Famous spoken guest voices in iconic songs?

[Coriolanus]

I forgot to mention Jagger’s line (in the song - he’s more than a cameo yet not the star) is “I don’t like music”

[Jophiel]

People have mentioned various film and interview snippets in Pink Floyd songs but the Roger Waters solo work “Perfect Sense” has a whole lengthy bespoke part by sportscaster Marv Albert giving sports commentary on a naval battle.

Marv Albert

Hi everybody I’m Marv Albert, and welcome to our telecast coming to you live from Memorial Stadium. It’s a beautiful day, and today we expect a sensational matchup. But first our global anthem…
[…]
And here come the players! As I speak to you now, the captain has his cross hairs zeroed in on the oil rig. He’s at periscope depth… it looks to me like he’s going to attack. By the way did you know that a submarine captain earns 200,000 dollars a year?"

That’s less tax Marv

Yeah, less tax, thank you Edward.

You’re welcome

Now back to the game: He fires one… yes! There goes two! Both fish are running. The rig is going into a prevent defense. Will they make it? I don’t think so! Look out! Look at that baby burn!

[schwim]

Tool had Henry Rollins provide some spoken word for the song Bottom:

youtube [DOT] com/watch?v=O7VmBC19P5M

and a Bill Hicks clip on Third Eye:

youtube [DOT] com/watch?v=O5Ohwdps7u4

And I know this doesn’t fit the topic completely but in Anthrax’s Intro to Reality / Belly of the Beast, there’s a voice clip stating:

We just heard you offer the apology for all the monsters of our kind…
Is that correct? Ha… (etc)

Which I never was able to place until a couple of weeks ago, I was binge watching Twilight Zone episodes on Prime and in Season 3 - Episode 9 : Death’s Head Revisited, I heard it in it’s original format for the first time.

youtube [DOT] com/watch?v=CabD7ImUmrk

[EDIT] unfriendly links due to my being a generally non-trustworthy scoundrel.

[digs]

On Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes album, you hear a muffled crash as if something fell down, then a voice from the recording booth saying “It’s just the normal noises in here…”

Which has become a catchphrase with my friends, that can be used remarkably often…

[psychonaut]

In case you’re wondering what the origin of this chatter is, there’s another thread here in which the question is both posed and very satisfactorily answered:

Tom Petty: "It's just the normal noises in here!"

At the beginning of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ song “Even the Losers”, there are some strange instrumental sounds followed by a woman saying, “It’s just the normal noises in here!” Anyone know the story behind this? Who’s the woman, and why is she saying this? Why was this clip added to the beginning of the song? Petty wasn’t (and isn’t) particularly known for inserting studio chatter or avant-garde elements into his songs, so why was it done in this case? Was it maybe some recording gl…

[kenobi_65]

@schwim

[EDIT] unfriendly links due to my being a generally non-trustworthy scoundrel.

Nah, it’s the board software. It doesn’t like to embed Youtube links, unless you do one of several work-arounds.

And, welcome!

[digs]

Thanks for the link to the “Normal Noises In Here” thread (from 12 years ago)!

Clearly other Dopers loved that line as well as the mystery. The answer was found in a Petty biography:

@clogue

According to Warren Zanes’ 2015 Tom Petty biography:

And Damn the Torpedoes was an album, with studied sequencing and interstitial material between song matter that connects the whole experience into one event. “Louisiana Rain,” “Even the Losers,” and “Century City” all have bits of audio scrap leading into the actual recordings, and some of those scraps would become as well loved as the songs themselves.

Mike Campbell’s wife, Marcie, can be heard shouting, “It’s just the normal noises in here!” right in the middle of side one.

It was something Petty found in a Campbell demo. “I had a TEAC four-track recorder, and it was right around the corner from the washing machine in our little rental house,” explains Campbell. “I was trying to record something, and the washing machine was broken, making this loud noise. I yelled at Marcy, ‘You have to turn that off!’ And she goes, ‘It’s just the normal noises in here!’ Like, ‘Shut the fuck up! I’m living my life!’ Next thing you know, we’d be in the car, and there was Marcie on the radio.”

Petty pushed Iovine to get the audio snippets on the record. The producer didn’t want any of it. “Tom and Mike were Beatles freaks,” says Jimmy Iovine. “They wanted that stuff on there, not me. But, really, these guys were already brilliant record producers. The record’s perfect. It was number two to The Wall for nine weeks.

Zanes, Warren. Petty: The Biography (p. 145). Henry Holt and Co.

[Miller]

@TCMF-2L

Clayton might be known to British people of a certain age as the narrator of kids show Count Duckula but… To be honest doing the intro to the Iron Maiden song was probably peak fame for him…

Ha, that’s pretty cool - I used to watch Count Duckula on Nickelodeon when I was a kid, then aged almost directly from that into being a huge Iron Maiden fan as a teen. Neat to learn about the connection there!

[blondebear]

The other “famous” bit of dialog on a Petty album is by Tom himself on Full Moon Fever: Hello CD listeners

[EinsteinsHund]

I’ve only ever heard about that bit here at the Dope, though I have the album on CD. But I got it a few years after the first release in 1989, around 1992-94 and it’s a German pressing and doesn’t contain it.

[hogarth]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

Almost every song by Man or Astroman? Includes some sort of spoken word outtake. My favorite is Evel Knievel in “Nitrous Burnout”.

Someone made me a mix tape with the Man or Astroman? cover of Goldfinger on it. I love the intro with Goldfinger’s monologue. “[Man has] achieved miracles in every field of human endeavour…EXCEPT CRIME!!”

Man Or Astroman? - Goldfinger

[schwim]

@kenobi_65

And, welcome!

Thank you very much, it seems very nifty here

[garygnu]

The Us3 single “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” opens with a spoken introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know we have something special down here at Birdland this evening… A recording for Blue Note Records.”

I always just assumed it was a woman, but in researching it for this post, I learned it was ~3½ foot tall (male) Birdland M.C. “Pee Wee” Marquette.

The song is rap lyrics layered on top of Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island,” which is indeed a Blue Note release, as is the Us3 record itself. But the intro by Marquette is taken from a live recording at the Birdland jazz club in NYC by The Art Blakely Quintet.

Marquette was apparently quite the character. He extorted payments from musical acts in exchange for better introductions and proper name pronunciation. He later became a doorman for a Times Square restaurant and was a guest on Dave Letterman.

[Yogeekgirl]

Both Blur’s Parklife and the Clash’s Ghetto Defendant have been mentioned. I was going to add Tim Curry from the Clash’s album Sandinista!

The Clash - The Sound Of The Sinners