Paul Fifield Music

1995 Version recorded in my home studio using Studio Vision Pro, Band-in-a-Box, a Roland MIDI keyboard and a Fostex 4-Track cassette Porta-studio.

Vocals: Paul Fifield
MIDI Band: Band-in-a-Box
MIDI Lead Guitar: Paul Fifield (played into Studio Vision Pro via MIDI keyboard then edited in piano roll view)

1995-2026 Version A is a combination of the vocal tracks from the 1995 version and instrumental backing tracks from a 2026 SUNO generation (based, as you can hear, on the 1995 MIDI guitar tracks).

1995-2026 version B is a combination of the vocal tracks from the 1995 version, the guitar tracks from the same 2026 SUNO generation (based, as you can hear, on the 1995 MIDI guitar tracks), and session players (Drums, Bass, Piano) from Logic Pro 12 in 2026. Quite an interesting marriage, IMHO.

2024 version recorded, mixed and mastered in Logic Pro in my home studio using backing tracks I created in Band-in-a-Box Real Tracks.  The real musicians that played those Real Tracks audio samples are listed below. 

Vocals - Paul Fifield
Acoustic Bass - Byron House
Acoustic Piano - Blair Masters
Drums - Brian Fullen
Electric Rhythm Guitars - Dave Cleveland
Soloist Acoustic Slack Key Guitar - Brent Mason

(The explanation of this song's origins is rather long, so I placed it below the lyrics. - Paul Fifield)

For a decade prior to starting up Haywire I had been playing guitar casually, playing and singing songs that I liked, admiring the songwriting of artists like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter, Lennon & McCartney, and many, many others. I hadn’t given much thought, if any, to writing my own songs. Then  in 1977 we started up Haywire. We were doing some covers but also a lot of Gary Manley’s originals, and the mystery I’d always felt about how songs originated began to dissipate. After all, here I was hanging out with a good songwriter three nights a week. Something was bound to rub off. Around the same time I remember driving home from work listening to the radio, station hopping because I didn’t like what I was hearing, and I suddenly thought, “I could do better than that! I should try it.” I don’t know if I was right but I found myself no longer thinking that there was some sort of barrier to creating songs.

My first attempt came about when my wife at the time went home to Oregon for a two week stay with her large extended family. I remember thinking that I was going to have a lot of fun, maybe go out drinking, maybe… whatever… just two weeks of nothing but fun, with few responsibilities, since the kids were with my wife. But it only took a couple of days for that to turn around. I mostly became lonely. I missed my family terribly and the feelings were so strong that they easily fueled the creation of my first song, which at the time I called, “Gotta Have Someone”. Many years later, in 1995 to be exact, I rewrote some of the lyrics because I no longer had the original lyric sheet and couldn’t remember the final verse. I also changed the name to “I Wanted You To Go” because that's a recurring phrase in the song, and gotta have someone only showed up in the first line. 

Fast forward to late 2023 when I decided to get some very old Haywire tapes digitized and I heard a live Haywire version of the song which had the original lyrics, obviously, and there was the final verse I’d forgotten, and I liked it so much I had to put it back in. It’s now the third verse of four, the fourth being the final verse I’d rewritten in 1995, which I also like and didn’t want to take out.