I was listening to Echo & the Bunnymen’s superb 1997 comeback single ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ this morning and it struck me that Liam Gallagher’s backing vocals added absolutely nothing to the track.
Now, I acknowledge that the young Gallagher’s presence probably did a lot to raise the profile of the Bunnymen and led to increased sales, so it;s not to be totally dismissed, but I wish I could get my hands on a version without his closing-time karaoke bawling.
Any other examples?
Pete Townshend plays acoustic guitar on ‘Hey Manhattan’ by Prefab Sprout, off the ‘From Langley Park to Memphis’ album, and I defy anyone that doesn’t know that to spot him.
I must’ve listened to that track 100 times and had no idea. Love stuff like this.
Ana Matronic’s BVs add nothing to New Order’s Jetstream. To be fair to her, the song stinks anyway.
Bowie’s “Fame” – John Lennon is officially a co-writer and does the falsetto call-and-response backing vocals. But I wouldn’t know he was there unless it was pointed out to me, and I think his actual contribution was minimal. It sounds more like Carlos Alomar and Bowie jamming – but I may be wrong, I admit.
Compare to Whatever Gets You Through The Night, which sounds genuinely (and thrillingly) like Lennon and Elton John upping each other’s game and creating a brilliant collaboration.
(That’s a whole other thread, isn’t it? Collaborations that really work and become bigger than the sum of their parts. I would say Under Pressure by Queen and Bowie is a great example of this).
I genuinely cannot hear Lennon at all on Fame – it sounds 100% Bowie to me. I know he’s on backing vocals somewhere, but the backing vocals all sound exactly like Bowie.
The funny thing about Under Pressure is that it was a big No. 1 hit yet I think it is relatively unloved by the fan bases of both artists. I imagine both Bowie and has fans are faintly embarrassed by the fact that he had a hit with Queen. Queen fans can also be a bit lukewarm about the song: I think it reminds them of the Hot Space period a bit too much. Queen used to play it live, but it was tucked away mid-set, while the two big hits that preceded it, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Another One Bites the Dust were kept until what we may as well call “The Brown Sugar Slots” at the end.
I don’t think Bowie was embarrassed about it at all. Certainly not when he performed it live with Gail Ann Dorsey doing the Freddie parts, and the audiences responded enthusiastically as well. I don’t see why Queen fans wouldn’t embrace it as a hit either. It’s still quite ‘rock’ as a tune. A win for both camps surely. Fits right in to both their back catalogues. Personally I think everything about it is a triumph. One of Bowie’s best 80s moments. One of anyone’s best 80s moments in fact. I used to think oh, naff Queen song, Bowie’s bits are good though, shame Queen are on it, but then I used to be wrong quite a lot.
I’m sure you’re right. DB had nothing if not an eye for the main chance. Queen were hot, so guesting was good business sense.
Bowie was equally if not more ‘hot’ at the time…had scored a No1 album and only his second No1 single, plus a further Top 10 hit in the previous year.
Au contraire Mon Cher Diddley, if he wasn’t exactly embarrassed by it, he certainly ignored it. It didn’t make the set list on either Serious Moonlight or Glass Spider, and didn’t appear on any Bowie compilation until Best of Bowie, almost 20 years after.
So basically for the best part of two decades, Bowie kept Under Pressure locked in the attic along with The Laughing Gnome, where they sat in old smoking jackets talking about how they were once big hits. Twice a day Bowie would leave some food outside the door, saying “Dearest, dearest Pressie, this is all for the best. One day you’ll understand.”
Well we can also speculate he saw it as primarily Queen’s song and left it alone until after Freddie’s death in the early 90s. Thereafter it was regularly performed. So he die he think Queen were cool after that?
Fair enough, a perfectly reasonable theory. However, I’m stuck with the image of David Bowie bringing up cups of tea and digestives to two of his hits in the attic and I’m reluctant to let it go.
Perhaps there’s some other candidates he might want to keep hidden away up there?
He tried. When he launched BowieNet, the only album excluded was Never Let Me Down and he was very careful that Too Dizzy, a song he never performed live, was dropped from any reissues.
Drive-In Saturday is his “forgotten” single, according to Nicholas Pegg. It wasn’t released in the US, did not appear on a greatest hits for twenty years and was barely played live. He performed it for VHS Storytellers, a show which spotlights lesser known songs.
I like Bowie. I like Queen. And I like Bowie and Queen together! It’s a win win for me!
It could only be bettered if Quo did a cover version. With Beany.
There is a Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney duet. Forgettable is the word as I couldn’t remember much about it (it’s called A Friend Like You)
Doesn’t Macca make chewing carrot noises on Vegetables off of Smiley Smile?
Yes
And chews celery on the SFA’s “Receptacle For The Respectable” from the wonderful “Rings Around the World” LP.
Johnny Marr on almost anything, from Electronic onwards. How can you form a group with the best guitarist of his generation and have him be totally anonymous!?
The Cribs album with Marr was definitely their weakest. Mind you, I did like the record he did with Modest Mouse so I’m on the fence.
Not necessarily “guitar hero” stuff but he plays lots of nice stuff on Electronic tunes, co-writes then too
Tend to agree re JM anonymity on the non Smiths stuff, however I think this is the exception. His playing & tone on this are just fantastic.
See also: this.
And this.
The Right Stuff single came out when the Smiths were still a going concern. Morrissey only found out about it when he turned up early to studio to find them recording it. In his autobiography it is clear that Morrissey was very hurt by this.
The song is basically a Smiths track – Money Changes Everything. This was an instrumental track and perhaps Johnny felt bitter that Morrissey didn’t come up with lyrics to it.
I’m really asking for it here, but sometimes I like throwing the cat into the proverbial pigeons:
I don’t really rate Johnny Marr! Too weedy and jangly, no personality or attack.
Made a lot of average music since the Smiths
I like bits of Electronic but that was more Barney I reckon. As the New Ordery Electronic was good but the guitary Electronic was a bit shit
Made a lot of average music in the Smiths as well.
(Arthur, run, duck!)
I didn’t know that about Nothing Lasts Forever. You live and learn.
I’d like to nominate Jay Z in Empire State of Mind.
If you take him out of it, it’s no longer the great single that it is. So no, wrong.
Madness singer, Suggs does some backing harmonies and mutters something on Morrissey’s Piccadilly Palare single. Madness bassist, Bedders plays bass on Robert Wyatt’s version of Shipbuilding. Madness saxophonist, Thommo plays the sax solo on Hey Little Rich Girl on More Specials album and while we are here, The Specials organist, Jerry Dammers plays keyboards on the b side of Yesterday’s Men called All I Knew. Possibly, their best b side.
Actually, none of these are pointless or irritating. Please ignore this post.
Also not pointless or irritating… Chas Smash wrote Listen To Your Father for the ex-Undertone and well-known river campaigner, and Liquidator Productions (i.e. Madness without Suggs) were Feargal’s backing band.
It’ll be removed at 2:58 pm on Sunday. The Government will be issuing a warning via people’s mobile phones
Snow On The Beach by Taylor Swift feat. Lana Del Rey, in the cameoest of cameo roles. Still a great song, mind.
I may be Wrong, whodathunk?, but I think most of the song is Lana doing a corking imitation of Taylor?
No, she’s just (barely) on BV in the chorus. They’ve each said that it would’ve/should’ve been a more prominent collaboration had they communicated their intentions more clearly.
My wife heard that track and asked me if it was LdR, so nerrrr.
I read the title of the thread and the first thing I thought of was the Bunnymen single!
I only recently found out that Mick Jagger is on You’re So Vain, and listening to it now I wonder why I never heard it before.
(Not pointless or irritating though. Actually brill.)
Not a musical cameo, but a friend of mine thinks that Mick Jagger has a cameo in the film the Bank Job, based loosely on the Lloyds Bank safety box robbery in 1971. The role is a bank employee who shows some people into the vault. He doesn’t speak. I’ve seen it since my friend told, and it could be him, with his hair slicked back and wearing a suit, looking like a man in his sixties, which he was. But he’s not mentioned in the credits, so I don’t know if it is (and why would he do it?)
He’s not the only one who thinks so. I went looking for a still and found this
Thanks for solving the mystery. I’ll let my friend know.
These things can play on your mind. There was a Galton and Simpson half hour comedy in the seventies, I tell you it’s Burt Reynolds, where Leonard Rossiter plays an annoying neighbour who comes round when a family are watching something on TV, talks away, and insists he sees Burt Reynolds in it for a moment. He’s not in the credits, but Leonard Rossiter is insistent that he’s seen him, and rings the TV company for confirmation, and this goes on until he manages to contact Reynolds himself. “What do you mean you weren’t in it – I saw you.” (Funnier than I’ve made it sound.)
Yes I remember that – and I recall Rossiter being completely brilliant as he spirals into total obsession and madness.
I think it was a Galton & Simpson showcase series where they had several standalone pilot episodes – perhaps the idea being that one of them would be taken up as a going concern. I remember one with Richard Briers that wasn’t very good, unfortunately.
I also didn’t realise that for years, but once you are aware and hear it, it’s really obvious. And in fact I think he does a great job. I think a lot of the character and attitude of the song come from his bits, and it’s a great harmony.
According to IMDb. It is indeed Mr Laughter Lines as the bank clerk in TBJ
Would imagine he agreed to sing backing vocals on YSV because he really did think “the song was about him”
Pointless cameos are completely unimportant UNLESS they are either irritating or fantastic. Therefore, Liam’s warbling on “Nothing Lasts Forever” qualifies (although E&tB were already very irritating).
Not irritating, but not really adding much of a “signature” to proceedings:
Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher are often dropping in with each others recordings. They live close by and are friends, but musically not really lifting things
Neither have much of a signature though. Weller’s guitar in The Jam maybe, otherwise they’re both unremarkable generic players who don’t rise above their influences. See also: Steve Cradock.
OOAA
Mi-aaaow!
IIRC PW did a fairly good solo on Peter Gabriel’s Through The Wire
Out of interest I looked it up but there is no solo?
He’s playing the rhythm guitar riff
I like Champagne Supernova. I believe Noel needed some help with the guitar. I think Weller did the job required. A success I would say.
And Johnny Marr has helped out a few times when performed live
Bruce Springsteen does a completely pointless cameo on Graham Parker’s excellent The Up Escalator album. (Springsteen once named Parker the only performer that he would pay to see.)
I prefer his cameo on Lou Reed’s Street Hassle.
Thomas Dolby’s Astronauts and Heretics has a great long list of musicians featured, of whom only Eddie Van Halen and Eddi Reader are obvious. Features some Cajun stars, Budgie, Bob Weir and Gerry Garcia.
JERRY Garcia [sorry – we Deadheads are notoriously touchy!]
But full pedant points for EDDI Reader. Let’s call it a score-draw.
Sorry!
Best film ever: Summer of Soul.
Maybe the 8 seconds of Chris Rock (is it Chris Rock?) over stays its welcome.
I once bought an album »featuring« Steve Hacket. Only later did I realise that it indeed was the Genesis one – but he was featured on harmonica. Did he forget to bring his guitar?
Take Me Home by Phil Collins has Sting and Peter Gabriel on backing vocals, but they’re in a backing chorus thats been tracked so many times that their voices are completely indisguishable.
This reminds me of the backing vocal cameos by Neil Hanson and Neil Tennant, as featured on No Regrets by Robbie Williams. You can’t hear them; they add precisely nothing to the song.
Indeed, how did we get this far etc etc.
Sting on Money for Nothing.
Not a cameo on the record as such, but the Michael Bolton song Steel Bars was actually co-written by Bob Dylan. No, I’m not making this up. The song in question – perfectly pleasant, in its own way – sounds exactly like a Michael Bolton song. I can only assume Dylan makes a good cup of tea.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/michael-bolton-interview-bob-dylan-steel-bars-912917/amp/
Kate Bush, much mentioned on the other ‘good cameos’ thread, really went for it on The Red Shoes, arguably her least whelming album. The famous names ‘just dropping by’ included Eric Clapton, Prince, Jeff Beck, Nigel Kennedy and … err … Lenny Henry. Try as I might, with the exception of Kennedy, I can’t hear anything distinctive being added to the arrangement by the stellar contributor.
Don’t you remember the 60 second ohhhhhkayyyyy at the end of side 1?
The Prince one, Why Should I Love You?, was practically rewritten/rearranged by the great man from Kate’s original verse melody (which is on YouTube). He sent the complete Princified version back to Kate, and according to Del Palmer (her professional sidekick and personal paramour at the time), it took them ages to rework it into something approaching their original vision.
https://superdeluxeedition.com/feature/when-prince-worked-with-kate-bush/
Came home from work with a plan to listen to the album, probably for the first time in five years or more. I may be being harsh in that his influence is certainly all over the song. Perhaps it’s more that, I love Prince and I adore Kate, but I don’t find the song is that strong, for such a collaboration. The best contributions on that album are still Trio Bulgarka.
Which is why it is the only Bush album I own. OK, and This Woman’s Work.
Bongo. Even tho it’s his album. Joss Stone belts out a serviceable boogie and then we get to the chorus. Ouch
Prince’s guitar intro to Madge’s Like A Prayer.
He also features in a similar vein on Act Of Contrition from the LAP album.
And their duet Love Song is no great shakes, either…such a pity.
Back to the band in the OP: The Fun Lovin’ Criminals guested on two songs from the Bunnymen’s oft-overlooked What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? album. You’d never know.