phil manzanera has said of the title track, "avalon", "when we were recording the third or fourth album in london we'd often be working in the same studio as bob marley, who'd be downstairs doing all of those famous albums. it just had to rub off somewhere." rhett davies recounted the story of how the song got made: "with the 'avalon' song we had to recut the entire song right at the end of the album. we were actually mixing the album, and the version of the song that we'd done just wasn't working out, so as we were mixing we recut the entire song with a completely different groove. we finished it off the last weekend we were mixing. we put some percussion on and some drums on, and then on the sunday, in the quiet studio time they used to let local bands come in to do demos, bryan and i popped out for a coffee, and we heard a girl singing in the studio next door. it was a haitian band that had come in to do some demos, and bryan and i just looked at each other and went 'what a fantastic voice!' that turned out to be yanick etienne, who sang all the high stuff on 'avalon'. she didn't speak a word of english. her boyfriend, who was the band's manager, came in and translated. and then the next day we mixed it."