At about the same time the Bond theme was scaling the Brit-pops, their fantasy of working with Shirley Bassey (noted for her singing of the themes from Bond films "Goldfinger" and "Diamonds Are Forever") came to fruition.
While Gifford and White don't like to use vocalists too often, they saw her as a perfect match for their grooves which commonly tip their hat to the spy flick themes of that decade. But the recording with Bassey didn't initially go as smoothly as it did with Arnold. "Once we got the 'ok' that she wanted to do the track, it took forever to hear back from her people [as to] when she could [record]." After about four months of back and forth, the boys finally got together with her in September of last year to put her voice down on tape. "She was a bit standoff-ish at first. She didn't quite know what to make of us. But as soon as she saw through our humor, she warmed up and we got on fine."
Their working with Bassey was not their way of being another Massive Attack -- they just went with the flow and felt the need to use her voice on their track. "We don't want to do songs that feature vocalists -- at least there's no urgency for vocals; just as we see them nessessary." When asked who they'd like to work with next, both look up in a matter-of-fact kind of way and Alex spurts out "Lemmy!" But then they are also in discussion with Mike D from Beastie Boys to get a cameo from him as well. On the domestic release they also worked with Native Toungues De La Soul on a track and Jungle Brothers on another, but otherwise, it's instrumentals and samples for the Propellerheads.
Decksanddrumsandrockandroll is out now on Dreamworks Records.
Written 5/5/98
Originally posted by Jennifer Warner, reposted with permission.
