‘I didn’t understand what Gaz was singing. It’s about needing a hug’: how Reef made Place Your Hands
Jack Bessant, bass
We were hanging out with the lovely producer George Drakoulias at Abbey Road. He said, “We’re going to bring in some instruments for you guys” – and replaced the fairly low-budget ones we’d been playing. I was given this beautiful 1960s Fender Jazz bass.
Sometimes you pick up an instrument you’ve never touched before and immediately start playing stuff you wouldn’t normally play. It made me want to come up with something cool, James Jamerson-style, with that Motown feel. I found the riff that became the bassline to Place Your Hands, showed it to Gaz, and he came up with this chilled melody about going down by the water. When Kenwyn House, our guitarist, added that classic opening guitar riff, it changed from something mellow into something much more action-packed.
It was just a lovely time to be alive. We were young and everyone in the band was talented, even though we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were rockers at heart, but we were very open-minded. We listened to everything from Motown and Bob Marley to Van Morrison’s Common One – Summertime in England can still make me cry. I eventually bought an old Telecaster bass – you can definitely hear the reggae influence in the bass during the bridge to Place Your Hands.
I’ve always thought the emotion Gaz brought to it was incredible, but I didn’t fully understand what he was singing about until quite recently. He explained that “put your hands on” was a metaphor for wanting a hug, to help him through the grief of losing his grandfather. I hadn’t realised at the time because we were young rockers, swept up in the moment and full of testosterone, with no time to think about anything. The 90s wasn’t really a time when men were encouraged to be sensitive – there were all the lads’ mags, and we were playing that game to an extent. We certainly didn’t discuss our feelings in the way we would now. Looking back, I think the lyrics are beautiful.
I don’t think we’ll ever get bored of playing it because it’s so funky and full of rhythm and spirit. We’ve had quite a few lineup changes, and Place Your Hands is the song that has always pulled us together. It gets people dancing and putting their hands up – even though the lyric is actually “Put your hands on”.
Gary Stringer, vocals
We were signed to S2 in 1993, under the legendary figures Lincoln Elias and Muff Winwood. Our first album reached the Top 10, we had three Top 40 singles and played Glastonbury, so we were really happy. We were touring the west coast of the US with stoner-rock band Kyuss when Lincoln suggested we meet George Drakoulias, who had worked with Rick Rubin at Def Jam and helped discover the Beastie Boys. George turned up wearing flowing white robes, which made quite an impression, and we decided to go with him for the second album.
We recorded three or four songs at Abbey Road. George hired a 1960s Fender bass. Jack was fiddling around with it and started playing what would become the bassline to Place Your Hands. Kenwyn dropped his guitar’s E string down to D and came up with the riff that sits over Jack’s bassline. At first, I sang it quite gently, but then thought: “That’s too airy-fairy.” We went to Los Angeles to finish the album with George, taking the bassline and guitar riff with us.
The lyrics are about the death of my grandfather, Kenneth. I was on the tour bus when I got a call saying he had died. I went to the morgue and my auntie said: “Do you want to see Ken?” I’d seen a dead body beside the road while on a surfing trip in Morocco when I was 18, but this had a different impact. The lyrics are essentially asking for comfort – for a cuddle. That’s why it’s “Put your hands on”. I’m sure if it was “Put your hands up” the song would have been even bigger.
Chris Evans was a huge supporter of the band and played the single to death on Radio 1. When you went on TFI Friday, it didn’t matter if you were Dave Grohl or Oasis – you had to do the It’s Your Letters segment and sing those words to the melody of the song you were on the show promoting. For some reason, our version of It’s Your Letters stuck. “Put your hands on” and “It’s your letters” have the same number of syllables, so they used it every week ever after.
The video cost about £250,000. We were turning head over heels on wires that had to be threaded through holes cut into our trousers. Place Your Hands accounts for a lot of my income. If we had 10 songs like that, I’d be a multimillionaire.
Reef perform at Lakefest festival in Eastnor, Herefordshire, on 8 August