My Inspiration: The Avelons – Rolling Down The Rising Sun

Newcastle-based indie-rock quartet The Avelons, release their newest single Rolling Down The Rising Sun. The track is a retrospective look back over summer; getting drunk with your mates, making memories and reminiscing on youth in general. 

The band, who have recently announced their final headline gig of 2022 on 9th December at The Cluny 2, tell us what inspired the single…

On some level this song has been in the making for 13 years…

But I only started writing it 4 years ago. So rewind to Barcelona 2018, post-Benicàssim festival. I’m sat outside some club with a good friend William, and he says to me,

“I’ve got an idea for a song!”

“Alright man yeah…. You can’t play anything though Will, you don’t write..”

“I’ve got the title and the first line, youre going to finish it!”

“Yeah? What’s it called?”

“Rolling Down the Rising Sun”

The Rising Sun is a country park round our way. We may have been there as teens, drinking away from watching eyes as teens do. Another good friend Kris may have tried to run down a hill nicknamed “dead man’s drop” and he may have ended up in a heap in a bush of nettles. It’s one of those things we’ve talked about since, never to be forgotten. So yeah, it was suggested that it should be a song, and here you have it.

To me the lyrics scream nostalgia, and reminisce about a lost youth I’m clinging to. It looks back on a glorious summer gone, all the highs and the lows and asks where the time has gone.

Being one of our older tunes, musically I can hear us still finding our sound. The chorus drives, the bridges build. The guitars jingle and jangle. I think I was heavy into Catfish at the time, I can certainly hear them.

Rolling Down the Rising Sun is a return to the optimistic themes of our debut single The Barricades. We can’t wait for you all to hear it.