Hello, I Love You/The Planets (Jupiter)

The Doors, fronted by the charismatic and untamed Jim Morrison, made some astounding music. “Hello, I Love You” isn’t the best of it, but I’ve always liked the song. In the early 90s, my band, Chimera, found the energy and simple melody of the piece to be a crowd pleaser.

At rehearsal, one evening, we were practicing “Hello,” and I was visited by a musical moment. I stepped away from the mike and stopped strumming. “Dudes” (I probably didn’t call them “dudes,” but it fits the moment), “let’s try something different.”

I have always loved Holst’s “The Planets.” Barring the first listen when my high-school friends and I couldn’t refrain from guffawing about a piece of music named “Uranus,” “The Planets” has been a long-standing favorite. My preferred planet is usually “Jupiter.” It has three of the all-time best melodies in music, regardless of genre. What had danced around me as we rehearsed “Hello” was one of them.

A decade after Chimera's bitter breakup, Jim Fraschetti—keyboard player extraordinaire—enticed me into preparing a set of music that the two of us would play together. If you read my intro to “In Your Eyes,” you will already know a bit about this, so I’ll not repeat it, here. If you haven't read the intro (and listened to the song), what are you waiting for?

The bass line that I played was destroyed in one of my hard-disk transfers, and the bass was borrowed/stolen by a musical colleague, so along with the percussion and tubular bells, the bass is also sequenced. everything else is played by Jim or me. The voice is mine.

You will see that I have decided to use the “progressive rock” label for a tune that would normally be placed firmly in the “classic rock” pigeonhole. I hope that the proggers out there (who decide to listen to the song) agree that the arrangement moves the song from classic to progressive. If you don’t, let me know why you disagree.

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