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A Week Away was always intended to be our debut album.

Right from 1996 when we released the song "A Week Away" as a 7" single, I had a vision of this as our first album. Not that the songs were written; but I knew what the album was about and how it should feel. It took 3 years to make it exist. This was mainly because we didn't know what we were doing, we had to learn as we went along. Hence we approached it single by single, building the thing up bit by bit. The upshot of that was that the album features lots of singles, but that didn't seem to matter. the important thing was that we were constructing a perfect Pop album. It didn't matter if it ended up being our only ever album (I thought that was actually quite likely), it just had to be right.

I don't think "A Week Away" is perfect, but I do think it is very close to being what it was supposed to be.

The album has a concept, which is quite under-played. It is the same idea as "A Week Away" the song: that you have a limited amount of time on earth, you start out full of enthusiasm and energy, and then gradually realise that time is running out. In the song, it is quite a simple analogy of a week's holiday - you live it to the full and make the best of it, but in the end Saturday comes round and it is over.

The album expands the same theme - it starts out full of fizz with the title song and "Isn't It Great To Be Alive" and "Sweeping The Nation", where literally anything can be achieved, and works its way through to sadness and loss of "You Are Still My Brother", "Making You Laugh" and finally "Saturday".

I love Jim's artwork for this album. We talked a lot about getting a simple striking Pop-Art image for the sleeve, and James eventually came up with the airplane on the dayglo blue background. We then also used this idea for all the singles. Jim worked through each song and came up with an object or image that fitted and these appeared in the booklet. I dug out the actual transistor radio from my childhood which I sing about on "Sweeping The Nation" - James photographed it and placed it against a bright yellow backdrop. Simon had announced the day we were mixing "I Can't Sleep" for a single that his girlfriend Eva was going to have a child. In the booklet for the album, we used an image for each song - a snap of Si's child, Toby, went alongside the song "A Week Away", representing birth at the start of the lifecycle / album. We then took all the images on tour with us as projections, so Toby's baby picture went all over with us.

On Christmas Day 1998, our original bass player Martin Talbot died. Martin was in Africa for Christmas with his girlfriend Sue. On Christmas Day he was larking around listening to Led Zeppelin really loud, and miming air guitar to "Stairway To Heaven". He fell on his back to the floor grimacing to the solo - he died there and then. It turns out he had a heart condition - I think Martin knew this - some of the things he had said previously later made sense to me.

I feel very lucky to have known Martin - he was one of those rare, genuinely warm, uplifting, mature people. He also had a brilliant sense of humour and a ridiculous infectious laugh. Our friend Nigel Smith went to see Johnny Cash at The Royal Albert Hall in the late 90s. The gig was amazing, and after all the encores were done and the lights were up, and most people had filed out, there was still a loan voice shouting from across the venue "Johnny Cash! Johnny fucking Cash!". It turned to be Martin. I always think of him when Johnny Cash is mentioned - "Johnny Cash! Johnny fucking Cash!". So we dedicated "A Week Away" to Martin. I miss him, but in many ways he is still around.

Strangely, and in a very Spinal Tap way, the original bass player from Laverne & Shirley, Tony Stephenson also died around the same time, I lost touch with Tony, but he was an unbelievably sweet, talented guy. (I have never mentioned this coincidence to our bass-player Andy Lewis.)

I am intensely proud of "A Week Away". It was a long struggle to make it and get it released, but after the fact it is all worth it, even if it seemed like it was taking far too long at the time.