Recording Sessions With The Sex Pistols
In 1976, he was asked by Malcolm McLaren to produce the debut single by the Sex Pistols. He recalled:
| “ | When I first heard the Sex Pistols' demos that they brought to me, I thought, 'This has the potential to be the best English rock band since The Who. It's a three-piece again – guitar, bass and drums.' The first single was Anarchy in the UK which made quite an impression ... Anarchy has something like a dozen guitars on it; I sort of orchestrated it, double-tracking some bits and separating the parts and adding them, et cetera ...It was quite labored. The vocals were laboured, as well. | ” |
Thomas’ colleagues in the recording industry were horrified by his involvement with the Sex Pistols, particularly when he found himself producing the band at the same time as he was working with Paul McCartney. His work with the band also led to one of his most curious album credits. Co-producer Bill Price explained:
| “ | The simple facts of the matter were that Chris was hired by Malcolm (McLaren) to do a series of singles for the Sex Pistols. I was hired by Malcolm to do a series of album tracks with the Sex Pistols. Life got slightly complicated, because I did a few album tracks that Chris remade as singles. Also, Chris started a couple of tracks, which got abandoned as singles, which I remade to be used as album tracks. On quite a large number of songs, when we'd finished the album, we had two versions of the song. I couldn't quite understand why Malcolm kept chopping and changing between different versions of different songs. It slowly dawned on Chris and myself that Malcolm was trying to slip between two stools and not pay Chris or me. So we said, "I'll tell you what, Malcolm. Whatever's on the Sex Pistols' album, it was either done by me or Chris, and you can pay us and we'll divvy it out amongst our little selves." Which is what we did. But it did force that very strange credit, simply because the sleeve was printed long before it was finally decided which version of each individual song was on the record. If we'd known, it would have said 'produced by Bill Price' or 'produced by Chris Thomas'. That's how you ended up with that credit, 'produced by Bill Price or Chris Thomas'. | ” |
During 2007, Thomas produced a brand new studio recording of Pretty Vacant for use in the new video game Skate. John Lydon, Steve Jones and Paul Cook all play on this new version, which was recorded in Los Angeles in July 2007, with only Glen Matlock absent.
Read more about this topic: Chris Thomas (record Producer)
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)