There are probably thousands of hours of recording studio banter between musicians that have been thrown away by engineers, but sometimes, artists choose to leave these little bits of conversation in the album's finished version. Here are six songs that have studio banter in them.
1. The Beatles - "Helter Skelter" (1968)
Perhaps the most famous case of unscripted studio talk comes in the very last moments of the Beatles' proto-metal classic "Helter Skelter" from the "White Album". After the song's second fake fade out, John Lennon can faintly be heard asking "How's that?" Shortly afterwards, Ringo Starr flings his drumsticks and shouts, "I got blisters on my fingers!" This was the 18th take of the song, and the band was fed up.
2. Syd Barrett - "Feel" (1970)
Former Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett was notoriously mentally unstable, something that's quite apparent when listening to some of the songs on his debut solo album The Madcap Laughs, which he plays with totally unpredictable strumming patterns and time shifts. The song "Feel" is particularly strange, and at the end of the track, Barrett makes a few attempts to play the next song "If It's In You," but is obviously embarrassed when he botches the vocal melody.
3. Pixies - "Oh My Golly!/I'm Amazed" (1988)
Two tracks on side two of the Pixies' debut Surfer Rosa feature lengthy bits of conversation, which were supposedly prompted by producer Steve Albini in a deliberate attempt to record some banter for the album. The first comes at the end of "Oh My Golly," with singer Black Francis shouting, "You f**kin' die!" and then explaining to Albini why he had done that. The second comes at the beginning of "I'm Amazed," with bassist Kim Deal talking about a sex scandal at her old high school.
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - "Oh Comely" (1998)
Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea album seems like it's far too somber to have any extraneous studio banter, but there's still a very discreet exclamation in the eight-minute folk epic "Oh Comely." At the very end of the song, which was done in just one take, producer Robert Schneider can be heard shouting, "Holy s**t!!" in the background, which is probably what many NMH fans first said when they heard the song.
5. Of Montreal - "The March of the Gay Parade" (1999)
Of Montreal's third album The Gay Parade is an underappreciated indie-pop gem, like a lo-fi version of Smile, and the album's semi-title track "The March of the Gay Parade" sounds like a psychedelic take on Eastern European folk music. At the end of the song, singer Kevin Barnes stops singing and begins protesting to whomever's recording him, begging for one more chance to record a vocal take.
6. Radiohead - "2+2=5 (The Lukewarm)" (2003)
The short banter at the beginning of Radiohead's "2+2=5 (The Lukewarm)" is so discreet that I didn't notice it until ten years after I first heard the song. The song begins with some very Radiohead-esque sputtering electric noise, which was Johnny Greenwood plugging in his guitar, followed by Thom Yorke saying, "That's a nice way to start, Jonny." The song was eventually placed at the beginning of the album, 2003's Hail to the Thief.
What other songs have studio banter in them? Let us know in the comments section!
