‘I was working as a cook when it went to No 1’: how Norman Greenbaum made Spirit in the Sky

Norman Greenbaum, singer, guitarist, songwriter Spirit in the Sky started as an old blues riff I’d been playing since my college days in Boston, but I didn’t know what to do with it. After I moved to LA, a guy I knew came up with a way of putting a fuzzbox inside my Fender Telecaster, which created the distinctive sound on Spirit in the Sky. I’d come across a greeting card with a picture of some Native Americans praying to the “spirit in the sky”. The phrase stuck in my head. One night I was watching country music on TV and the singer Porter Wagoner sang a gospel song, which gave me the idea to write religious lyrics. Although I came from a semi-religious Jewish family, I wasn’t religious, but found myself writing Christian lyrics such as “When I die and they lay me to rest, I’m going to the place that’s the best” and “Gotta have a friend in Jesus”. It came together very quickly. Soon after that, I was playing the Troubadour club in LA when the Lovin’ Spoonful’s producer Erik Jacobsen walked in. He said he had a production deal with Warner Brothers and was interested in signing me. When we recorded Spirit in the Sky for my debut album, the finished mix sent shivers up my spine. Initially, Warner said a four-minute single containing lyrics about Jesus would never get played on pop radio, but eventually they relented. In 1969, it sold two million copies. But I couldn’t recreate the success. In 1986, I was working as a cook when Dr and the Medics took it back to No 1 in the UK. Then Gareth Gates’s 2003 version meant it was No 1 in three different decades. It’s been in countless movies, including Apollo 13, Oceans 11 and Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m 82. A few years ago, I was a passenger in a car crash and spent three weeks in a coma. I feel like I was granted another life. So now every day, I pray and give thanks to the spirit in the sky. Erik Jacobsen, producer I saw Norman at a hootenanny at the Troubadour singing one song, School for Sweet Talk, but he said: “I’ve got a million songs I’d love to play for ya.” It turned out he’d had a minor hit called The Eggplant That Ate Chicago with a group called Dr West’s Medicine Show and Junk Band and had a whole raft of crazy songs about goats, chickens or a Chinese guy who ate some acid. I said: “Let’s make some records that somebody might like.” I put him together with Norman Mayell, the drummer from San Francisco psychedelic group Sopwith Camel, and Doug Killmer, a bassist, who’d played a lot of black music. The Spirit in the Sky riff originated in an old John Lee Hooker tune called Boogie Chillen’ and set the tone for where the song went, but the rhythm track sounded too loose. I got Norman to bring his acoustic guitar in and we recorded two performances – each slightly different – and made it stereo. Then we brought in gospel singers the Stovall Singers and their church-type clapping became a key part of the groove. A guitarist called Russell DaShiell played a hell of a solo. By now, the track was sounding immense, but when I heard Norman’s little vocal, my heart sank. It just wasn’t heavy enough, so once again I recorded two performances and combined the two together. I thought: “Thank God!” It sounded amazing. The single got a lot of play on KRLA, a hugely influential radio station, but it came out just before Christmas, when people buy records for others, not for themselves, so there were no sales. KRLA stopped playing it. Then, two weeks into January, 22,000 orders came in from record stores in LA. Everyone started playing it again – and it just took off. The funny thing is that when we went in to record it, my engineer was sick but we went ahead anyway with just a handful of little mics, no headphones and no sound baffling. Every sound was coming in on every mic, but it sounded great. For years people asked: “How in the world did you get that sound?” I said: “I just pointed the amps right at the drums. I had no idea what I was doing.” • Norman Greenbaum’s 1969 debut, Spirit in the Sky, is available on vinyl on Craft Recordings, with a Dolby Atmos mix of the single on Apple Music. Read more about Erik Jacobsen’s career in music at www.allabouterik.com