MR: About as new as you can get. We were able to rehearse it because I had enough sort of melodic shapes for each section. It was a little bit like“ Yesterday,” [ when ] Paul McCartney originally wrote

or something more general? MR: They ' re obviously objectionable human beings, and I don ' t think that ' s a particularly controversial thing to say. But Tristan is somehow even slightly more pathetic than his brother [ Andrew ]. He ' s trying to be this Bugatti driving, cigar smoking, sexually abusing bad boy, and he ' snoteventhebestatthatinhisfamily. For me, he cuts a deeply pathetic figure. I thought that was quite an interesting angle to write about.

IE: It seemed like it was about being in the shadow of something that ' s not really worth aspiring to. MR: You ' ve put it better than I did.

Gene, circa 1993

“ Scrambled Eggs.” Sometimes you have placeholder lyrics. That allowed us to knock it about over the space of three or four different rehearsals. But the words weren ' t finished until a few days before the show. There ' s [ nothing ] like a deadline, I tell ya.

IE: The song’ s premise involves the Tate brothers. Was it sparked by recent news,

IE: You’ ve had“ Rain Makes the Roses Grow” a while longer, correct? MR: I wrote that about five or six years ago. Believe it or not, I was asked to write a song for Simply Red. What I ' d noticed is that they had done two Cole Porter covers –“ If You Don’ t Know My by Now,” and I can’ t remember the other one. So, I tried to write a Cole Porter song with the language of the era. It’ s using loads of weather analogies and then has the chorus of,

“ sit back, baby, I ' ve good news to unveil.” [ Simply Red ] didn ' t use the song, so their loss is our blessing.

IE: The tone and sentiment reminded me of“ Little Child,” written for your first daughter. Was this song also very personal? MR: No. I haven ' t lived enough lives to write six albums’ worth of autobiographical

songs. It ' s a simple notion of somebody reassuring somebody else that sometimes good things can come from bad things. It ' s not like me to be hopeful, but I can occasionally muster a little.

IE: This will be your first time performing in Chicago in 24 years, and perhaps the first run of shows that you’ d consider an actual tour in decades. Are you