'Dreadnought Seaman's Hospital'
"There exists a cassette of a class of schoolchildren (from Montem Junior School, Hornsey) who paid and educational visit to Wood Wharf in 1984, singing along to this piece accompanied by BJ (gtr), Dave Bitelli (bar sax) and David 'Mole' Carmichael (b gtr). For the 'A' section they sang "dearie me" in unison, as if lying on the ward waiting for surgery. For the 'B' section Billy told them they had to pretend they were having their salty seadog legs sawn off without anaesthetic. It's a scream."

'Rope'
"There is a lot of rope in Greenwich - nowhere more than on the Cutty Sark, that strange mummified icon to a bygone age when wind filled the sails and a man's life depended on sureness of foot up on the rigging. Hence the ascending chromatic chords. Upwards in short spurts, then a pause to reduce the bounce of endless twine soaring skywards to the mast-top.
And when no more than a gentle breeze blew on the aluminium-adorned Gypsy Moth, trapped in its own dry-dock death-bed, slightly adrift from the more majestic tea-clipper on the concrete expanse farcically called Cutty Sark Gardens, the winch rope on the main mast would go clack! clack! clack! against the upright. All day and all night. One suspects it didn't help the residents within earshot on the Meridian Council Estate to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
As the swell from a passing boat heaved shoreward, floating snakes of twine and hemp would make desperate attempts to reach terra finma."

'Arrival of the Tourists'
"Crash bash 6/8 & 12/8 over 4/4.
"TARRAH!! WE ARE HERE!!!!"
Well we don't want you - we want your money. Only the trader likes the tourist. Every weekend in Greenwich, siege mentality got the locals through, but not necessarily through the debris. Pavements opaque with gum stains and squashed hamburger, pools of cider, piss and Special Brew underflowing benches scored with 'I Woz Ere,' followed by a historical date for one person to treasure, the next to scorn."

'An Empty River'
"I wrote this one day in the early '80's for saxophonist Mark Ramsden and walked along the road to hear him play it. He wasn't in so I left the manuscript on a music stand in the middle of what seemed like a dolls' house bedroom full of haphazard hand-scooped carpet strewn dolls' clothes. He later took off to reside in Germany, so with a slight huff I re-titled it for the 'Greenwich' album. Ramsden had gone. The tide was out.

'Meridian Council Estate (Vandalise Tourists' Property, Not Residents''
"Fuzzy-faced flock wallpaper peeling at the edges, barely supporting cracked flying ducks and wire gilt clock hideously deformed into a classical guitar. Crash! resonates around the square. Crash! Faded-colour cot-out photographs of pit bulls invite you to break in and 'make my day.' On the wind the strains of John Coltrane's 'Giant Steps' accompany the weary young mother plodding her way up four storeys as the piss-smell lift lies dormant, vandalised again. The choice was stark. Which to carry first? The child or the shopping? The latter won out, trusting baby to half-seen, half-known but never spoken to neighbours. Crash! goes another car window as forgotten children dance a cha cha cha on a lovingly-waxed Vauxhall - 1966 vintage. Eyes down and collar turned, the alto saxophonist hurries through."

'Discoboats at Two o'Clock'
"Every night they'd come, wafting in through the skylight on the summer breeze. Drifting out of sleep into 'Lover Ter Love Ya Bay-beee,' bass pumping and bouncing of the far shore, then off our side, then back over ... Boom Boom Doom. The slow approaching crescendo, whirling louder, softer, even louder 'till one feared the children might disco in their dreams.
One day we found a bass guitar washed up on the foreshore. I pondered for a moment where its owner was and prayed that next time it'll be a disc jockey's turntable ..."

Said Billy to Wire magazine:- "I briefed the players for each 'Motorway' closely. Twenty minutes at 70mph, no U-turns, no stopping. I like to hear the person, the potential, the inherent skills. Every player who records with me knows that if they blow it, it will be documented forever. Knowing this, this was certainly no 'all-the-lads-together-what-a-larf' session. Some were visibly petrified and too wound up to play fluently. Whatever humour is apparent (though I find little humour in the concept of a motorway) is entirely down to me attempting to relax the players. We did no re-takes, no editing. We over-dubbed the String Trio using 'real notes' from 'real scores.' By having a 160bpm click in the drummer's ear, we ensured a repetitive measure, thus placing the lateral improvising of a Prime Time-type music into an 'easier to absorb' vehicle to those who might well turn off to improvisations less structured."

'Motorway at Night' was the last vinyl release - and one that actually uses the sound of the plastic itself. For the end of side two the groove was deliberately opened up during the cut. This had two effects. Firstly the sound of Django's synthesiser was raised (but not loud enough to shatter a stylus, as was BJ's original daft suggestion), and secondly, a genuine surface noise can be heard on the 'motorway exit' - as the record label warns.