You snuck up from my past

I swore to you this time that It was gonna last

It’s easier to see

How far apart we had to get…. together

It started all over for me

Looks like this love will never be

I kiss the morning when I wake up and I see the light

It all makes sense when I realize that I was right

I wait til you're old enough that I could never make you cry

Old enough that you could rip me up inside

I never want to see you again

Cause the truth can’t hurt me bad enough

To believe it had to end

I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free

That’s why no one can ever get that close to me

It’s a picture perfect world

A door that once lie open becomes a scar I needed

The knife comes back to me

I let you see the only side of me that bleeds

I’d keep it going I know you're mistaken in my mind

If only I had something to live for besides my pride

I’ll take it as long as it takes to make you depend on me

It’s gonna take your pain to set me free

I never want to see you again

Cause the truth can’t hurt me bad enough

To believe it had to end

I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free

That’s why no one can ever get that close to me

I don’t ever wanna heal because I hold on to the pain I feel

And if everybody holds a knife how could I ever let another soul inside

I kiss the morning when I wake up and I see the light

It all makes sense when I realize that I was right

I'm keeping an empty space where you were living inside of me

It's gonna take your pain to set me free

I can’t wait to see you break your promises again

Because the only thing that’s real to me is that this pain will never end

I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free

That’s why no one can ever get that close to me

I’m pushin’ along…makin’ it strong…movin' along…holding on

Never again is my first true heartbreak ballad. The first one that comes from a very real, deep, adult heartbreak. The kind that leaves you messed up for weeks and scarred for life. I remember my drinking partner/shoulder at the time telling me I should be grateful that no one would ever get that deep inside again, Celebrate the scar tissue. 

Somewhere there’s a cassette of a version I did with a tiny little keyboard and a four track. I played the keys along with the little drum beat from the keyboard to one track, leaving me two for vocals and another for guitar. I didn’t have these words written yet, but I recorded a couple of vocal tracks of just improvised falsetto in an effort to get a melody written that I could write words to. Somewhere else there’s another cassette that has a mix down of my first 8 track version, and I really wish I could find that (or better yet the actual 8 track tape). When I recorded that I was in the band Nova Brain, and we had a practice spot downtown where we kept the old 8 tracks to cassette machine. I had the song fully fleshed out with words, and I went down there by myself to record the song. I recorded the drums first (real drums!), then keyboard, guitar, and vocals. In my mind the vocals were to be a two part harmony like Jerry Butler’s “He Will Break Your Heart”. The mixdown of this song was perfect except a minor hiccup in the drums. This being an analog cassette, that sort of thing wasn’t easy to fix like it is these days so I knew I’d have to re-record it eventually.

As I was compiling songs for “Dr Wippit’s First Time Out” in the late nineties this was one of the first songs I got to work on. I put down essentially the same drum beat as the previous eight track version, this time with a drum machine. I had remembered that my brother told me he wished there was more lead guitar in the last version, there was just the one lead bit that’s in between the first two verses. So on this new version, in true Dr Wippit fashion, I completely slaughtered the song with annoying leads almost everywhere. 

When I started working on the redo of this song for An Anthology of Sorts, I decided to keep the drum machine and keys from the nineties, and re-record the vocals and guitars. There was never any bass in any of the versions, I always thought the keys had that covered. I knew I needed to go easier on the lead guitars this time. I’ve kept that bit between the first and second verses the same for the third version now, this time I doubled it. You can hardly tell it’s two guitars because I’ve done it so many times now. I wish it could sound as good as it did the first time I played it, but that was a moment in time, and you can’t go back. I tried a few different things with the next lead and it worked out best to use two of them for a few seconds and then just one. I was playing a mix down for one of my drummer friends and he said the snare on the pre-chorus was bugging the crap out of him, and as soon he said that I heard it too. So I used my current drum machine software (Beat Craft) to create a new pre-chorus part and inserted it between the old drum machine parts. I kept the annoying snare in for the very end. Of course the other thing that I didn’t have access to back in the nineties was that auto-tune all the kids are using these days, and if there’s one song here (and one singer) that cries out for some of that auto-tune this is the one.