War Child's Eyes - 1993 Production

In or around 1993, John Nicholson was asking a friend if he knew someone who could take his poem, War Child’s Eyes, and turn it into a song. This mutual friend introduced John to Dean Stevenson, a young arranger/composer and a meeting was set. John told Dean what he was looking for and a couple of weeks later, Dean handed John a cassette of the production demo for “War Child’s Eyes”.  John was very happy with how the song turned out. In their subsequent discussions, the option to try and sell the song for mainstream recording came up.  John mulled on this but came back to Dean a few months later and said that he wanted to keep the song because he was beginning to write a story around War Child’s Eyes.

After that discussion, John and Dean lost touch. For many years both wondered what the other was doing but neither reached out due to work, life, children, etc.

One day, John’s daughter  Rachel came to visit him bearing an incredible gift – one of the original cassette tape recordings of War Child’s Eyes. There were only two ever made, one with John, and one with Dean.

Through the outreach of social media, John was able to reconnect with Dean. Literally while on the phone with John, Dean pulled out his cassette player, found the cassette and original lyric sheet with a ton of notes on it and started to play the song. Dean had not heard it for many years.

Dean told John that it would be great if the song was rewritten to be structured more appropriately, arranged and recorded using modern technology. Dean has been working on the new orchestral release of the song and hopes to have it available before the end of 2023. War Child’s Eyes is the backbone for the screenplay/novel and for other creative productions coming from The Orphan Child’s Foundation.