Be My Guest (Vocalist)

There have been times when listeners have done a double take when a familiar singer unexpectedly appears on a song by someone else. The most successful example was Mick Jagger, rumored to singing about himself on “You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon’s #1 hit from 1972.

Other instantly recognizable voices are hard to hide as Rod Stewart discovered when he sang “In a Broken Dream” with the one and only Python Lee Jackson band.  Before the Australian group recorded its only album, Python Lee Jackson Sings, pianist David Bentley refused to sing his composition.  Bentley noted, “I realized that I didn’t want to sing my own song and the band would have to find someone else to handle vocal chores.”

That someone turned out to be Rod Stewart, a fact that the album’s liner notes did not acknowledge.  In an interview with Record Collector magazine, Bentley recalled: “I heard Joe Cocker singing ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and decided that I wasn’t the right guy to sing my song. When I told the other members of the group that I wouldn’t be singing, they were pissed off. The next thing I remember, I’m in [drummer] David Montgomery’s Chelsea flat teaching the lyrics to Rod Stewart.”

In an interview with Uncut magazine, Rod remembered: “I recorded ‘In A Broken Dream’ in 1970 because this friend of mine [Python’s manager] ran a sports car shop, so he said, ‘Come and sing the song as a demo’ and I said, ‘Okay, what’s in it for me?’ He replied, ‘We haven’t got any money but I can give you a new set of carpets for your car.’ I said, fair enough and that was it. All forgotten until ‘Maggie May’ became a hit and the record company decided, wisely, to put that song out.”

Rod’s vocals briefly made the band an aural force to be reckoned with in 1972 (#3 hit in England and #56 in America).

Then there are some recognizable voices that others don’t want to be recognized. Such was the case when Ike Turner refused to have Tina’s voice acknowledged on Frank Zappa’s 1973 Over-nite Sensation,  keeping her name off of the record’s credits.  This odd coupling of the avant-garde Zappa and Tina came about when Zappa wanted some backup singers on five of his album’s songs. He explained, “My road manager [Marty Perellis] at the time said, ‘Well, why don’t you just use the Ikettes?’ I said, ‘I can get the Ikettes?’ and he said ‘Sure.’”

Zappa worked with the singers for hours on the song “Montana” until Frank felt they had nailed their part.  Ike was not impressed. Zappa said, “Tina was so pleased that she was able to sing this thing that she went into the next studio where Ike was working and dragged him into the studio to hear the result of her labor. He listened to the tape and he goes, ‘What is this s_ _t?’ and walked out. I don’t know how she managed to stick with that guy for so long. He treated her terribly and she’s a really nice lady.”

One singer whose stage persona made Ike look as mellow as Donovan was Alice Cooper—who used Donovan on one of his biggest songs.  Unlike some parents who were horrified by a man named Alice using a guillotine in his act, Donovan “got” Cooper’s shtick.  He told Creem.com in 2005, “I was working in Morgan Studios in London to record my Cosmic Wheels album upstairs and I’d heard that there was this American rock band down below. I went down to introduce myself and I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and Alice said, ‘We’re doing this, it’s called ‘Billion Dollar Babies.’ Now Alice actually was exhibiting a kind of British mad humor in his songs, a kind of bizarre, absurd sort of way of presenting his songs—totally tongue-in-cheek, but lots of people would take them seriously as if he was really dark and evil. He was the sweetest guy. And when I heard ‘Billion Dollar Babies,’ it sounded very much like that Beatles album cover, where the Beatles are on the cover with all these dolls with broken heads and broken arms—what you call Dada, surrealism, a very well-accepted-in-the-art-world form of expression. And here was ‘Billion Dollar Babies;’ a sort of a horror story song. And then he said, ‘Would you like to put a vocal on?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ ‘Well, go on and get in there.’ And I realized the only place I could go was in falsetto and sang: ‘Billion dollar babies!”  And then it was released and became Number One and nobody knew that I was half the vocal. I thought it was a lot of fun!”

Other musicians have shared their time in a recording studio with their competition. Carole King recalled in her 2012 memoir, A Natural Woman: “A constant stream of singers and musicians flowed in and out of the recording studios along Sunset Boulevard. At A&M, we commuted down the hall. Sometimes we commuted between A&M and Sunset Sound studios. Periodically, James [Taylor] came over to A&M to play acoustic guitar and sing background on my record. Physical proximity to me and romantic proximity to James brought Joni Mitchell’s beautiful voice to both James’ and my albums.”

On some recordings, it sounds as if the lead singer coaxed vocals out of background singers by promising them physical proximity to illegal substances. This is heard on Rick James’ 1982 tune “Dance Wit’ Me” which includes a raucous party going on as Rick funks out. Amidst the partiers is Grace Slick, who thankfully left that life and later philosophized about it: “Death is like taking an intermission when you can’t come back. I like living and being around.”

-Mark Daponte

Photo: Mick Jagger (Pixabay)