By: Guided By Voices
Appears on: It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!
Robert Pollard’s songwriting process can often yield puzzling results. In the case of “Cherub And The Great Child Actor,” he starts off with a simple guitar riff as an intro, uses it again for a first verse, and then abandons it completely for the remainder of the song. His demo for this song was released as part of the Hot Freaks subscription under the name “The Standard Learner’s Croon,” where we can clearly hear him stop recording after the first verse, at which point it seems he either lost interest in that initial riff or forgot about it entirely while writing the rest of the song.
