I don't think it's important to be that good at singing. I think people who are good at singing sing backing vocals for pop stars. It's about how you project. I wouldn't consider myself to be a singer.
My role in the Mamas and Papas was basically just to sing.
It's a particular skill, I think, doing backing vocals. You're blending the vocals between the gaps, between the music.
Nobody put the camera on the background singers who were singing. It was on Stevie Wonder. It was on Elton John. It was on whoever was the lead singer out front. We were 20 feet from stardom.
From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto.
I think, for a long time, people thought I was a figment of Phil Spector's imagination because they knew The Crystals, they knew The Ronettes, they knew Bob B. Sox and the Blue Jeans, but had never had met Darlene Love.
I'll sing backgrounds, but a lead singer, you know, you've got to have that mentality and personality. I'd rather be the bass guy.
I pay such close attention of the record making process that most people would assume are very little and wouldn't be that big of a deal; the packaging, the title, and the harmonies, I think, are arguably as important as the lead vocals.
If I'm singing powerfully, I need something powerful behind me so that I don't feel like I am left alone.
I like singing in harmony - I like not having to sing every song.
My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can't do it alone.
I'm a little more of a lead instrument in the Meatbats.
There are a lot of people using technology that are playing to a click with backing vocals already stuck in there on some computerized thing that runs along in time to the show so they have these amazing vocals that are only partly the guys on stage producing them at the time.
I was in 'Seussical,' and I was in a cage onstage in a purple yarn suit singing backup, and I was like: 'I've had it. I can't do this anymore.' I will say for the record that I did love the show, but I was like: 'I want to do something else. I need a little more.'
The only time it dominates is during a solo, or when we play a low blues and I put figures in behind Eric's vocals. There's never any real problem fitting guitar and organ together.
People would call me up because they liked my voice, and they wanted some kind of vocal harmony. Sometimes I was asked to come in and sing all the harmony parts, and sometimes I would sing with other people.
