WENDY JAMES

A hip-hop sample of Iron Butterfly’s most celebrated song led ex-Transvision Vamp singer Wendy James on an investigative trail.

JM

“Iron Butterfly came up on my radar because of hip-hop. I moved to New York in 2002 and got heavily into East Coast hip-hop. As a musician and a producer of my own material, I was interested in how rap groups utilised these amazing samples, mainly from 70s soul. I was doing geology of how they put their music together and their production values were so much more impactful than a typical white rock’n’roll record. And then Nas’s song, Thief’s Theme, came up and I was like, ‘That main riff has to be a sample – no way did they write that music!’ I started digging around and it was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly. So I went round to my friend’s house on St Mark’s Place and I said, ‘Have…

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Prog Italia (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 157

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