Giorgio Moroder

Amelia’s Magazine | Donna Summer 1948 – 2012

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Donna Summer by Naomi Ryder

Rumours had been circulating all year that undisputed Queen of Disco, matriarch of the 12″ record and five-times Grammy award-winning Donna Summer would perform at London’s Lovebox festival. I bought a ticket in advance and, even when Grace Jones was announced as the headline act, I hoped that Donna Summer would make a surprise appearance and I would finally see one of my favourite artists of all time perform live. So it came as a massive shock to discover (via Twitter as is fast becoming the norm) that the legend had lost her battle with cancer; a battle we didn’t even know she was fighting.


Donna Summer by Sam Parr

Most tributes you’ve read by now probably tell you that LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born on New Year’s Eve 1948, performed in church from the age of ten and moved to Munich in her teens, where she met and married Helmut Sommer – anglicising his name when they split. It was a chance meeting with producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte in Germany that would change Donna Summer‘s life forever.


Donna Summer by Nicola O’prey

It was in 1975 that Donna Summer had the idea for a song with the lyric ‘I love to love you’ and Moroder developed the track for another artist, asking Donna only to record a demo. Rumour has it that Donna asked for the lights to be turned off so she could get into the zone, as it were, and her recorded version was so powerful that Moroder insisted it should be released. Casablanca Records‘ chief Neil Bogart was impressed with the song but felt that discotheques would desire a longer track. Wasting no time, Summer moaned her way through 17 minutes – played in full in clubs – and the 12″ record was born.

In 1977, Moroder got his synthesiser out, and with Donna Summer created, in my opinion, one of the greatest dance records of all time – I Feel Love. This song is THIRTY FIVE years old. Its hypnotic beat and Summer‘s ethereal vocals are an impeccable match. The video’s elegant and raunchy simplicity makes it timeless. It makes my knees knock even now.


Donna Summer by Gemma Champ

A string of Summer/Moroder hits and albums followed: I Remember Yesterday featured dance floor classic Love’s Unkind (see below) and I Feel Love; Once Upon a Time has my favourite photograph of Summer that many of our illustrators have used as a source. The end of the seventies saw Summer trying to break from disco with album Bad Girls, featuring some of my favourite records ever – the title track and Dim All The Lights and the infamous Hot Stuff, for which Donna won the Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal (making her the first woman and first African-American to win a Rock performance Grammy). You could argue, considering that this category was created the year Donna Summer won, that it was created especially for her – it would have been criminal if she hadn’t won for this incredible performance.


Donna Summer by Inês Neto dos Santos

It’s at this point where things go a bit grey. Tensions rose with Casablanca Records, eventually parting ways in 1980. Summer renounced her saucy past as a born-again Christian and said that she resented her sex-symbol image and erotic persona. Whatever her reasons, it is my firm belief that nobody can fake an orgasm for 17 minutes with such conviction like on Love to Love You, Baby. I just don’t buy it. Hell, we’ve all had a go, but that breathy performance is definitely not a fake. Also, check her out in the I Feel Love video – she’s hot for that microphone stand and it looks pretty real to me.


Donna Summer by Gemma Champ


Donna Summer by Gilly Rochester

Some pretty ambiguous comments followed about HIV, AIDS and the gay community. Most reports suggest Summer said that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality. She consistently denied it whenever questioned, but I never felt like she really meant it – her documented responses always skirt around the issue, when really she should have just said ‘ LOOK, I HEART GAYS, THEY BOUGHT MY RECORDS.’ A lot of fans never forgave her, but as has been evident from press coverage, social media and online tributes, it’s her music that we’ll remember her for.


Donna Summer by Sarah Ushurhe


Donna Summer by Claire Kearns

As a tribute, here are five of my favourite Summer songs. Ask me tomorrow and this list would probably change entirely, but here goes anyway:

Last Dance

Last Dance is one of my favourite disco records ever. It introduced a completely revolutionary song structure that, like Dim All The Lights and Enough is Enough after it (see below), began as a ballad before speeding up to the up-tempo mainstay that we love. It received an Oscar, a Golden Globe and earned Donna Summer her first Grammy award for best vocal performance. It’s a beautiful example of the genre at its finest – with disco strings and horns aplenty and Donna soaring vocals.

Love’s Unkind

Love’s Unkind always has me leaping around a dance floor. The lyrics are hilarious – Donna fancies some bloke who fancies her mate, but her mate fancies somebody else – oh, the drama. She’s desperate to cop off with him at the dance but the love rat has already asked her best mate and Donna is left legging it from the school in tears. It’s no sonnet but it’s a camp disco classic that I adore.

Bad Girls

Toot toot, beep beep. Need I say more? Look out for Twiggy’s hilarious cameo in this video.

Enough is Enough (No More Tears)

1979 saw Barbra Streisand‘s melancholic vocals teamed with Donna Summer‘s powerhouse disco sound . Legend has it that Summer went wild the night before and turned up to the recording studio with a terrible hangover, passing out whilst Babs was singing – hence the super long note Barbra delivers before the beat kicks in.

Love to Love You, Baby

I hadn’t got this on my original list, but the burden of not including it was too much. Enjoy 16 minutes 50 seconds (or, according to the BBC‘s statistics department, 23 orgasms) of disco heaven.


Donna Summer by Rebecca Strickson

I haven’t even included Summer‘s epic version of Could it Be Magic, the hypnotising Try Me, I know We Can Make It, the wonderful Dim All the Lights, the epic cover of the bonkers MacArthur Park or Sunset People, On The Radio, I Love You or Love Is In Control. The list is endless. Donna Summer was the Queen of a genre that transformed not only dance music but music as a whole, and continues to influence the greatest producers and performers. I’m sure you’ll agree that all of the songs I’ve mentioned (and more) sound as fresh today as they ever did, and I hope they’ll be continued to be played – now more than ever. Long Live the Queen!

Written by Matt Bramford on Wednesday May 23rd, 2012 8:57 am

Categories ,1948 – 2012, ,African-American, ,AIDS, ,Bad Girls, ,Best Female Rock Vocal, ,Casablanca Records, ,Claire Kearns, ,Could it Be Magic, ,Dim All The Lights, ,disco, ,Donna Summer, ,Enough is Enough, ,gay, ,Gemma Champ, ,Gilly Rochester, ,Giorgio Moroder, ,Grace Jones, ,Grammy, ,Helmut Sommer, ,HIV, ,I Feel Love, ,I Love You, ,I Remember Yesterday, ,Ines Neto dos Santos, ,Last Dance, ,Love Is In Control, ,Love to Love You Baby, ,Love’s Unkind, ,Lovebox Festival, ,MacArthur Park, ,Matt Bramford, ,Naomi Ryder, ,Nicola O’prey, ,No More Tears, ,On the Radio, ,Once Upon A Time, ,Orgasm, ,Oscar, ,Pete Bollette, ,Queen of Disco, ,Rebecca Strickson, ,Sam Parr, ,Sarah Ushurhe, ,Sunset People, ,Try Me I Know We Can Make It, ,twitter

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Amelia’s Magazine | FFS at the Forum: Live Review

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FFS

One of the surprise music announcements of 2015 had between that of the collaboration between art rockers Franz Ferdinand and veteran pop eccentrics Sparks. Born from a long term mutual admiration and a chance meeting in San Francisco, they released a well received album under the nom de plume of FFS and, following a sold out show at the Troxy in June, they returned to London to play a pretty much packed out Forum.

Coming on to the stage to the strains of, if I wasn’t mistaken, the theme to 70s sci-fi show Blake’s 7, FFS kicked things off with Johnny Delusional, the lead single from their eponymous album. Ron Mael’s stately piano intro gave way to a dizzying dancefloor beat, with brother Russell and Franz Ferdinand front-man Alex Kapranos bouncing around the stage.

I did wonder how the set would progress, whether it would be a run through of tracks from the album maybe followed by a couple of the two bands’ own songs for an encore, but pretty quickly Kapranos hinted that they would air some songs “we’ve never played together before.” And sure enough, there was a smattering of individual Franz Ferdinand and Sparks material, with both Russell Mael and Alex Kapranos sharing vocal duties – amongst others, Take Me Out, No You Girls and Do You Want To made an appearance from the FF half of FFS’ back catalogue, whilst the Mael brothers’ contributions included When Do I Get To Sing My Way and, inevitably, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us (though Kapranos wisely left Russell Mael’s still remarkable falsetto well alone). Sparks’ Giorgio Moroder produced hit Number One Song In Heaven also saw an impromptu Charleston from that normally immovable object, Ron Mael, before segueing into a pumped up version of Franz Ferdinand’s Michael.

Listening to the FFS songs, it suddenly becomes clear how much of an influence Sparks were on Franz Ferdinand, I think mainly on Alex Kapranos’ lyrics and delivery. The unmistakeable imprint of Sparks’ songwriter Ron Mael is ever present, as is Franz Ferdinand’s art rock nous, and the two complement each other surprisingly well. What’s also evident tonight is how much fun everyone seems to be having on stage (though it’s typically hard to tell with Ron Mael, ensconced behind his “Ronald” keyboard and with the same expression he’s been using since scaring the audiences on Top Of The Pops all those years ago).

Franz guitarist Nick McCarthy stepped up to duet with Russell Mael on Things I Won’t Get, whilst Police Encounters supplied a suitably silly “bomp bom diddy diddy” refrain. FFS closed the set in a typically less than po-faced fashion with Piss Off, before an encore that climaxed with the epic, genre hopping and ever so slightly knowing Collaborations Don’t Work.

Franz Ferdinand and Sparks proved that they weren’t such an unlikely pairing after all, and while the FFS project might well be the aural equivalent of the sideways look to camera, they show that, in these days of earnest artistes, fun (without being self indulgent) and music are not mutually exclusive things.

Written by Richard Pearmain on Wednesday September 30th, 2015 10:40 am

Categories ,Alex Kapranos, ,Blake’s 7, ,FFS, ,Franz Ferdinand, ,Giorgio Moroder, ,Nick McCarthy, ,Ron Mael, ,Russell Mael, ,Sparks, ,The Forum, ,the Troxy, ,Top Of The Pops

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