The Clash bassist Paul Simonon has teamed with Galen Ayers, daughter of the late Soft Machine bassist Kevin Ayers, for a new album, Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?, and the pair, who go by Galen and Paul, have shared a new track from the record, “Room at the Top.”
Simonon tells Rolling Stone the song is “sort of a tribute to Del Shannon,” explaining that before making the tune he tasked his keyboardist Dan Donovan to figure out how to mimic the sounds on Del Shannon tunes.
“I’ve always loved Del Shannon songs like ‘Hats Off to Larry’; they remind me of a kid when you go to the funfair and there’d be like roller coasters and stuff swinging around,” the punk legend tells the mag. “So Dan got a sound, and I thought, ‘We better write a song,"” adding, “So it came partly from inspiration and various English Gothic films.” Simonon notes the lyrics were inspired by the 1945 film of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day? is set to drop May 19. It is available for preorder now.
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
