Between the lines

Wednesday, 3rd June 2009

I caught it by chance while stuck in traffic on the Bank Holiday weekend, but it turned out to be one of those programmes that really alters the way you think about something you’ve never questioned before in such detail — in this case, the actual construction of classic songs such as ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’, ‘Leader of the Pack’ and ‘I’m So Tired of Being Alone’. You’ll have heard them hundreds of times, sung along to them in the bath, but never listened to them in quite this way. It was like being taken round an art gallery by an expert and being told to look at aspects of familiar paintings you had never even noticed before. Or, as Nick Barraclough put it on R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (Radio Four, produced by Barraclough and John Leonard), have another listen to Aretha Franklin’s great anthem for women, first aired in 1967, and tune into what’s going on underneath that surging, swooping, terrific vocal line.

If you’re over 40 you’ll probably have imbibed Aretha’s most famous song with your mother’s milk, ‘All I’m askin’/ Is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit)/ Hey baby (just a little bit) when you get home.’ But have you ever thought what it would sound like without the superb backing vocals, harmonising, commenting, reflecting back on what Aretha has just belted out like a preacher in her pulpit? All those ‘oos’ and ‘just a little bits’. Without them, Aretha would lose her momentum, her alternator.

Barraclough, a one-time backing vocalist himself, and a bit of an enthusiast, urged us to ignore the bouncing ego at the front of the stage (you won’t be able to ignore Aretha for long) and to listen in to what the row of singers in the left-hand corner are doing, twisting and turning and cutting in at just the right moment. It can’t be easy. Try singing ‘sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me...’ eight times without a pause, so fast and always right on the note.

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