Sparks on Giorgio Moroder

My friend Alex just interviewed Ron & Russell Mael from Sparks, and managed to ask them a few questions about Giorgio Moroder: "The drums on their ace Moroder co-written and produced album 'Number One In Heaven' [sample Amazon review quote: "the electronic equivalent of Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell"] were not only all real, but played by Keith Forsey who went on to produce Billy Idol's big hits. ("He had a very steady right foot," said Ron Mael.) They said that Moroder was incredible in that they'd give him 20 songs and he'd reject 19 of them, which they found quite bruising to their egos but at the same time had to admire. They were also there when Moroder had the first ever Linn Drum delivered. They said they stood round going "it'll never replace the feeling of a real live drummer", but apparently Moroder just smiled enigmatically..."

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Drums on No'1 In Heaven are amazing. I always knew they were a real player, but there are definitely overdubbed hihats on there. If you listen closely (particularly on "Tryouts For The Human Race") you can hear classic disco off-beat open hihats panned slightly in one ear, and classic rock closed hats panned slightly in the other.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:05 am

another little known fact about giorgio was that, previous to the Linn Drum Machine, Giorgio had created his own method for quickly coming up with a drum track for his music.

He went into Westlake Studios with Keith and had him lay down drums and percussion one instrument at a time, (kick on one track, snare on the next, etc.), putting fills in every 4 bars. There were two basic feels - the standard 4/4 four on the floor thing, with 16th note feel and triplet/shuffle feel. The duration of the recording was long enough for you typical pop tune....

After the session and Keith had recorded on all 24 tracks, Giorgio took the tape to the studio manager and had the studio make a ton of duplicate 2" tapes.

For the next several years, Giorgio would take one of these 2 inch tapes to the studio every time that he would write - he would choose a feel, VSO the tempo down to what he wanted, erase the superfluous tracks and viola - a new drum track for his next hit!

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:10 am

nice Moroder update stuff. What the heck is the guy doing these days?

# posted by

Kevin : 6:47 pm

I always thot those drums sounded pretty real. Jus cuz they're playing 4/4 disko doesn't MEAN it has to sound like a drummachine. They are very tight tho! I think disco would've been worse if the LINN had been invented earlier. The Kool thing about the krauts like Neu and Moroder was that they combined humans with mathematics, i.e. the music was designed to be rigid, but when played by human hands, loosened. There was this tension.

All B.S. aside, without real drummers we wouldn't have all those wonderful disco roto-tom fills. We all know that drum machine fills just absolutely suck. Just don't even ATTEMPT it boys!

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:52 pm

Oh, me again. Giorgio is ITALIAN, my bad. That NME article from 1978 you previously linked:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.hocker/moroder/mor_1978/part01.htm

...really explains a lot about this brainiac. I almost worry that he'll become the next George Soros or something. Like "today..fast cars... tomorrow... diamonds! ..then.. currency devaluation! ..and then.. electric dreams II !!! HAHA.

He comes across as being totally devoted to elevating booty shaking, so I gotta applaud that. But what do you bet Giorgio hates hip-hop?

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:54 am

Alex works for the NME - I'm not sure if the piece has been published yet.

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 6:51 am

Tony Thompson was a great HUMAN disco drummer (or funk drummer??)

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:02 pm