Ross Godfrey, songwriter, guitars, keyboards, electronics
We’d made our first album and were waiting for it to come out. But we wanted to carry on writing more stuff while we were in the mood. I even cut Christmas dinner short at my uncle’s in Brixton, London, so we could get back to the studio. We would work until we passed out, then I’d sleep underneath the mixing desk with my head in the bass drum, as that’s where the pillow was.
One night in early 1996, my brother Paul and I stayed up all night drinking vodka, trying to write as many songs as we could, and we came up with much of the Big Calm album. We showed Skye Edwards the chord progression for The Sea and some lyrics, and she came up with a melody. When the first album was released, we were suddenly doing lots of TV shows and touring, but when we played the Concorde in Brighton we went down on to the beach. It put us in the mood to record The Sea. Paul and I grew up in Hythe on the Kent seafront, so it felt poignant.
We recorded a rough version and gradually made it better. One night I came back at 3am with a load of people that we’d dragged from the pub after a lock-in, and I decided to record the wah-wah guitar bit. Another day we got a string section in and because I was 20 and was making them cups of tea they thought I was the studio assistant. When I asked for a psychedelic improvisation like at the end of the Beatles’ A Day in the Life, they went: “Why is the tea boy telling us what to play?” Paul found some loops for the drum beat and we ran everything on an Atari two-inch tape machine to piece the music together. Then Skye came in and sang.
The Sea was all set to come out as a single but the record company lost confidence, so it only came out as a white label for DJs, but we’re proud that Big Calm became a really successful album without having any hits on it. It spent a year in the Top 40 initially and eventually went double platinum, but we were still seen as an underground band. Then Channel 4’s early reality TV show Shipwrecked used The Sea as the theme tune and it’s since become our most popular track and our favourite to play live.
Skye Edwards, vocals, songwriter
My best friend, Julie, worked in a clothes shop and a courier who was delivering parcels invited her to a party. She asked me to come – “Because I don’t wanna be stuck with this random guy at a house party in Greenwich.” When I arrived at 11pm, there was no one there apart from Ross, who had a cute little denim jacket and a ponytail, and his mate, this guy Justin. I got Justin’s number, because he was very handsome, and took Ross’s, because I was going to try to sell him my drum kit as it was ridiculous playing drums in my little flat. It turned out that Morcheeba were looking for a singer and Justin told Ross I could sing. After my first gig with them, someone stole my car with my dole money in the glove compartment, but things worked out.
When we’d go in the studio, Ross would generally play the song on an acoustic guitar and I’d just sing along and Paul would talk about the lyrics he’d written. To me The Sea always felt very evocative and now whenever we perform it, I tell the audience to close their eyes and imagine they’re at the beach. Ironically, I grew up in the 80s with the Jaws films so was always afraid of the water. Then in 2019 a free-diving course in Thailand completely changed my relationship with it. Now I can put my face down, hold my breath and not be afraid of what lies beneath.
The song’s taken us around the world to some really beautiful places: we get asked to play at loads of festivals in lovely places by the sea or by lakes. Gary Clark from the band Danny Wilson once said to me: “You really nailed it there. I’m thinking of writing a song about a tree.”
