Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer Songfacts Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer Songfacts Songfacts Summer wrote this with the help of European producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. It was the first big hit for Moroder, who went on to great success as a songwriter and producer. Among his accomplishments: Summer's " Hot Stuff " and "On The Radio"; scores for many movies, including Scarface, Midnight Express and American Gigolo; and many songs used in movies, among them " Take My Breath Away " (used in Top Gun) and " Call Me " (used in American Gigolo). This was Summer's first hit, and one of the first disco hits. Disco gained popularity in gay dance clubs where they used DJs instead of bands. Eventually, the music spread to mainstream clubs and made it's way onto radio stations and movies like Saturday Night Fever. Summer had many hits and became known as the "Queen of Disco," but before "Love To Love You Baby," she was more of a folk-pop artist, and before that, she performed in musicals and recorded show tunes. This was the song that set her on the path to disco divadom.

It was rumored that Summer sang her very convincing orgasmic-sounding vocals on the studio floor while simulating a sex act. The rumor was partly true - after trying to record her vocal the traditional way, her producer Giorgio Moroder had her sing on the studio floor while lying on her back with the lights out, since she didn't want the guys working on the album looking at her when she sang it. She explained that she was indeed touching herself during the vocal: she had her hand on her knee. Her boyfriend Peter served as her fantasy inspiration. Donna Summer had had a Christian upbringing and was an unlikely writer of such a sexual song.

She told Time magazine December 1975 that to write the lyrics, "I let go long enough to show all the things I've been told since childhood to keep secret." She added in an interview with the Telegraph Magazine: "I took on this character and eventually it just fitted me." Donna had a hard time listening back to the song after she recorded it and was concerned about what the song did to her image, but she learned to embrace it and made it a centerpiece of her subsequent tour, putting on a stage show that Madonna would later crib, complete with dancers simulating sexual positions and Summer squatting over an array of guys. According to a tally by Time magazine, Summer could be heard enjoying 22 orgasms in this number. The magazine declared this song "Sex Rock," and stating, "Donna's message is best conveyed in grunts and groans and languishing moans. Her goal is to make an album 'for people to take home and fantasize in their minds.'" After this article was published, there was more organized opposition to sexually suggestive songs.

In Britain, the BBC banned "Love To Love You Baby." In the US, the Reverend Jesse Jackson used his group Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) to rail against songs of this nature, claiming they led to an increase in teen pregnancy. Summer told the Telegraph Magazine: "They were afraid of what it would perpetrate among the youth. And I don't disagree with them on this end of it as a mother. I would not have chosen that specific song to open my career with. But I accept that's what happened. And I tried my best to parlay the success of that record into something else and get away from that imagery as soon as I could." Summer explained to the Telegraph Magazine why she stopped performing this song at her concerts. "If I were to do that song like I did it in the old days, the fire department would have to be at the show," she said. "Seriously. Riots broke out in, like, Argentina and Italy.

I was in a tent in Italy, 5,000 men, almost no women, and I was doing 'Love to Love You, Baby' and I was fairly scantily clad - I was fairly young, and the guys got so wrapped up that they began to push the stage back. And I had to run off the stage, to my trailer out the back. And they came to the trailer and started to rock it. Five thousand guys in a little village in Italy! I just thought, 'I'm going to die today, I'm not going to get out of here.' It's not the kind of song you just want to throw out there." Summer's record label, Casablanca Records, made a huge push to promote their new artist, and in a classic example of record company excess, had a life-sized cake sculpted in her image that was flown from Los Angeles to New York on two first class airline seats. The cake made it's way to a disco on December 31, 1975, where Summer performed in celebration of the release of this single and her birthday (this story is recounted in the book Love Saves the Day by Tim Lawrence).

Summer did a variety of press press parties to promote the song and her upcoming tour. The reception wasn't always good, but it did get her lots of attention. When this song was played at the parties, Summer said, "The audience was groaning worse than I was." The full version of this song (found on the album) runs 16:50. The single version is cut down to 4:57. It was extended after Summer's label boss, Neil Bogart, called Giorgio Moroder up after he'd sent him a three-minute version. The Italian producer recalled to Redbull Music Academy : "He called me at 3 a.m., and asked me to extend the song. He said that he had a party at his house and he was playing the single version and that people wanted to hear it over and over again. He thought that was a great idea – and so did I. That was the key element for the song to become a hit." Summer explained during a 1977 interview with Black Music magazine how plans for this song were laid during a 1975 meeting with Moroder.

"Giorgio remarked that Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's 'Je T'Aime' had been re-released and was again doing well," she recalled. "Then he asked me what I thought of the idea of recording that sort of song. I reckoned it was worth a try so we went ahead… we had to create the atmosphere we wanted by turning the studio lights down and keeping people out." According to Giorgio Moroder, the bass guitarist didn't do a good job on the original short version of the song. He told Redbull Music Academy: "When it came if you hear the first part of it, the bass sounds good. But if you hear it soloed, it's terrible. Absolutely terrible. Two weeks later we did the longer version and, in the meantime, the bass player learned the song better. So the bass in the second part is much better. If you hear it with all the other instruments, though, you don't notice. It's quite good." Scarlett Johansson based her monologue on this song when she hosted Saturday Night Live on May 2, 2015.

Johansson had her first child, a daughter named Rose, the previous year and was demonstrating how she sings "Love To Love You Baby" as a lullaby, apparently clueless as to the song's sexual connotation. In a 2003 interview with NPR's Fresh Air Summer remembered coming up with the hook that inspired this song: "I had this idea at home one day, and I ran into the studio, and I said Giorgio, I have this idea. Would you - do you think you could write something to it? And I sort of sang it to him, and he kept saying it over, he says love to love you, I love to love you. He kept rubbing his chin and thinking like a little mad scientist, and then he went into the studio, and Giorgio had written this track." Donna Summer ‘I Feel Love’ | Classic Tracks | "It didn't feel at all revolutionary at the time,” admits Pete Bellotte, whose production and songwriting credits also include Elton John, Janet Jackson and Cliff Richard.

"We just thought it was a decent track.” Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder, 1977.Photo: Redferns Having played guitar in a number of school bands, Bellotte joined an outfit named Linda Laine & The Sinners at age 18 in 1965, and acquired his first studio experience recording at the EMI facility on Abbey Road under the auspices of producer Norrie Paramor. This subsequently came into play at the end of the decade when, after having toured the UK and Germany with his fellow Sinners, Bellotte decided that "the guy behind the glass had the best job... If a particular act didn't work, he would have something else, whereas in a band, if you didn't work out, then that was it.” Fluent in German, Bellotte initially visited both Hamburg and Munich to try to find some gigs as a producer, and it was in the latter city that he landed a job as assistant to one Giorgio Moroder. "The first day I met Giorgio, he gave me his briefcase to carry, whereupon I told him I would perform all the other duties, but there was no way I could do that,” Bellotte recalls.

"Fortunately, Giorgio accepted this, and I worked as his assistant for a year, year‑and‑a‑half, before Ariola Records offered me a job as a house producer.” It was while at Ariola that, in 1972, Bellotte co‑wrote 'Son Of My Father' with Moroder. However, although also recorded by Moroder, the song became a chart‑topper in Britain as covered by Chicory Tip. "I never really liked that song,” remarks Bellotte, who wrote the lyrics. "It was so lightweight.” Nevertheless, Giorgio Moroder's recording of the song was also his first to feature a synthesizer; the instrument whose sound he would later become irrevocably associated with. "In 1970, an engineer I knew, called Robbie [Wedel], introduced me to a classical composer in Munich [Eberhard Schöner] who had this incredible new instrument,” Moroder recalled when I spoke with him in 1998. "It was a humongous machine with cords everywhere, and he played me this composition which just consisted of a bass tone that kept changing every half minute. That was his composition!

He was using this huge machine to create what was known as 'musique concrete'. There were no rhythms, no effects, and it wasn't too interesting, but then, when he wasn't around, Robbie took me aside and said, 'Look, with this synthesizer you can create more than just a low note.' He showed me a few things and I thought, 'Wow, this is great!' "I was immediately fascinated by the possibilities and the different kinds of sounds it could produce. It was two or three weeks later that 'Son Of My Father' became the first of my records to feature a synthesizer, but, although I had several small hits in Europe with other records that used it, I eventually began to lose interest. You see, it was quite a pain in the butt to use, because the Moog in question was the only one around and the classical composer who owned it wasn't too happy about people using it as a popular instrument. He guarded it jealously, so we kind of had to sneak in when he was away. That's how it was for a couple of years, before synthesizers became more widely available.” In the meantime, following a year at Ariola, Bellotte again teamed up with Moroder.

"Now I was his partner,” Bellotte explains. "We both produced equally together, each giving our own input, and back then, in terms of the songs, Giorgio principally wrote the music while I wrote the lyrics. In terms of the productions, we overlapped all the time — there was no defined area, and I think that's why we got on so well. Neither of us contributed more than the other, and we also never argued. I have to say, Giorgio and I were a strange team, because we never, ever smoked, drank or did drugs; we were just there for the music and working all the time. I don't recall us ever disagreeing vehemently over anything whatsoever — we always had similar visions of where we were heading.” In 1974, this happened to be in the direction of Donna Summer, a trained gospel belter who had recently performed in various stage musicals, most notably the German and Austrian productions of Hair. "There were all these refugees from Hair back then,” Bellotte confirms. "There was Marsha Hunt, Judy Cheeks, Roberta Kelly — all these black American girls who had appeared in different versions of Hair in various cities and countries.

Judy, Roberta and Donna were all doing session work in Munich, performing backing vocals, and one day I needed to demo a song that I had written, 'Denver Dream', and the French record company wanted to release the demo of Donna. Well, that then became a hit in Holland, so she signed with us and we recorded 'The Hostage' and the Lady Of The Night album, both of which were also big hits in Holland [the only place where they were released], and we all thought we were doing fantastically well. They were just pop records, but then came the disco thing...” Songs For Swingers A core band of musicians had been used up until this time, including Keith Forsey on drums and Sylvester Levay on piano. It was while doing a sound‑check warm‑up with a Crusaders jazz‑fusion instrumental for a particular session that Forsey employed the then‑unique four‑on‑the‑floor bass drum pattern, coupled with the 'pea soup' hi‑hat rhythm that he had heard on the Hues Corporation's dance hit, 'Rock The Boat'. Pete Bellotte, late 1970s. "That is how the first disco beat elements came about,” says Pete Bellotte.

"They simply came out of that jam.” And what resulted from those disco beat elements was 'Love To Love You Baby', the 1975 smash‑hit breakthrough for Summer, Moroder and Bellotte that, courtesy of the singer's graphic moans and groans — amounting to a record‑breaking 22 simulated orgasms, according to Time Magazine — stormed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, while being banned by certain radio broadcasters, including the BBC. Several days after 'Love To Love You Baby' was demo'd, it was placed with Dick Leahy's GTO record label during MIDEM in Cannes. Moroder persuaded Summer to re‑record the song. Released in the UK, it initially bombed, but it was a different story after the tape was sent to Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart in the US. "Keith Forsey was away when we did that recording, so Martin Harrison filled in for him,” Bellotte recalls. "Martin was a very nice guy, but his timing wasn't great, so after the whole thing was finished and we listened to the breakdown in the middle, we could hear it noticeably slowing up. We therefore sat down trying to figure out what to do.

I'd gone to a lot of clubs where these peculiar Italian bands played a schmaltzy kind of music and they used to have this little drum machine where, if you just pressed a button, it would play a samba, or if you pressed another button it would play a waltz. It was very basic and it had a horrible sound, but of course it played in time, so we sent out for one and we laid that down as a track. This then provided us with a four‑minute, metronomic beat that had a kind of groove going on, and that really was the origin of drum machines, and the thing that enabled us to stretch it to a 16‑minute version, kept in perfect time, when Neil Bogart requested it.” According to Moroder, it was on a Friday that Bogart called him, at about three o'clock in the morning LA time, ecstatic over the number and insisting that it should be extended to cover the entire side of an album. Bellotte fills in the details...

"Bogart was having an orgy at his house, there was a lot of coke going on and, to use his own language, they were all 'f*cking to this track' and the crowd there had him replay the song over and over again. Suddenly, a 'Eureka' thought hit Bogart; he recalled 'In‑A‑Gadda‑Da‑Vida' by Iron Butterfly, which had taken up a whole side. In a flash he came up with the idea of doing the same with 'Love To Love You Baby' and he needed it within a week. So we just proceeded to get down to it on that weekend, and since things always went very fast back then, within the week he had what he wanted.” Having been a hit in Europe at its original length, the remixed song became a dance‑club sensation in the States, where it peaked at Number two on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album of the same name — whose entire first side comprised the extended version of the title track — was quickly certified gold.

Nevertheless, despite all the controversy surrounding Donna Summer's breathy performance, when I spoke with Moroder, he denied setting out to cause a stir with 'Love To Love You Baby', or even being aware of the reaction. "I wasn't really in touch with what was going on in England and America,” he stated. "I got some feedback about how the record was selling through the music papers, but I was never one for going to the discotheques. I maybe visited [New York's] Studio 54 once or twice, but I didn't follow the scene and the trends too much.” Capitalising on the success of 'Love To Love You Baby', Donna Summer returned to America and was followed there by Giorgio Moroder, who would eventually base himself full‑time on the West Coast. This, in turn, would lead to the end of his partnership with Pete Bellotte who, not enamoured with the US, would return to England in the mid‑'80s.

But that was still a long way in the future when, after recording two more albums, 1976's Love Trilogy and Four Seasons Of Love, the trio created the following year's I Remember Yesterday, and Summer's second top 10 single, in the form of 'I Feel Love'. Moog Manoeuvres "With disco albums, we started using themes,” Bellotte explains. "I was always the ideas man, and so for Love Trilogy I came up with the idea of having three separate songs and then a fourth song consisting of those three songs linked together, all combined into one. Four Seasons Of Love was a double album, with each side featuring a season, and my next idea — having just read Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time, which is 12 novels inspired by the painting of that name by Nicolas Poussin — was to record an album that chronicled popular music up until the present and on into the future.

So, we started out with a '50s song, 'I Remember Yesterday' — I was rather peeved when the album was changed to that name, because I really wanted it to be called A Dance To The Music Of Time — and continued with a bit of rock, a Tamla Motown number and so on, and then brought it up to date with disco, before the final, futuristic song was 'I Feel Love'. "That's when we got Robbie Wedel in. He came in with four cases containing the Moog and set it all up. Giorgio had the idea for how the bass should go, and we explained the concept to Robbie that the whole song had to be done with the Moog. He said this meant we would need to lock or sync the Moog to the Studer, and when we asked, 'What do you mean, sync?' Robbie replied, 'Well, whatever you play now will then play in perfect time with the first take.' We said, 'How's that possible?' and he said, 'It's something I've figured out that even Bob Moog didn't know his machine was capable of, and now I've told him how it's done...

Here's how: first, we need to record a reference pulse on track 16 of the tape, and from that we can then lock in the Moog so that the rest of the tracks are perfectly synchronised.' "Once this was done and Giorgio had laid the basic track down — we'd use other Moogs later on, including the Minimoog, but nothing ever had the strength of that particular bass, which is like a giant's hammer on a wall — every other synthesized sound locked in absolutely solidly with the original tempo. We had entered another world! This is how brilliantly clever Robbie Wedel was. No one had ever figured this out before — he was the true innovator, and he deserves so much credit. "Robbie simulated a hi‑hat, snare and bass drum on there, as well as a swell pad — he was just a very ingenious programmer. It was recorded on a 16‑track Studer A80 in an Eastlake room at Musicland, where we had a 32/32 Harrison desk. In terms of effects on this track, there was only compression and reverb from one of the early Lexicons, while for vocals we just used Neumann U87s.

The Moog was simply direct‑injected into the desk, and even now, on any system, that track sounds so massive, so future‑proof. "Giorgio had the idea for the song, coming up with the tune while Donna and I wrote the lyrics, but in the studio we always built things as we went along, just as with 'I Feel Love'. For others we'd also come up with basic ideas, sometimes the musicians would chip in, and with hindsight it now seems a much, much more fluid way of recording than that which takes place today. I mean, nowadays it's possible to sit in our home studios with no hourly rate clocking up, and spend days working on a little detail that doesn't make too much difference in the end. Back then, I think there was more spontaneity, less navel‑gazing.” Last-minute Edits The last song on the album, recorded in two to three hours and designed to transport listeners into the future, 'I Feel Love' would quickly become a gay anthem, not least because of Neil Bogart's astute marketing, while topping the UK singles chart and climbing to number six on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, it was considered to be nothing more than a filler when the record was finished. "We never thought of it as a stand-out track, we just thought it part of a good album,” Bellotte comments. "However, when we sent the album off to LA, Neil Bogart called back straight away and said, 'The single is 'I Feel Love', it needs three edits and these are the edits.' Doing these immediately improved the fluidity of the track no end. He was that kind of a record man. And, of course, those edits no longer exist, because they would have been sliced from the quarter‑inch master and simply thrown on the floor. That's how it was then. If you ever did any editing, the floor was cluttered with all the stuff you didn't use. We never saved anything, it was just discarded. However, because of his uncanny feel for the music, Bogart knew exactly where the track should be edited and, of course, the improvement was fantastic.” Donna Summer ‘I Feel Love’ | Classic Tracks | "It didn't feel at all revolutionary at the time,” admits Pete Bellotte, whose production and songwriting credits also include Elton John, Janet Jackson and Cliff Richard.

"We just thought it was a decent track.” Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder, 1977.Photo: Redferns Having played guitar in a number of school bands, Bellotte joined an outfit named Linda Laine & The Sinners at age 18 in 1965, and acquired his first studio experience recording at the EMI facility on Abbey Road under the auspices of producer Norrie Paramor. This subsequently came into play at the end of the decade when, after having toured the UK and Germany with his fellow Sinners, Bellotte decided that "the guy behind the glass had the best job... If a particular act didn't work, he would have something else, whereas in a band, if you didn't work out, then that was it.” Fluent in German, Bellotte initially visited both Hamburg and Munich to try to find some gigs as a producer, and it was in the latter city that he landed a job as assistant to one Giorgio Moroder. "The first day I met Giorgio, he gave me his briefcase to carry, whereupon I told him I would perform all the other duties, but there was no way I could do that,” Bellotte recalls.

"Fortunately, Giorgio accepted this, and I worked as his assistant for a year, year‑and‑a‑half, before Ariola Records offered me a job as a house producer.” It was while at Ariola that, in 1972, Bellotte co‑wrote 'Son Of My Father' with Moroder. However, although also recorded by Moroder, the song became a chart‑topper in Britain as covered by Chicory Tip. "I never really liked that song,” remarks Bellotte, who wrote the lyrics. "It was so lightweight.” Nevertheless, Giorgio Moroder's recording of the song was also his first to feature a synthesizer; the instrument whose sound he would later become irrevocably associated with. "In 1970, an engineer I knew, called Robbie [Wedel], introduced me to a classical composer in Munich [Eberhard Schöner] who had this incredible new instrument,” Moroder recalled when I spoke with him in 1998. "It was a humongous machine with cords everywhere, and he played me this composition which just consisted of a bass tone that kept changing every half minute. That was his composition!

He was using this huge machine to create what was known as 'musique concrete'. There were no rhythms, no effects, and it wasn't too interesting, but then, when he wasn't around, Robbie took me aside and said, 'Look, with this synthesizer you can create more than just a low note.' He showed me a few things and I thought, 'Wow, this is great!' "I was immediately fascinated by the possibilities and the different kinds of sounds it could produce. It was two or three weeks later that 'Son Of My Father' became the first of my records to feature a synthesizer, but, although I had several small hits in Europe with other records that used it, I eventually began to lose interest. You see, it was quite a pain in the butt to use, because the Moog in question was the only one around and the classical composer who owned it wasn't too happy about people using it as a popular instrument. He guarded it jealously, so we kind of had to sneak in when he was away. That's how it was for a couple of years, before synthesizers became more widely available.” In the meantime, following a year at Ariola, Bellotte again teamed up with Moroder.

"Now I was his partner,” Bellotte explains. "We both produced equally together, each giving our own input, and back then, in terms of the songs, Giorgio principally wrote the music while I wrote the lyrics. In terms of the productions, we overlapped all the time — there was no defined area, and I think that's why we got on so well. Neither of us contributed more than the other, and we also never argued. I have to say, Giorgio and I were a strange team, because we never, ever smoked, drank or did drugs; we were just there for the music and working all the time. I don't recall us ever disagreeing vehemently over anything whatsoever — we always had similar visions of where we were heading.” In 1974, this happened to be in the direction of Donna Summer, a trained gospel belter who had recently performed in various stage musicals, most notably the German and Austrian productions of Hair. "There were all these refugees from Hair back then,” Bellotte confirms. "There was Marsha Hunt, Judy Cheeks, Roberta Kelly — all these black American girls who had appeared in different versions of Hair in various cities and countries.

Judy, Roberta and Donna were all doing session work in Munich, performing backing vocals, and one day I needed to demo a song that I had written, 'Denver Dream', and the French record company wanted to release the demo of Donna. Well, that then became a hit in Holland, so she signed with us and we recorded 'The Hostage' and the Lady Of The Night album, both of which were also big hits in Holland [the only place where they were released], and we all thought we were doing fantastically well. They were just pop records, but then came the disco thing...” Songs For Swingers A core band of musicians had been used up until this time, including Keith Forsey on drums and Sylvester Levay on piano. It was while doing a sound‑check warm‑up with a Crusaders jazz‑fusion instrumental for a particular session that Forsey employed the then‑unique four‑on‑the‑floor bass drum pattern, coupled with the 'pea soup' hi‑hat rhythm that he had heard on the Hues Corporation's dance hit, 'Rock The Boat'. Pete Bellotte, late 1970s. "That is how the first disco beat elements came about,” says Pete Bellotte.

"They simply came out of that jam.” And what resulted from those disco beat elements was 'Love To Love You Baby', the 1975 smash‑hit breakthrough for Summer, Moroder and Bellotte that, courtesy of the singer's graphic moans and groans — amounting to a record‑breaking 22 simulated orgasms, according to Time Magazine — stormed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, while being banned by certain radio broadcasters, including the BBC. Several days after 'Love To Love You Baby' was demo'd, it was placed with Dick Leahy's GTO record label during MIDEM in Cannes. Moroder persuaded Summer to re‑record the song. Released in the UK, it initially bombed, but it was a different story after the tape was sent to Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart in the US. "Keith Forsey was away when we did that recording, so Martin Harrison filled in for him,” Bellotte recalls. "Martin was a very nice guy, but his timing wasn't great, so after the whole thing was finished and we listened to the breakdown in the middle, we could hear it noticeably slowing up. We therefore sat down trying to figure out what to do.

I'd gone to a lot of clubs where these peculiar Italian bands played a schmaltzy kind of music and they used to have this little drum machine where, if you just pressed a button, it would play a samba, or if you pressed another button it would play a waltz. It was very basic and it had a horrible sound, but of course it played in time, so we sent out for one and we laid that down as a track. This then provided us with a four‑minute, metronomic beat that had a kind of groove going on, and that really was the origin of drum machines, and the thing that enabled us to stretch it to a 16‑minute version, kept in perfect time, when Neil Bogart requested it.” According to Moroder, it was on a Friday that Bogart called him, at about three o'clock in the morning LA time, ecstatic over the number and insisting that it should be extended to cover the entire side of an album. Bellotte fills in the details...

"Bogart was having an orgy at his house, there was a lot of coke going on and, to use his own language, they were all 'f*cking to this track' and the crowd there had him replay the song over and over again. Suddenly, a 'Eureka' thought hit Bogart; he recalled 'In‑A‑Gadda‑Da‑Vida' by Iron Butterfly, which had taken up a whole side. In a flash he came up with the idea of doing the same with 'Love To Love You Baby' and he needed it within a week. So we just proceeded to get down to it on that weekend, and since things always went very fast back then, within the week he had what he wanted.” Having been a hit in Europe at its original length, the remixed song became a dance‑club sensation in the States, where it peaked at Number two on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album of the same name — whose entire first side comprised the extended version of the title track — was quickly certified gold.

Nevertheless, despite all the controversy surrounding Donna Summer's breathy performance, when I spoke with Moroder, he denied setting out to cause a stir with 'Love To Love You Baby', or even being aware of the reaction. "I wasn't really in touch with what was going on in England and America,” he stated. "I got some feedback about how the record was selling through the music papers, but I was never one for going to the discotheques. I maybe visited [New York's] Studio 54 once or twice, but I didn't follow the scene and the trends too much.” Capitalising on the success of 'Love To Love You Baby', Donna Summer returned to America and was followed there by Giorgio Moroder, who would eventually base himself full‑time on the West Coast. This, in turn, would lead to the end of his partnership with Pete Bellotte who, not enamoured with the US, would return to England in the mid‑'80s.

But that was still a long way in the future when, after recording two more albums, 1976's Love Trilogy and Four Seasons Of Love, the trio created the following year's I Remember Yesterday, and Summer's second top 10 single, in the form of 'I Feel Love'. Moog Manoeuvres "With disco albums, we started using themes,” Bellotte explains. "I was always the ideas man, and so for Love Trilogy I came up with the idea of having three separate songs and then a fourth song consisting of those three songs linked together, all combined into one. Four Seasons Of Love was a double album, with each side featuring a season, and my next idea — having just read Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time, which is 12 novels inspired by the painting of that name by Nicolas Poussin — was to record an album that chronicled popular music up until the present and on into the future.

So, we started out with a '50s song, 'I Remember Yesterday' — I was rather peeved when the album was changed to that name, because I really wanted it to be called A Dance To The Music Of Time — and continued with a bit of rock, a Tamla Motown number and so on, and then brought it up to date with disco, before the final, futuristic song was 'I Feel Love'. "That's when we got Robbie Wedel in. He came in with four cases containing the Moog and set it all up. Giorgio had the idea for how the bass should go, and we explained the concept to Robbie that the whole song had to be done with the Moog. He said this meant we would need to lock or sync the Moog to the Studer, and when we asked, 'What do you mean, sync?' Robbie replied, 'Well, whatever you play now will then play in perfect time with the first take.' We said, 'How's that possible?' and he said, 'It's something I've figured out that even Bob Moog didn't know his machine was capable of, and now I've told him how it's done...

Here's how: first, we need to record a reference pulse on track 16 of the tape, and from that we can then lock in the Moog so that the rest of the tracks are perfectly synchronised.' "Once this was done and Giorgio had laid the basic track down — we'd use other Moogs later on, including the Minimoog, but nothing ever had the strength of that particular bass, which is like a giant's hammer on a wall — every other synthesized sound locked in absolutely solidly with the original tempo. We had entered another world! This is how brilliantly clever Robbie Wedel was. No one had ever figured this out before — he was the true innovator, and he deserves so much credit. "Robbie simulated a hi‑hat, snare and bass drum on there, as well as a swell pad — he was just a very ingenious programmer. It was recorded on a 16‑track Studer A80 in an Eastlake room at Musicland, where we had a 32/32 Harrison desk. In terms of effects on this track, there was only compression and reverb from one of the early Lexicons, while for vocals we just used Neumann U87s.

The Moog was simply direct‑injected into the desk, and even now, on any system, that track sounds so massive, so future‑proof. "Giorgio had the idea for the song, coming up with the tune while Donna and I wrote the lyrics, but in the studio we always built things as we went along, just as with 'I Feel Love'. For others we'd also come up with basic ideas, sometimes the musicians would chip in, and with hindsight it now seems a much, much more fluid way of recording than that which takes place today. I mean, nowadays it's possible to sit in our home studios with no hourly rate clocking up, and spend days working on a little detail that doesn't make too much difference in the end. Back then, I think there was more spontaneity, less navel‑gazing.” Last-minute Edits The last song on the album, recorded in two to three hours and designed to transport listeners into the future, 'I Feel Love' would quickly become a gay anthem, not least because of Neil Bogart's astute marketing, while topping the UK singles chart and climbing to number six on the Billboard Hot 100.

However, it was considered to be nothing more than a filler when the record was finished. "We never thought of it as a stand-out track, we just thought it part of a good album,” Bellotte comments. "However, when we sent the album off to LA, Neil Bogart called back straight away and said, 'The single is 'I Feel Love', it needs three edits and these are the edits.' Doing these immediately improved the fluidity of the track no end. He was that kind of a record man. And, of course, those edits no longer exist, because they would have been sliced from the quarter‑inch master and simply thrown on the floor. That's how it was then. If you ever did any editing, the floor was cluttered with all the stuff you didn't use. We never saved anything, it was just discarded. However, because of his uncanny feel for the music, Bogart knew exactly where the track should be edited and, of course, the improvement was fantastic.” 12 Classic Songs That Were Banned In The Past For Obscure Reasons - Page 2 of 2 12 Classic Songs That Were Banned In The Past For Obscure Reasons 7.

‘Louie, Louie’ by The Kingsmen Reason for banning: Obscene Lyrics Despite the fact that ‘Louie Louie’ is one of the most important songs in rock history, this song was a subject of censure, rumors and even a 2 and a half years long FBI investigation.The lyrics (written by Richard Berry in 1957) were about a sailor who spends three days traveling to Jamaica to see his girl. However, Jack Ely sang the song with merely understanding diction, wearing new braces and screaming at the top of his lungs so the rumors escalated that the lyrics is obscene and that Ely was howling about sexual encounter. The FBI took a serious turn of investigation and interviewing everyone related to recording or listening of this song, in order to decipher the “true” meaning. In the end, FBI had to call off the investigation. 8. ‘Lola’ by The Kinks Reason for banning: Free Advertising. Refers to encounter with transvestite. There were two reasons why ‘Lola” by The Kinks was excluded from the radio airwaves. The first was the immoral subject of the love between a man and a transvestite.

However, the reason that caused the main controversy was the line “where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola.” BBC had a policy against airing material with product placement, so Lola had to drink something else or she would be banned from the airwaves. So, the lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies was flown from U.S to Britain to re-record this line to the champagnes tasted like “cherry cola,” and that was fine with BBC. 9. ‘Love To Love You Baby’ by Donna Summer. Reason for banning: Simulating sex sounds. The disco diva Donna Summer shocked the Puritans-broadcasters by revealing the daring disco hit ‘ ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ Broadcasters, banned this song immediately upon its release in 1975 for ” explicit set of simulated sex noises” and openly speaking about satisfaction. Even though the song was banned from radio station, it was one of the biggest hits played by DJs in the discos, and Donna Summer earned the title “the First Lady of Lust.” 10.’Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues ft.

Kristy MacColl Reason for banning: Bad Language The bad boys from Ireland were not the favorite band among Broadcasters, their songs were often banned from the airwaves, especially, the Christmas parody hit “Fairytale from New York” featuring Kristy Maccol. Even though, the content of this song was not explicit or vulgar (a drunken couple exchanging insults to one another on Christmas Eve), BBC refused to air it because of vulgar language, the use of “slut”, “faggot” and “arse.” 11.’Tell Laura I Love Her’ by Ray Peterson Reason for banning:Too Depressing The reason that this melancholic classic from the ’60s was excluded from the airwaves was “morbid and depressing lyrics.” The story of a teenager who enters a stock car race, in the hope of winning the prize money for his girlfriend’s wedding ring… only to die in an accident on the track. “Tell Laura I love her” climbed the charts and gave BBC their worst nightmare a popular craze for songs about teenage death. 12.

‘Jackie’ by Scott Walker Reason for banning: Homosexuality The homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967 when Wolfenden Report led sexual acts between of-age males to become legal. In the same year, Scot Walker, released his hit ‘Jackie’, a song with a reference to “authentic queers and phony virgins.” BBC was deeply bothered with Walker’s ode to gays, so the song was banned from the radio station. –> The Sexiest Summer Songs of All Time The Sexiest Summer Songs of All Time Eugene S. Robinson Pin it Share Twenty-three. Someone at the BBC actually sat down and counted. We’re talking about the number of “simulated” “orgasms” in late singer Donna Summer’s 1975 hit “Love to Love You Baby.” And when it hit the dance floor in the hothouse of mid-’70s disco fever , all 16-plus minutes of it, people lost their minds. Although with most dance floors a swirling bouillabaisse of chemicals, there probably wasn’t that much mind to lose.

The song was produced as an aside — and recorded with Summer laying on the floor in a dim room, mostly laughing her ass off because the idea was just so ridiculous. And the ridiculous escalated: The song rocketed up the charts to become Summer’s first Top 40 smash on the U.S. charts. It spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Later, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pegged it as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock ’n’ roll. Never mind the song being banned in the U.K. for a spell. And it still has the power to make you uncomfortable when it comes on at the church social. Or even on most videos, which edit out or mute the sex noises. Yeah, that uncomfortable. Even for Summer, who stopped doing the song for 25 years — she was a born-again Christian who’d started to feel like she was losing control of her life because of the song. “When you’re standing so close to me / There’s no place I’d rather you be than with me”? Indeed.

Love to Love You Baby: 1976 Too bad Summer’s sense of the ridiculousness of her song’s general thrust had her later only sheepishly claiming it. Her direct antecedent, the one-named wonder Sylvia had no such qualms and was completely unrepentant and all-in with her song “Pillow Talk.” Passed over by Al Green no less for being too damned nasty, Sylvia, a record executive with a smattering of fairly significant hits under her belt stretching back to the ’50s and including, arguably, the creation of hip-hop through her involvement with “Rapper’s Delight,” just did the song herself. Complete with moans, heavy breathing and orgasms — no quote marks or mentions of “simulated” here — Sylvia tore it up, and for 4:20 she made just about everyone who heard it first laugh nervously, and eventually? Start to sweat. In 1973, nothing else sounded like “Pillow Talk,” says Scott Sterling, former editor-in-chief at Urb magazine.

“The song was sultry, unadulterated sex; promising everything her lover desired, over the objections of her friends, and more if he succumbed to her advances.” He calls her delivery real, saying it “elevated the song’s quietly stormy arrangement into one of R&B’s most effective seductions of all time.” Which is what good art can do. That good art charted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Best-Selling Soul Singles charts, and was, predictably banned in the U.K. Even the edited version, seen here on Soul Train in 1974, brings a certain amount of heat. Let’s see another executive pull off what she does at 2:40. Jimmy Iovine, we’re looking at you. The Edited Pillow Talk We’re also looking at the granddaddy of all simulated sex songs, 1971’s “Jungle Fever” by the Latinos from Belgium named the Chakachas.

Swathed in a certain amount of mystery, videos of the Chakachas are scant, and outside of the great Tito Puente’s wife on vocals, the band was formed with an international spread of players of mixed note. Which did not at all stop the song from being banned in the U.K. (again) for a period of time (that’s three for three, BBC) on its way to selling over 1 million copies in the U.S. and hitting No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sampled by everyone everywhere, from Kendrick Lamar to Grand Theft Auto, the song didn’t play up a central female lead’s character as much as it did drop us into action in progress. Sly, funny, sexy, political correctness be damned. Good for a party. That doesn’t involve in-laws, bosses or kids. Yes, in that order. Jungle Fever Honorable mentions, though: The first goes to former porn star Andrea True’s pre-HIV 1976 disco runup “ More More More ,” which has no simulated sex though plenty of the sexually suggestive.

And finally, dark horse style goes to Black Flag’s 1984 song “ Slip It In ” from an album of the same name, featuring one of rock’s least sexual former frontmen Henry Rollins breaking one of simulated sex songs’ basic credos: It’s much less sexy if a guy who hates sex is simulating the sex he hates. But you wanted a party mix? You got a party mix! The Sexiest Summer Songs of All Time | Wildcard | OZY The Sexiest Summer Songs of All Time Copy link to share with friends Copy link The Daily Dose AUG 01 2015 Twenty-three. Someone at the BBC actually sat down and counted. We’re talking about the number of “simulated” “orgasms” in late singer Donna Summer’s 1975 hit “Love to Love You Baby.” And when it hit the dance floor in the hothouse of mid-’70s disco fever , all 16-plus minutes of it, people lost their minds. Although with most dance floors a swirling bouillabaisse of chemicals, there probably wasn’t that much mind to lose.

The song was produced as an aside — and recorded with Summer laying on the floor in a dim room, mostly laughing her ass off because the idea was just so ridiculous. And the ridiculous escalated: The song rocketed up the charts to become Summer’s first Top 40 smash on the U.S. charts. It spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Later, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pegged it as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock ’n’ roll. Never mind the song being banned in the U.K. for a spell. And it still has the power to make you uncomfortable when it comes on at the church social. Or even on most videos, which edit out or mute the sex noises. Yeah, that uncomfortable. Even for Summer, who stopped doing the song for 25 years — she was a born-again Christian who’d started to feel like she was losing control of her life because of the song. “When you’re standing so close to me / There’s no place I’d rather you be than with me”? Indeed. Too bad Summer’s sense of the ridiculousness of her song’s general thrust had her later only sheepishly claiming it.

Her direct antecedent, the one-named wonder Sylvia had no such qualms and was completely unrepentant and all-in with her song “Pillow Talk.” Passed over by Al Green no less for being too damned nasty, Sylvia, a record executive with a smattering of fairly significant hits under her belt stretching back to the ’50s and including, arguably, the creation of hip-hop through her involvement with “Rapper’s Delight,” just did the song herself. Complete with moans, heavy breathing and orgasms — no quote marks or mentions of “simulated” here — Sylvia tore it up, and for 4:20 she made just about everyone who heard it first laugh nervously, and eventually? Start to sweat. In 1973, nothing else sounded like “Pillow Talk,” says Scott Sterling, former editor-in-chief at Urb magazine.

“The song was sultry, unadulterated sex; promising everything her lover desired, over the objections of her friends, and more if he succumbed to her advances.” He calls her delivery real, saying it “elevated the song’s quietly stormy arrangement into one of R&B’s most effective seductions of all time.” Which is what good art can do. That good art charted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Best-Selling Soul Singles charts, and was, predictably banned in the U.K. Even the edited version, seen here on Soul Train in 1974, brings a certain amount of heat. Let’s see another executive pull off what she does at 2:40. Jimmy Iovine, we’re looking at you. We’re also looking at the granddaddy of all simulated sex songs, 1971’s “Jungle Fever” by the Latinos from Belgium named the Chakachas. Swathed in a certain amount of mystery, videos of the Chakachas are scant, and outside of the great Tito Puente’s wife on vocals, the band was formed with an international spread of players of mixed note.

Which did not at all stop the song from being banned in the U.K. (again) for a period of time (that’s three for three, BBC) on its way to selling over 1 million copies in the U.S. and hitting No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sampled by everyone everywhere, from Kendrick Lamar to Grand Theft Auto, the song didn’t play up a central female lead’s character as much as it did drop us into action in progress. Sly, funny, sexy, political correctness be damned. Good for a party. That doesn’t involve in-laws, bosses or kids. Yes, in that order. Honorable mentions, though: The first goes to former porn star Andrea True’s pre-HIV 1976 disco runup “ More More More ,” which has no simulated sex though plenty of the sexually suggestive. And finally, dark horse style goes to Black Flag’s 1984 song “ Slip It In ” from an album of the same name, featuring one of rock’s least sexual former frontmen Henry Rollins breaking one of simulated sex songs’ basic credos: It’s much less sexy if a guy who hates sex is simulating the sex he hates.

But you wanted a party mix? You got a party mix!

Question: What disco hit of 1975 by Donna Summer was banned by the BBC because of the background noises?
Answer: Love to Love You, Baby