Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [HIGHLIGHT] The Wild Story Behind Focus’ “Hocus Pocus” - From EP 381

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[HIGHLIGHT] The Wild Story Behind Focus’ “Hocus Pocus” - From EP 381 · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's just a part of a recent episode of book
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Don Rock. Stephen Limb is back on the show. His
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: latest book from the un Track series is titled Focus
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty ninety nineteen eighty five. So let's get to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: hocus Pocus number twenty in the UK, number nine single
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in the US and at its core built on an
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: unforgettable riff. How did the idea evolve into something that
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: was so wildly unconventional?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I think I think they're just sort of band
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: that kind of did. They kind of did that thing
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: in the studio. They just they just, you know, the
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: waste of the way Queen developed Behemian Rhapsody. It just
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: layer on not layer upon layer, up on layer, But
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  Speaker 2: it's idea upon an idea upon idea, up on idea,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: and they just throw it all together based around if
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: you look at the structure of it, which I do,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: it's based around that that riff and some soloing, but
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: with something else between each of the reiterations of the riff.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: So the interesting thing is that if you listen to
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the album, it's a six minute version. It was re
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: recorded for the for to be an American single, and
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: that's what that's the version that did so well in
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  Speaker 2: the USA. That version is is faster and shorter, so
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: some of the slightly mad cap ideas that are in
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: the in the six minute version are kind of missing
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: in the in the version that was a hit in America.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: But anybody can hear that that that that longer version
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: because it's on it's on moving waves slash focused.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: To, but the yodling remains on both.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, well yeah, that's that's that's almost the hook.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: For the hook. How did he land on that as
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: a musical choice.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: He just tried it, and you realized that the thing
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: with yodling is that it's really hard to do, and
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to pitch. So anybody can start or
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: see I always tried to do it then, and anybody
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: can can can do that, well, a lot of people
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: can do that voice, but to do it and actually
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: get the pitch right so that it sounds right is
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  Speaker 2: really hard and there's not many people can do it.
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  Speaker 2: And Tye just found he tried it. He'd never yodled
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  Speaker 2: before in his life. He tried it just just to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: try an idea, and found he could do it and
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  Speaker 2: he could pitch it that's the thing. If you people
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: will have seen like reaction videos on YouTube, and there's
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: loads of reaction videos of people of people listening to
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  Speaker 2: to to to hocus Pocus, because everybody goes, how is
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: he doing that? When the people when there's a there's
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: a there's a guy who will be unknown in the USA,
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  Speaker 2: but the guy from the fifties British musician from fifty
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  Speaker 2: is called Frank Kirefield, and he could yodled as well.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: No doubt there will be many people because yodling is
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: kind of a thing in folk music in the USA.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I know as well. But there's a guy so he
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: had some hits yodling as well. But but it's to
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: actually shehard that into a piece of rock music. It's
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: kind of weird. It's interesting. It's interesting also that he
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: does try a bit more. He tries it. Okay, so
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: this is our this, this is our gimmick now, so
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: so occasionally he tries it again without the same success.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: There's a track on Hamburg Concerto called Harum Scarem, and
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: he does a little bit of a little bit in
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  Speaker 2: that as well, but it doesn't work so well.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: It was a hit, okay, it wasn't It's like hocus
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  Speaker 1: Pocus the sequel.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of, you can see what they're reaching for,
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  Speaker 2: but you know, but Hocus Focus is so wild and
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  Speaker 2: so done on almost it feels like it's done on
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  Speaker 2: the spur of the moment that it would be very
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: hard to reproduce. But it's not just about focus. The
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: important thing with that album is that the other instrumental
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: tracks focused too, particularly, but also the other ones are
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: so strong, and Eruption is such an amazing piece of
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: music in itself as well, thanks as much as anything
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  Speaker 2: to Mike Vernon, the producer, that that's it's nearly perfect,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: nearly perfect, and also the title track is perfectly listenable,
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  Speaker 2: it just doesn't feel like it belongs on the album.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.