I spent a few hours this weekend re-recording the missing parts from that song “So Long”. I do quite like this song. So, now I’m back to where I was before with it, and I also have the new harmony ideas recorded. Cool.
The song was inspired by an awful article I read last year about a kid who was killed. Apparently, this kid was at the site where his friend died in an accident earlier that night. He was playing guitar, and when everyone else left, he stayed behind to play one last song for his friend, when someone else hit HIM and killed him. It struck me as something I might do, playing a song for my friend like that. It’s a completely horrific story and it moved me to write a song, from the point of view of the guitarist friend. Here’s the original article which I saved:
Teen killed at spot where friend died hours earlier
POSTED: 5:12 p.m. EDT, March 25, 2007
• Teen killed by hit-and-run driver hours after friend died in the same spot
• Andrew Coit was hit at makeshift roadside memorial for his friend
• Police searching for hit-and-run driver
WEST WARWICK, Rhode Island (AP) — A teenager was killed by a hit-and-run driver at the same spot where his 14-year-old friend had died in a car crash just hours earlier.
Andrew Coit, 18, was hit by a car after 4 a.m. Saturday as he played a guitar at a makeshift memorial to Darien Plass, 14, on West Warwick’s Main Street. Plass died after driving his mother’s minivan into a utility pole late Friday, friends of both teenagers told the Providence Journal.
“He wanted to play one last song for (Plass), and that was the last time anyone saw him. He loved singing. He died doing what he loved doing,” said Coit’s friend, Dennis Sullivan.
Plass’ friends said he had been drinking and took his mother’s minivan without her knowledge. Coit and other friends set up the memorial.
Sullivan told the newspaper the mourners remained at the memorial until about 4 a.m., but Coit stayed behind to play one more song for Plass by himself.
Minutes later, police received a call of a man down, and an ambulance crew found Coit on the sidewalk. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
“He died pretty much instantly. He did not suffer,” Alan Coit said of his son.
Police were searching for the hit-and-run driver who hit Coit, said Detective Sgt. James Tiernan.
