Songs From The DVD – (10) The Peace Within

Alright, let’s get stuck in and talk about the last song on the DVD, which is “The Peace Within”. As some of you know already, it was also the title track for one of my CD’s. I think the subject matter of the song is still relevant even though I wrote the song years ago.

Before we get down to talking about the lyrics, let me say a few words about the musical format first. Even though the song has ‘peace’ in the title I was very clear that I didn’t want the song to follow the usual style of peace song. In other words, I didn’t want it to be something that could be sung around a campfire. Therefore I deliberately made it as heavy, as rocky, as possible. This was also to help portray the world as many people view it – loud and noisy…in fact, the opposite of what peace is. The only place the song lets up is the ‘heartbeat’ part when I sing;

The only way for peace without
Is to find the peace within

That was to help draw attention to that part because that’s the key to what the song is all about.


So, why didn’t I want it to be a campfire type song? Well, because as far as I’m concerned most every song I’ve heard to date that is written about peace is more in the ‘wishful thinking’ camp than the ‘you need to do the work yourself’ camp. As Gandhi said – “be the change you want to see in the world!”

If you ask anyone you meet what they think is needed to achieve peace in the world they will rattle you off a list of things. The ‘problem’ is that they are all looking outside themselves for the solution. They say, if only they would do this or that, or if only he/she would agree with me or see things from my point of view, or if only that company or organisation would do things our way, etc. then we’d have peace in the world.

You see, each time it is a plea for the other person to change. If that’s what they think is needed to change the world then all I can say is they’d have a better chance of getting a cat to bark than bring about change through waiting for others to live life the way you want them to.

Achieving peace in the world is the same as achieving peace in your own world. Whose life do you have control over anyway? Your own of course! You start from within.

Getting back to the musical side of things, I wanted to do this song in an acoustic setting because I though it would give me a great opportunity to get the lyrics across but I was still aware of not wanting to lose my original aim with the song. Because there is a sort of message in the song, I though an early Bob Dylan type approach might work. That’s where the new tempo came from. Ralph added a very nice layer to it with his James Burton style playing and just recently PJ Curtis mentioned that it reminded him of Scotty Moore’s playing on the early Elvis records, so all in all I think we kept it in a nice place musically.

I hope you’ll enjoy listening to it and you can view the video here

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