The instrumental riff that forms the heart of "Treachery" was written in June 1986 at the home of Peter Hartley, who was then the chairperson of the Department of Communication at Sheffield City Polytechnic, Sheffield, England (now Sheffield Hallam University). I remember it was June 1986 because France and Brazil had played a cracker of a game in the World Cup and it was showing on Pete's telly. Pete had bought himself a drum machine and wanted me to help him compose some tunes using it. We laid down three tracks, two of which were used as background music to a student-produced video called "Steel City Boys." "Steel City Boys" was a documentary about the working class people of Sheffield struggling for the right to walk the moors of the Derbyshire Peak District. The third track, originally entitled "Wishbone" (because I thought it sounded like the band Wishbone Ash), contained the basis of the instrumental section that forms the heart of "Treachery."

The content of "Treachery" was inspired by a number of lines from the song "Forgotten Sons" by Marillion, which was released, and which I bought, in 1984 on the (then) LP entitled "Real to Reel." "Forgotten Sons" addressed the tensions in Northern Ireland and contained the following lyrics which have stayed with me since that time: "Asking questions, faking answers, from the nameless, faceless watchers that parade the carpeted corridors of Whitehall. Who orders desecration? Mutilation? Verbal masturbation in the guarded, bureaucratic wounds?" When I was trying to come up with words that would complement the Wishbone Ash instrumental riff, I kept coming back to the power of these words and based my own (less powerful) words around them. Marie Radford came up with the title "Treachery," which formed a natural center for the theme I was working with, and many ideas for the verses. The line "It's time for tea and meet the wife" is taken directly from "Good Morning, Good Morning" on the Beatles' "Seargent Pepper" album. This, again, seemed to capture the hopelessness of the situation that "Treachery" seemed to embody. "Treachery" debuted at the Princeton Jam on November 2, 1997. - GPR

The Lyrics

These are the fragments of my life
"It's time for tea and meet the wife"
It's all I ever know
It's all I ever do
These are the fragments of my life
"It's time for tea and meet the wife"
It's all I ever know
It's all I ever do
It's all treachery, treachery, treachery, aahhhhhhh

It's fading in, it's fading out
It makes me want to scream and shout
But I never do
They never told me to
It's fading in, it's fading out
It makes me want to scream and shout
But I never do
They never told me to
It's all treachery, treachery, treachery, aahhhhhhh

Lack of candor
Petty slander
It's all just propaganda
It's treachery
It's all treachery

Dereliction
Mass affliction
Just another market correction
It's treachery
It's all treachery

No reflection
Fear detection
It's another knee jerk reaction
To treachery
It's all treachery

Mutilation
Desecration
More gross exaggeration
It's treachery
It's all treachery