Songs where the studio version is made to sound like it was recorded live

I can think of two examples of this kind of song off the top of my head are Hanginaround by Counting Crows and, many decades earlier, The Rapper by the Jaggerz. Both of these songs end with a small amount of clapping and cheering that makes it sound like they were recorded in a small club or bar in front of a live audience - however, these are the album versions of the songs, and I’m assuming that they were recorded in a studio and the crowd noise was added in.

I know there are other songs like this. Can you name some?

“Bennie and the Jets”, by Elton John.

Elton John - Bennie And The Jets
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (& its reprise)
Focus - Hocus Pocus (the studio version has overdubbed applause on it)
David Clayton Thomas - Walk That Walk
The Kingsmen - Louie Louie (on the LP version, there is applause overdubbed, very badly, out of phase, over the studio version. In fact the whole album is like that.)

Many Ray Stevens songs have a studio laugh track. Makes it sound like audience laughter at a live show. Well, not really.

“Release Release” by Yes and “Power Failure” by Procol Harum both contain drum solos that are greeted by overdubbed applause at their conclusions.

The entire Mingus Presents Mingus album by Charles Mingus is a make-believe club date, with Mingus introducing each tune and asking the non-existant audience, bartenders, and waitresses to maintain perfect silence.

Tom Waits - “Nighthawks at the diner” - whole album
the Beach Boys - “Beach Boys Party” - whole album

Well, to be fair to Tom Waits, the whole “Nighthawks” album was recorded in a studio with an invited audience, so it was live, but in a controlled environment.

It’s possible that those tracks really were recorded live. It’s not unheard of- Radiohead’s “My Iron Lung” is a concert recording; only Thom Yorke’s vocals were re-recorded for the album mix.

The entire Paul McCartney “Get Back” concert movie was re-recorded in a studio, with looped speech and crowd reaction. It looks live, but the looping is terrible. and often the sound coming out of the speakers doesn’t match the frets the musicians are playing on. Paul will be saying something to the audience, meanwhile he steps away from the mic and his voice is still coming out of the speakers. Shoddy, shoddy workmanship.

Similarly, when The Beatles appeared on ABC-TV (US) “Shindig”, the producers must have thought the girls in the audience weren’t enthusiastic enough. The final program had many hundreds more hands clapping and voices shrieking than could have fit in the studio. This was only brought to light when audio tape of the unadulterated soundtrack before post-production was unearthed in the 1990s.

“The Beatles At Shea Stadium” is full of studio overdubs to cover lousy playing and singing.

The Chris Smither album “Another Way to Find You” was recorded this way as well.

Two examples from antipodes of the rock world:

The last song on Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s second album, Freak Out , has cabaret-lounge background noise dubbed in.

The album version of Ricky Martin’s song “Maria” has a crowd sound dubbed in for a few seconds after the otherwise studio-clean song is over. Why, I don’k know; it sounds idiotic.

“Farmer John” by The Premiers also had crowd noise and an emcee dubbed on to a studio recording. This was apparently a popular process in the 60s.

Freak Out was their second album? I thought it was their first…

mm

I don’t know for a fact, but “The Rapper” sounds too well made to have been done live. Judging from the quality of the album it came from, It would be a big shock to me if Donnie Iris and co. could have done that well live. Unless they played the song 20 times a show and this is the 20th take.

I read a biography of Janis Joplin in which the recording engineer for the “Cheap Thrills” record (that she did with Big Brother & the Holding Co.) had fake live cuts - all the tracks were done in a studio and the ‘racous cheering’ on the supposedly llve cuts was just the producer, the engineer & a few odd studio folks whooping it up.

Patti Smith has one song on the Lp “Easter” that has a lot of hooting & hollering from ‘fans.’ But when you listen closely, it’s obviously prerecorded SFX on a tape loop with the same guy going “Yeah! Yeah!” over & over again.

It was. JKellyMap meant to refer to the Mothers’ second album Absolutely Free, and the track “America Drinks and Goes Home.”

The Neil Young song “Broken Arrow” on Buffalo Springfield Again starts with what sounds like a bit of the group in concert singing “Mr. Soul.” However, the whole song was done in the studio including the “live” part and the screaming fans.

Correct. This isn’t complete, I don’t think, but…

Zappa Discography

Joe

Erasure mixed in some live noise to make “Love To Hate You” sound like it was recorded in a packed arena.

I would tack on “With a Little Help from My Friends” onto this, too.