Common One<\/a> \u2013 Summertime in England can still make me cry. I eventually bought an old Telecaster bass \u2013 you can definitely hear the reggae influence in the bass during the bridge to Place Your Hands.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nI\u2019ve always thought the emotion Gaz brought to it was incredible, but I didn\u2019t fully understand what he was singing about until quite recently. He explained that \u201cput your hands on\u201d was a metaphor for wanting a hug, to help him through the grief of losing his grandfather. I hadn\u2019t realised at the time because we were young rockers, swept up in the moment and full of testosterone, with no time to think about anything. The 90s wasn\u2019t really a time when men were encouraged to be sensitive \u2013 there were all the lads\u2019 mags, and we were playing that game to an extent. We certainly didn\u2019t discuss our feelings in the way we would now. Looking back, I think the lyrics are beautiful.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever get bored of playing it because it\u2019s so funky and full of rhythm and spirit. We\u2019ve had quite a few lineup changes, and Place Your Hands is the song that has always pulled us together. It gets people dancing and putting their hands up \u2013 even though the lyric is actually \u201cPut your hands on\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gary Stringer, vocals<\/p>\n
We were signed to S2 in 1993, under the legendary figures Lincoln Elias and Muff Winwood. Our first album reached the Top 10, we had three Top 40 singles and played Glastonbury, so we were really happy. We were touring the west coast of the US with stoner-rock band Kyuss when Lincoln suggested we meet George Drakoulias, who had worked with Rick Rubin at Def Jam and helped discover the Beastie Boys. George turned up wearing flowing white robes, which made quite an impression, and we decided to go with him for the second album.<\/p>\n
We recorded three or four songs at Abbey Road. George hired a 1960s Fender bass. Jack was fiddling around with it and started playing what would become the bassline to Place Your Hands. Kenwyn dropped his guitar\u2019s E string down to D and came up with the riff that sits over Jack\u2019s bassline. At first, I sang it quite gently, but then thought: \u201cThat\u2019s too airy-fairy.\u201d We went to Los Angeles to finish the album with George, taking the bassline and guitar riff with us.<\/p>\n
The lyrics are about the death of my grandfather, Kenneth. I was on the tour bus when I got a call saying he had died. I went to the morgue and my auntie said: \u201cDo you want to see Ken?\u201d I\u2019d seen a dead body beside the road while on a surfing trip in Morocco when I was 18, but this had a different impact. The lyrics are essentially asking for comfort \u2013 for a cuddle. That\u2019s why it\u2019s \u201cPut your hands on\u201d. I\u2019m sure if it was \u201cPut your hands up\u201d the song would have been even bigger.<\/p>\n
Chris Evans was a huge supporter of the band and played the single to death on Radio 1. When you went on TFI Friday, it didn\u2019t matter if you were Dave Grohl or Oasis \u2013 you had to do the It\u2019s Your Letters segment and sing those words to the melody of the song you were on the show promoting. For some reason, our version of It\u2019s Your Letters stuck. \u201cPut your hands on\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s your letters\u201d have the same number of syllables, so they used it every week ever after.<\/p>\n
The video cost about \u00a3250,000. We were turning head over heels on wires that had to be threaded through holes cut into our trousers. Place Your Hands accounts for a lot of my income. If we had 10 songs like that, I\u2019d be a multimillionaire.<\/p>\n
Reef perform at Lakefest festival<\/a> in Eastnor, Herefordshire, on 8 August<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Bessant, bass We were hanging out with the lovely producer George Drakoulias at Abbey Road. He said,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-726405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726405","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=726405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}