The Unrepeatable Guitar Tone.

The Unrepeatable Guitar Tone

There are two types of one-hit wonder.

It’s too simple to divide them into merely “good” and “bad,” though. One kind includes the expected movie and TV tie-in, X-Factor, charity single, novelty song, and so on. The other is an altogether different matter. These are the unknowable, unrepeatable moments of divine inspiration — when the seemingly ordinary are briefly possessed of the ability, for one moment and one moment only, to create something that connects with a zeitgeist and resonates. No instruction manual, marketing team, or amount of record label money can come close to achieving this feat. These one-offs simply come from an undefinable place and enter our consciousness.

Perhaps the greatest example of this latter kind is Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, ultimately being such a deeply strange record that no exec or A&R could possibly have dreamt it would become a million-seller. It comes from the other place.

Of course, the primary hook of Spirit in the Sky (which has many other great hooks) is the epic fuzz guitar that drives the entire song. To me, the beauty of the song is its simplicity. Not being a guitar player, I assumed this sound was just a guitar, an amp, and an effects pedal with clever mic-ing — which it is, sort of.

This fuzz popped into my head and made me think I was sure I’d read something about it ages ago — that there was something unusual about it.

When I looked into it further, there was indeed something odd surrounding it.

For such a simple sound, nobody has been able to recreate it exactly since the original recording — not even Norman G himself.

For decades people have been trying to achieve it, unsuccessfully. It’s turned into one of the mini mysteries of rock. There are dozens of YouTube videos, articles, Reddit threads, and blogs going into every possible aspect of how it might have been achieved, and more importantly how it might be recreated — or, in this case, why it can’t be replicated.

And yet, nearly 60 years later, nobody has managed to do this. Some have investigated every pedal and combination imaginable, while others have used computers to analyse the waveform.

I think this is brilliant. This strange song came from seemingly nowhere (though we all know its the place that only opens rarely), and its biggest hook — that fuzz guitar — can’t be recreated by any of the hugely talented guitarists who try, even with all of the modern tools they have to hand.

It’s simply just magic.