{"id":617364,"date":"2026-06-02T17:18:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T17:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/617364\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T17:18:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T17:18:26","slug":"we-got-so-bored-with-it-we-didnt-even-play-it-which-was-a-mistake-its-the-song-everyone-wants-to-hear-the-bluetones-on-their-sideways-tribute-to-jimi-hendrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/617364\/","title":{"rendered":"“We got so bored with it, we didn\u2019t even play it, which was a mistake”: it\u2019s the song everyone wants to hear”: The Bluetones on their \u201csideways tribute\u201d to Jimi Hendrix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britpop band The Bluetones have been talking about how they put together their biggest hit, Slight Return, to The Guardian<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The song, which reached Number Two in January 1996, was one of the first numbers they wrote when they were just starting out as a band. \u201cScott (Morriss, bass) wrote the chord progressions and structure, but didn\u2019t have any words or melody,\u201d remembers frontman Mark Morriss.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cHe recorded guitar into a cassette player, then played that back on a second cassette player so he could record himself playing along to what he\u2019d just recorded, in a very rudimentary way of four-tracking. We liked it, but we weren\u2019t skipping around the room going: \u2018My God, we\u2019re going to be millionaires.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Guitarist Adam Devlin remembers the bassist bringing in a \u201cfaster, simpler\u201d version of Slight Return. \u201cI fleshed out the guitar parts and put in a guitar solo. Mark worked out the vocal melodies, and we added a coda \u2013 the instrumental that fades out at the end, which originally had a sample from Tom Courtenay in Billy Liar, which was all very 60s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever, Slight Return went down well at the band\u2019s early gigs. \u201cIt was catchy and memorable,\u201d says Morriss. \u201cWe recorded a demo version and sold it on blue 7-inch vinyl at our gigs. When we got signed to A&M, they were keen for it to be a single, but we felt like it would be short-changing our fanbase, which was about 200 people, who had already bought it. We had to be talked around by the label, who said: \u2018We can hear it being played on the radio.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t wrong. Slight Return was A-listed weeks in advance of release by BBC Radio One, who were by then Britpop\u2019s most enthusiastic patrons. In the end it didn\u2019t quite make Number One, beaten only by Babylon Zoo\u2019s Spaceman, a track which had had the even greater benefit of months of prior publicity due to its use in a Levi\u2019s TV ad.<\/p>\n

Despite – or perhaps because of – its success, Devlin admits the track hasn’t always been a band favourite. “We\u2019ve been playing it for 30 years,” he said. “One tour, we\u2019d got so bored with it, we didn\u2019t even play it, which was a mistake because people thought we\u2019d gone up our own arses. We learned our lesson,” while Morris admits, “I\u2019m bored of rehearsing it. If we do rehearse it, we\u2019ll play it at three times the speed or in a reggae or funk style.”<\/p>\n

But what of the title, which is not mentioned at all in the lyrics? It is, apparently, a \u201csideways tribute\u201d to Jimi Hendrix<\/a>\u2019s Voodoo Child (Slight Return) according to Morriss.<\/p>\n

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It’s still, apparently, a cause of some puzzlement. \u201cI was at a farmers\u2019 market recently when one of the stallholders said: \u2018You were in that band who sang Where Did You Go?\u2019 says Devlin. \u201cI said: \u2018Yes, but that\u2019s not what it\u2019s called.\u2019 People get confused because Slight Return isn\u2019t actually in the lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britpop band The Bluetones have been talking about how they put together their biggest hit, Slight Return, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-617364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}