The Common Thread by The Keith Reid Project

Album: The Common Thread (2008)

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Songfacts®:

Southside Johnny sings lead on this track. Keith Reid wrote the lyrics and Matt Noble came up with the music. For the album, Reid used 8 different vocalists, and was fortunate that Southside Johnny happened to come by the studio and offered to record the song.
Reid, who was the lyricist for Procol Harum, told us about this song: "That was just thinking about the working guys, the people that hold the place together, the ones that build the roads. Now we're going through this whole thing with the banking crisis, well we had a thing in England when we had this prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. And her famous saying was, 'There's no such thing as society.' And to me, the common thread was saying, No, actually, the truth, the reality, is the opposite of that. There is a fabric of society, and we forget that at our peril. I was trying to say we are all connected. And when we forget that connection, when people act with impunity and forget that we're all connected, that's when you get trouble. And it happened in a big way, people thinking they can do what they like, and everyone ends up paying the bill. Now the common folk are bailing everybody out, society is looking after everyone." (See our interview with Keith Reid.)

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