True For You

Album artwork and sleeve notes available to download from here

"The difficult second album! I had moved over to England, I had English management and with their help I had put together a band of English musicians. We did some gigs around London and maybe even an Irish tour and then began work on this album at Ridge Farm in Surrey in the winter of '82.
It was one of those country-house studios and it was a very, very cold winter and the place was knee-deep in snow. Certainly it wasn't as easy to make as the first record.That one had been made without thinking but this one was all to do with planning and working out how to expand on what I had already done.
Getting to know new musicians and working with a different co-producer Neil Dorfsman who had just come off working with Dire Straits on 'Love Over Gold' and Springsteen's 'The River' prior to that. And I guess this was an attempt to stretch my wings outside of Ireland and consolidate on the last album. Phil Palmer, who played guitar on this record went on to tour with me for a couple of years. His solo at the end of 'Not The Only One' is still one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
The songs on 'True For You' formed a large part of my touring set for the next few years and a lot of them like 'Helpless Heart', 'Steel Claw' and 'Not The Only One' were covered by other artists and have become standard requests at my concerts ever since.