Fact #82131
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Tony Visconti (producer) : When we met up in New York, Marc suggested we start recording the next album. This was late April. We booked Media Sound Studios on 57th Street and recorded Jeepster and possibly The Motivator for the Electric Warrior album. Bob Margouleff was the engineer.
Marc Bolan (T.Rex) : I wanted to record (the Chuck Berry song) Little Queenie but it wouldn’t have worked again, so I wrote my own song to it. and I put that on the end so that someone like you would know and wouldn’t say, ‘What a cunt, Bolan, ripping off Little Queenie’, because, in the end, it’s only the feel of the song.
Bill Legend (drummer, T.Rex) : He called me into his room while we were on tour in America and asked me to bring a snare drum along. We sat on the bed and he played it through, giving me a rare opportunity to work out all the stops. He told me, ‘I’m thinking about using the song as a follow-up to Hot Love and we’re gonna record it when we get to Wally Heider’s in LA.’ And we did.
Tony Visconti : The group flew to Los Angeles for a gig at the Whisky-a-Go-Go. We hooked up with Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, and I remember us having a lovely jam up at Howard's house in Laurel Canyon.
Tony Visconti : We made plans to book Wally Heider's studio to cut a few tracks, including Get It On Marc was a prolific songwriter. He had a lined schoolbook chock-full of lyrics and chord symbols. He would open the book at the beginning of an album, and then when we had enough tracks recorded-say, about 17- he'd close the book. Get It On was just one of about 50 or 60 he had in the book at the time.
When I first heard it, only the day before we recorded it, it sounded like a hit to me. At Howard's house, we were singing it for hours and banging things for percussion. We were totally vibed to record it the next day. I can still remember driving in a van with the band to Wally Heider's through freeways and unbearable sunshine-we all had the complexions of maggots, coming directly from gray London.
Mickey Finn (bongo player, T.Rex) : I gave him the idea for the last line of Get It On, ‘Meanwhile, I’m still thinking.’ From Chuck Berry ‘cos I thought it was such a great line to go out on.
Marc Bolan : I put that on the end so that someone like you would know and wouldn’t say, ‘What a cunt, Bolan, ripping off Little Queenie because, in the end, it’s only the feel of the song.”
Tony Visconti : The session was like any other T. Rex session. We had an engineer called Rick [Pekkonen] who was a very nice guy. Flo And Eddie recommended him and the studio. The drums were quickly set up, and we got sounds immediately. I was impressed with the speed of American engineers at that time; it was a much slower process in England. The recording started sometime in the middle of the afternoon. We cut Get It On and two other tracks in a few hours. The group already knew the songs, and we had rehearsed backing vocals with Mark and Howard the previous day at Howard's.
By 10 p.m., we were cutting the backing vocals. Flo And Eddie were self-starters-they could harmonize the phone book! My job with them was mainly to have enough tracks for them and to make sure we covered all the harmonic possibilities before they left. But everything was always done fairly quickly on T. Rex albums, because Marc wanted to keep costs down, an old habit from the days when we hardly had a decent budget to record.
At the time, Heider's was equipped with a custom console, a 16-track recorder, and "they had all my favorite mics, dynamics for the drums, but U87s for the toms; I used to insist on that. We recorded the drums over three tracks. In those days, it was such a dilemma-do we record the kick on a separate track and the rest of the kit in stereo? Or should we record the snare on a separate track and record the kick in with the stereo kit? Should we record the kick and snare on separate tracks? I tried everything for Electric Warrior. Since we needed tracks for backing vocals, strings, horns and percussion, the drum configuration was a very important decision. In the end, we went with keeping the kick separate with the snare and the rest of the kit in stereo on Get It On.
From memory I can say that the bass guitar was probably coming off just the amp stack to one track. Marc's live guitar was recorded to one track from a mic in front of his Marshall. This track was used and not replaced, so the live groove was preserved. He overdubbed a second guitar playing groove parts and the short solos. Mickey Finn's two conga mics were mixed to one track. There was an open vocal mic in the room during tracking. Marc sang on some takes but didn't on the master take. We used this vocal mic for the final mix as an ambience mic. We used about four or five tracks for Flo And Eddie, with Marc joining them. I always used a U87 on vocals and backing vocals.
Recorded it at Wally Heiders in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Marc Bolan : The actual backing track of guitar, drums, bass, Howard, Mark and me took about ten minutes, and then we double tracked which took about another five.
Bill Legend : Steve and I were basically hired hands. We didn’t have a say in anything. Marc’s attitude seemed to be, I’m in charge here. If you don’t like it, piss off.
Marc Bolan : What we did was bring the track back from America, overdubbed Ian MacDonald on saxes…
Visconti : He played all the saxes, one baritone and two altos. I kept the baritone separate but bounced the altos to one track. I bounced the backup vocals to two tracks, making an interesting stereo image."
Mrac Bolan : The only thing that took time was the lead guitar track. I did four which I wasn’t happy with, then I did it again at Advision and managed to get what I wanted. The trouble was that I was playing too much, over-playing all the time, and it took some time to work that part out.
Rick Wakeman did a piano part on it too, just came in, heard it and played, took about five minutes and that was it.
Blue Weaver : I remember doing some T.Rex sessions for Tony with Mark present. They had some backing tracks down and asked me to put some piano on. I can't remember if there were any vocals on or not but Mark sang along while I was working out a part. I did one song which they liked I can't remember which it was (those days are a little hazy now and were even more so at the time) then they asked me to play along with another song and I always remembered the part I played because I thought the song had a great groove and that was Get It On. I can still play the part to this day. The piano part on the record is exactly what I played and sounds like what I would have done(did do) it's a very simple boogie I can't envisage Rick ever having played piano that style and that simple.
When the track came out I didn't have any doubts that was me playing even when Reg played(mimed) it on TOTPs. Tony did tell me that it was Get It On later so I always assumed it was me playing. I also did some piano glissandos that they recorded and later on they ended up on Telegram Sam.
Marc Bolan : … and the strings were an afterthought, really. We’d put strings on the b-side, had some time over and decided to put strings on Get It On too.
Tony Visconti : We didn't intend to put strings on Get It On but when I was writing arrangements for 'Cosmic Dancer' and the other titles with strings, I felt maybe I should have something ready for Get It On just in case. At the session, I reminded Marc that our first two hits had strings on them and maybe we should continue the trend. Superstitiously, he agreed. All I had written out were the notes G-A-E, as whole notes over the chords of the chorus. We did those first and realized it was icing on the cake! There was no need to write any more for an already dense track. It took about ten minutes."
Marc Bolan : I should have approached America differently after Bang A Gong was a hit here. I should have come over and followed it up but we were just so busy all over the rest of the world, we didn’t have time.
Marc Bolan : There was an American group which already had a song out called 'Get It On in the Morning' and it had been banned for being too suggestive. We therefore changed the title of Get It On to Bang a Gong. We sold a million but it did take the record nine months to go gold.
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Marc Bolan (T.Rex) : I wanted to record (the Chuck Berry song) Little Queenie but it wouldn’t have worked again, so I wrote my own song to it. and I put that on the end so that someone like you would know and wouldn’t say, ‘What a cunt, Bolan, ripping off Little Queenie’, because, in the end, it’s only the feel of the song.
Bill Legend (drummer, T.Rex) : He called me into his room while we were on tour in America and asked me to bring a snare drum along. We sat on the bed and he played it through, giving me a rare opportunity to work out all the stops. He told me, ‘I’m thinking about using the song as a follow-up to Hot Love and we’re gonna record it when we get to Wally Heider’s in LA.’ And we did.
Tony Visconti : The group flew to Los Angeles for a gig at the Whisky-a-Go-Go. We hooked up with Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, and I remember us having a lovely jam up at Howard's house in Laurel Canyon.
Tony Visconti : We made plans to book Wally Heider's studio to cut a few tracks, including Get It On Marc was a prolific songwriter. He had a lined schoolbook chock-full of lyrics and chord symbols. He would open the book at the beginning of an album, and then when we had enough tracks recorded-say, about 17- he'd close the book. Get It On was just one of about 50 or 60 he had in the book at the time.
When I first heard it, only the day before we recorded it, it sounded like a hit to me. At Howard's house, we were singing it for hours and banging things for percussion. We were totally vibed to record it the next day. I can still remember driving in a van with the band to Wally Heider's through freeways and unbearable sunshine-we all had the complexions of maggots, coming directly from gray London.
Mickey Finn (bongo player, T.Rex) : I gave him the idea for the last line of Get It On, ‘Meanwhile, I’m still thinking.’ From Chuck Berry ‘cos I thought it was such a great line to go out on.
Marc Bolan : I put that on the end so that someone like you would know and wouldn’t say, ‘What a cunt, Bolan, ripping off Little Queenie because, in the end, it’s only the feel of the song.”
Tony Visconti : The session was like any other T. Rex session. We had an engineer called Rick [Pekkonen] who was a very nice guy. Flo And Eddie recommended him and the studio. The drums were quickly set up, and we got sounds immediately. I was impressed with the speed of American engineers at that time; it was a much slower process in England. The recording started sometime in the middle of the afternoon. We cut Get It On and two other tracks in a few hours. The group already knew the songs, and we had rehearsed backing vocals with Mark and Howard the previous day at Howard's.
By 10 p.m., we were cutting the backing vocals. Flo And Eddie were self-starters-they could harmonize the phone book! My job with them was mainly to have enough tracks for them and to make sure we covered all the harmonic possibilities before they left. But everything was always done fairly quickly on T. Rex albums, because Marc wanted to keep costs down, an old habit from the days when we hardly had a decent budget to record.
At the time, Heider's was equipped with a custom console, a 16-track recorder, and "they had all my favorite mics, dynamics for the drums, but U87s for the toms; I used to insist on that. We recorded the drums over three tracks. In those days, it was such a dilemma-do we record the kick on a separate track and the rest of the kit in stereo? Or should we record the snare on a separate track and record the kick in with the stereo kit? Should we record the kick and snare on separate tracks? I tried everything for Electric Warrior. Since we needed tracks for backing vocals, strings, horns and percussion, the drum configuration was a very important decision. In the end, we went with keeping the kick separate with the snare and the rest of the kit in stereo on Get It On.
From memory I can say that the bass guitar was probably coming off just the amp stack to one track. Marc's live guitar was recorded to one track from a mic in front of his Marshall. This track was used and not replaced, so the live groove was preserved. He overdubbed a second guitar playing groove parts and the short solos. Mickey Finn's two conga mics were mixed to one track. There was an open vocal mic in the room during tracking. Marc sang on some takes but didn't on the master take. We used this vocal mic for the final mix as an ambience mic. We used about four or five tracks for Flo And Eddie, with Marc joining them. I always used a U87 on vocals and backing vocals.
Recorded it at Wally Heiders in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Marc Bolan : The actual backing track of guitar, drums, bass, Howard, Mark and me took about ten minutes, and then we double tracked which took about another five.
Bill Legend : Steve and I were basically hired hands. We didn’t have a say in anything. Marc’s attitude seemed to be, I’m in charge here. If you don’t like it, piss off.
Marc Bolan : What we did was bring the track back from America, overdubbed Ian MacDonald on saxes…
Visconti : He played all the saxes, one baritone and two altos. I kept the baritone separate but bounced the altos to one track. I bounced the backup vocals to two tracks, making an interesting stereo image."
Mrac Bolan : The only thing that took time was the lead guitar track. I did four which I wasn’t happy with, then I did it again at Advision and managed to get what I wanted. The trouble was that I was playing too much, over-playing all the time, and it took some time to work that part out.
Rick Wakeman did a piano part on it too, just came in, heard it and played, took about five minutes and that was it.
Blue Weaver : I remember doing some T.Rex sessions for Tony with Mark present. They had some backing tracks down and asked me to put some piano on. I can't remember if there were any vocals on or not but Mark sang along while I was working out a part. I did one song which they liked I can't remember which it was (those days are a little hazy now and were even more so at the time) then they asked me to play along with another song and I always remembered the part I played because I thought the song had a great groove and that was Get It On. I can still play the part to this day. The piano part on the record is exactly what I played and sounds like what I would have done(did do) it's a very simple boogie I can't envisage Rick ever having played piano that style and that simple.
When the track came out I didn't have any doubts that was me playing even when Reg played(mimed) it on TOTPs. Tony did tell me that it was Get It On later so I always assumed it was me playing. I also did some piano glissandos that they recorded and later on they ended up on Telegram Sam.
Marc Bolan : … and the strings were an afterthought, really. We’d put strings on the b-side, had some time over and decided to put strings on Get It On too.
Tony Visconti : We didn't intend to put strings on Get It On but when I was writing arrangements for 'Cosmic Dancer' and the other titles with strings, I felt maybe I should have something ready for Get It On just in case. At the session, I reminded Marc that our first two hits had strings on them and maybe we should continue the trend. Superstitiously, he agreed. All I had written out were the notes G-A-E, as whole notes over the chords of the chorus. We did those first and realized it was icing on the cake! There was no need to write any more for an already dense track. It took about ten minutes."
Marc Bolan : I should have approached America differently after Bang A Gong was a hit here. I should have come over and followed it up but we were just so busy all over the rest of the world, we didn’t have time.
Marc Bolan : There was an American group which already had a song out called 'Get It On in the Morning' and it had been banned for being too suggestive. We therefore changed the title of Get It On to Bang a Gong. We sold a million but it did take the record nine months to go gold.