"You Are Holding Me Back" was originally a mellow, spacious, canon kind of thing.
It was written in a 6 week period with lots of experimentation by myself. The year was 2000, around summertime.
I made the loop after some improvisations, sped it up and made a new arrangement onto the loop. The more I worked on "You Are Holding Me Back", it became more funky.
I love Motown, the production, the musicians, the instruments. I kind of grew up on it as a kid. I have spent much time listening to and trying to emulate the qualities of the clavinet. And this is one of the songs were I tried to go for that 60-70’s clavinet feel on the guitar.
I remember we used to push it real hard during shows. I cranked two amps up on full for the ending. To be able to play the arrangement and all the notes live, I used a Gibson double necked guitar and played each string separately on the 12 string neck
In fact, I was so fascinated by the twin neck guitar that it almost became a problem. I started to use it on 90 percent of the live material. It was a heavy guitar to drag around, and I had to carry it about 8 km to and from rehearsals. And we rehearsed 5 hours, 5 days a week at the very least.
I remember lying on the couch to the very moment of the gig because of the back and shoulder pains caused by this guitar. :)
Additional musicians:
Geir Arne Ose: drums.