Halfway Between Heaven and Earth

Richard Sinclair wrote it in the period when he produced some of the band's best-loved songs. Its published lyric is about longing: two people suspended halfway between heaven and earth, each feeling what the other feels though they are far apart, ending in a wordless coda that the words themselves call absurd. It was not on the original Rotters' Club.

The band played it at the Rainbow Theatre's closing concert in London on Sunday 16 March 1975, on a bill with Procol Harum, Richard & Linda Thompson, John Martyn and Kevin Coyne, with John Peel introducing the acts. The Virgin Mobile recorded the night, and the 6:22 performance went onto the live album Over the Rainbow. Virgin's 1980 compilation Afters carried a shorter edit, which became a bonus track on the 1987 and 1992 CDs of The Rotters' Club. Esoteric's 2009 reissue restored the full take, which Head Heritage welcomed as beautiful and newly unedited.

Live

The song outlived the band. It is on Live 1990, at 8:19 with Sophia Domancich on keyboards, and Sinclair recut it at 8:30 for Richard Sinclair's Caravan of Dreams in 1992, with Andy Ward, Jimmy Hastings and David Sinclair. It returned with the 2005 reunion, appears on Live in Japan 2005, and was played at Pyle's last gig in August 2006.

The upload in the hypersongs web is a live recording from the Rainbow Theatre, London, on 16 March 1975, first issued on Over the Rainbow, in the shorter edit from the 1980 compilation Afters. It is not from the Rotters' Club sessions.