4. Del ShannonHats Off To Del Shannon

I’ve always loved Del. He was my first hero when I was young. When ‘Runaway’ came out I was only 13 or 14. I had to have my own rock star. Well, they weren’t called ‘rock stars’ then – they were all pop stars. But my sisters had had Elvis – and I loved Elvis of course – but you had to have your own hero, you know? So Del Shannon was my one.

But there’s a great story about Del and ‘Runaway’. He’d made the record and he was on the road and someone had sent him a copy of the record and he put it on his record player, played it and went, "what the fuck?!" It was semitone faster than it should have been! And he phones up his manager and he says, "what the hell have you done to my record?" And the manager said, "oh, we sped it up because we thought it was too slow." And that’s how it is to this day. It’s in B flat minor instead of A minor. Which is amazing and it sounds better when it’s sped up.

I’ve slowed it back down to see what it sounded like when it was originally done and it doesn’t sound as good as the sped-up version. You can tell that his vibrato is really fast and you can tell it’s sped up.