This week on Behind The Chain…
I know it’s an extremely ripe case of the pot calling the kettle, but every time I hear Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s “Yer Mother’s Got A Penis”, I find it more and more difficult believe that Ryuichi Sakamoto from Yellow Magic Orchestra allowed them to use the riff from Behind The Mask – a track that has already been put through the mincer once before, by some wannabe blues guitarist on the Phil Collins-produced, long-playing nadir of his 80’s career, “August”. Despite the fact that everyone seem’s to think it’s his track, which is largely attributable to the new set of corn ball lyrics he grafted on (apart from MSN, who think the track may be attributable to Michael Jackson, of all people), but If I was YMO, I’d be keeping my head down too…
(Although do check out the pristine remix of the YMO original that Orbital delivered for the tribute / remix album Hi-Tech No Crime – possibly one of the P&P Bros finest moments.)
November 20th, 2004 at 11:59 pm
Eric,
Loved “Night at the Hip Hopera” very VERY much. Was wondering if you’d be available for an interview (e-mail q n’ a or phone if you’d rather). If you’re interested contact me through my site.
BTW. As a PR guy and a film lover I’d say Sweet Smell of Success is an AMAZING movie choice!
November 21st, 2004 at 2:29 pm
Thanks for the comments – don’t know where to contact you though – you don’t mention what your site is!!!
April 9th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Hey Eric,
Yes, it is probably correctly rumoured that Michael Jackson grafted new lyrics for Behind the Mask but ultimately never used the song on Thriller. This hand-me down track was then used by his erstwhile session keyboardist Greg Phillinganes for his solo album and the track is credited to Chris Mosdell (who wrote most of YMO’s English lyrics), Sakamoto and one M Jackson!
Later when Greg Philinganes became the keyboardist for your namesake Clapton while working on the Phil Collins produced album, August, the Michael Jackson lyrical reworking of Behind the Mask was used and hence Eric Clapton mistakenly gets all the credit for it.
And it doesn’t end there – Human League did a version of Behind the Mask in 1993, and used the same Jackson/Clapton version of it. While at it, the Human League similarly mangled another YMO original Kimi Ni Mune Kyun with their own English version of it, which did not go down well with the YMO purist fans.