
date. Nick thinks it’s about a hot, dirty girl. Alex thinks it’s
about drugs. But don’t worry, we are going old school soon.
Let us know what you think!
-Bryn
Listen to Miss Illusion