When a performer chooses to hire someone to provide backing vocals, the idea is to add something to the song that the musicians on hand wouldn’t be able to provide. Still, the additional singer is there to provide backing vocals, not fronting vocals.
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Sometimes, though, backing vocalists turn in a performance so powerful that they become impossible to ignore. That’s certainly the case for each of these four classic rock tracks. In each instance, a key vocal performance is provided by someone who is not the artist credited with performing the song. For three of the four songs, the guest vocalist is there to complement a lead vocal performance, and singling out the backing vocal performance is in no way a knock on whoever is singing lead. These guest performances, however, are so good that we just might forget about the lead vocalist—at least momentarily.
1. The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter”
How good do you have to be to take attention away from Mick Jagger? You’ve got to have a lot of presence and some serious vocal chops, and Merry Clayton shows listeners she has both on the leadoff track to the Stones’ 1969 album, Let It Bleed. It’s hard to imagine this song hitting as hard without Clayton’s dynamo of a performance, especially when she wails, Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away / It’s just a shot away, unaccompanied by Jagger in the bridge.
In the middle of the night-time recording session for “Gimme Shelter,” Stones producer Jimmy Miller asked Jack Nitzsche (who contributed the choral arrangements for “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”) to bring in a female vocalist to accompany Jagger, so he contacted Clayton. She was already in bed but came down to the studio in her pajamas and recorded her part. The performance came at a great cost, as Clayton, who was four months pregnant, had a miscarriage the next day, which she attributes, in part, to the strain she put on her body with her performance.
While Clayton may be best-known for her work on “Gimme Shelter,” she also recorded seven studio albums and provided vocals on numerous songs for other artists, including Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and Ringo Starr’s “Oh My My.” Clayton is also an actor, and her credits include the first London production of The Who’s Tommy, in which she played the role of the Acid Queen.
[RELATED: A Deeper Look at the Meaning Behind “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones]
2. Pink Floyd, “The Great Gig in the Sky”
Aside from a pair of brief spoken-word passages, the vocals on this Dark Side of the Moon track are performed exclusively by Clare Torry. While she doesn’t utter any words, the emotional range of the sounds that she sings gives the song a narrative arc, making “The Great Gig in the Sky” a memorable track on an album that is loaded with classics.
The anguish in much of her performance is palpable, which sets the precise tone needed for a song about dying and death. A 2004 lawsuit filed by Torry resulted in her sharing songwriting credits with Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright. Subsequent to her work on Dark Side of the Moon, Torry provided backing vocals for several artists, including Olivia Newton-John, and she recorded lead and backing vocals for Meat Loaf and The Alan Parsons Project.
3. Mott the Hoople, “All the Young Dudes”
If David Bowie was going to sing on your song, you had to be prepared for him to attract the spotlight. Naturally, Mott the Hoople was more than happy to have Bowie on this track, and all the more because he wrote the song for them to record. Bowie not only wrote the song and provided backing vocals, but he produced the entire All the Young Dudes album. His unmistakable vocals are heard most prominently in the chorus, though even there he doesn’t take away from a brilliant performance by Mott the Hoople’s lead singer, Ian Hunter.
Bowie would record his own version of “All The Young Dudes” later in 1972, and he would release it on his 1995 compilation album Rarestonebowie. He would subsequently release his version of the song on other compilation albums and on the 30th anniversary edition of Aladdin Sane in 2003.
4. Eric Clapton, “The Core”
The first voice you hear on this track from Clapton’s 1977 Slowhand album is not his, but Marcella Detroit’s. Then known as Marcy Levy, she split the vocal duties with Clapton throughout “The Core,” taking the lead on the first part of each verse and singing in unison with the guitarist in the choruses. Clapton lets his guitar do the talking with his solo in the middle of the song, but otherwise, it’s Detroit’s passionate and playful performance that gives “The Core” its power. She also co-wrote the song with Clapton, as she did on his hit “Lay Down Sally” as well.
In 1989, Detroit became one-half of the duo Shakespears Sister, along with former Bananarama vocalist Siobhan Fahey. Additionally, Detroit has provided backing vocals for other artists, including Alice Cooper, scored a Billboard Hot 100 hit with a Robin Gibb duet called “Help Me!,” and released seven solo albums.
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