Random Top Tens: Unlikely Music Collaborations
1The Beach Boys and Charles Manson: The Beach Boys took Manson under their wing, granting him studio time, a kindness that Manson repaid by moving his whole “family” into the drummer’s house, which they proceeded to wreck. Thankfully, the woeful recorded results are lost in the mists of time.
2 Nirvana and Anton LeVay: Strictly speaking this never materialised, but it wasn’t for want of effort by Kurt and the boys, who wanted the head of the Church of Satan, and full-time Ming the Merciless lookalike, to play cello on In Utero.
3 Phil Spector and The Ramones: If ever there was a case of “When Worlds Collide”, this is it: the wayward creator of symphonic pop and the low-brow artisans behind the three-chord “gabba, gabba, hey” ramalama nonsense that helped spawn punk. The result was End of the Century, a mess which left Da Brudders damaged.
4 Timothy Leary and Ash Ra Tempel: German hippies teaming up with the spiritual leader of the Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out generation isn’t on the face of it that strange. However, having collaborated on the lyrics for what would become Seven Up with a 53-year-old Leary, much to the band’s surprise, he then declared that he was going to sing with them. As odd as you’d imagine it to be, and apparently recorded mainly in the nude.
5Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue: Perhaps it was the Antipodean link, but their murder ballad duet on Where the Wild Roses Grow is possibly both Cave and Minogue’s oddest moment. So unlikely was their pairing that a story appeared in the tabloids that Cave had whacked Kylie over the head with a rock while recording the video, the reality being that that was the story of the song.
6 David Bowie and Bing Crosby: The footage of Bowie and the crooner (left) stumbling through Little Drummer Boy has been shown so often we’re inured to its oddity. Still, the fact Crosby seems terrified by the Man Who Fell to Earth and is doing anything not to look at him tells its own story.
7 Kenneth Anger and Jimmy Page: Having bonded over their interest in Aleister Crowley and all things occult, Page agreed to work on the score for underground filmmaker Anger’s Lucifer Rising. Page let Anger use his basement to edit the film, but their relationship went into freefall for some undisclosed reason, and when the music was delivered three years later, Anger was left with 25 minutes of unusable droning.
8 Primal Scream and Kate Moss: You’d have to imagine that there wasn’t a real meeting of minds here as much as one of mutual interests. Worst of all, the band take one of pop’s brilliantly weirdest songs, Some Velvet Morning, and set about it like angry panel beaters. Moss burbles along as if she’s doing the housework with her iPod on.
9 The Smiths and Sandy Shaw: Again, you’d have to bet against this one. However, Morrisey and Marr were incurable Sixties pop fans and Shaw’s day was well past by then, so perhaps it wasn’t completely odd. Either way, watching Shaw mime Hand in Glove on Top of the Pops was a moment to savour.
10Gorillaz and Dennis Hopper: God knows how this (below) came to pass: a cartoon rap album, put together by an middle-class white guy, recording one of Hollywood’s most wayward souls, now in his seventies, as he narrates a yarn of how a bunch of miners cause a mountain to explode by stealing all the jewels contained within it.
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