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The Man Who Spoke His Mind

by Steve Christie's Wrong feat. Louisa Revolta

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about

Steve Christie wrote ‘The Man Who Spoke His Mind’ in July 1990, at the age of 14, just after watching the Roger Moore film ‘The Man Who Haunted Himself’. The score to the 1970 film, by Michael J Lewis, was fantastic and use unusual sounds like percussive skulls and heavy tape echo.



'I wanted to recreate something with a similar sound, but all I had was a bedroom, a downstairs lounge and echoey kitchen, a Fostex 160 4 track cassette machine, an Akai 4000D reel to reel, and a Peavey guitar amp.



I wrote the music on piano in about 2 seconds as I was in the frame of mind to capture something of the late 60s big show band feel of the film score. I then set about trying to record a rhythm track using a kick drum, snare, hi hat and one cymbal, turning the kick drum over and overdubbing the ‘tom tom’ fills. To make the recording sound lively, I put one microphone out in our kitchen (very reverberant) and recorded the drums with another microphone (very probably a cheap Shure dynamic) in the heavily carpeted and upholstered lounge next door. You can hear this delightful ‘slap back’ style room echo on the final track.

I had no trumpets or cellos, so I improvised by sending a guitar sound through the mixer so it overloaded, and then into the peavey guitar amp on full saturation, then sent it through the reverb spring and took the signal from the foot switch out socket (which bypasses the source signal if a standard mono 1/4” jack is used). I also did something with a tape recorder with dirty heads, but I can’t quite remember what. It may have been that I played guitar through this and recorded the sound as it came out, not quite recorded properly.

I then used a few other sounds and created a high ‘Are You Being Served’ string sound by sampling one note from a Technics home organ several times on a little Yamaha VSS 30 Sampling keyboard, and adding a long decay time. I didn’t have any wooden skulls, but I did have my mother’s plastic measuring jug and a wooden spoon, so I recorded them and added tape echo. She was really very annoyed that I had taken them without asking, especially as she was about to bake a (terrible) cake.

The finishing touch was the sound of my brother throwing a tennis ball up at my bedroom window to piss me off, which can be heard momentarily on one of the tracks if you listen carefully.

At this point in time (around 28th July 1990) I had no idea about any lyrics. A teacher of mine did write some words the project soon got forgotten and I moved on to other things.

I had time to kill at this point, and thought - there’s no rush.

Thirty years later;

In the summer of 2020 I listened to it again and realised that Louisa Revolta, an excellent mimic, could sing in a vaguely Shirley Bassey-esque way, so in one afternoon we wrote some lyrics and she shout-sung them over the original track. I still had the original 4 track tape so was able to transfer that to Logic.

We added a cello part to gel it all together a bit more as before this, to me, it sounded like a grotty old tape recording with a nicely recorded vocal on top. At this point the track was 4 minutes 28 seconds, and it was decided that it should be cut down to a sixties pop record length, so we managed 2 minutes 13 seconds!

With a bit of flanging and phasing added to it from the same reel to reel machine that I used all those years ago to record the original track, the song was finally finished in early October 2020.'

credits

released October 28, 2020
Produced and Engineered by Steve Christie at Vintage Keys Studio
Composed by Steve Christie with lyrics added by Louisa Revolta
Copyright Control

Vocals - Louisa Revolta
Cello - Simon Wilkins
Piano, Bass, Drums, Guitars, Keyboards and String Arrangement - Steve Christie

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Steve Christie's Wrong UK

Steve Christie is a Multi-Instrumentalist, Professional Pianist and Composer from the South of England, who occasionally gets together with some fine musicians to produce music under the moniker of wRong. They use an extensive collection of vintage electronic instruments which keep breaking down, with largely home made studio gear. ... more

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