Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) chords by Melanie

Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) was written by Melanie after her performance and experience at Woodstock. Melanie herself said recently on CNN she walked onto the Woodstock stage an unknown and walked off a celebrity. What happened before Melanie took stage was it had started to rain. Candles were handed out and everyone was told to light them to keep the rain away. Melanie said the vision of what she saw calmed her and the beautiful sight remained in her mind and she wrote this song based on the experience. The song was recorded with the Edwin Hakwin Singers who were on the same record label Melanie was on at the time and were recording down the hall from her. It became what would be considered Melanie’s first “hit” and started the tradition of candles, lighters and matches to be lit at Melanie’s concerts which the more popular it became the more it started occuring at other artist’s shows for encores. In interviews Melanie has stated that because of “fire safety rules” venues where she would play would put it in the contract that she could not perform the show. Fire Marshalls would actually come to her shows to make sure candles, lighters and matches were not lit! Of course the tradition is still carried out today – only with cell phones as the light! There is about an 8 minute version of the song that is the original recording that the Edwin Hawkin Singers and Melanie just improvised at the end in an even more gospel feel. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.