{"id":1022,"date":"2010-08-30T13:41:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T13:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/mama-was-a-very-special-song-to-us-so-we-had\/"},"modified":"2021-08-03T07:13:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T07:13:29","slug":"mama-was-a-very-special-song-to-us-so-we-had","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/mama-was-a-very-special-song-to-us-so-we-had\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018Mama\u2019 was a very special song to us, so we had some of our parents come out and track some vocals on the ending, we could have them on the track forever. This made the record even more special to us but it still wasn\u2019t finished. During the last month, during final vocals, I had started to re-track some of the vocal parts in \u2018Mama\u2019 I was unhappy with. We came to this section where it gets very quiet before the big finale to the song and I stopped for a second and said to Rob and Doug:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I think it should be a woman here\u2026what do you think?\u2019<\/p>\n

This had come up before and I had done some female voices on the record I was pretty happy with\u2026but right here it felt like I couldn\u2019t act it. It needed real sorrow, real tenderness.<\/p>\n

They said \u2018Who do you think?\u2019<\/p>\n

Now I should mention that I had been warming up in the vocal booth by doing an impression of Judy Garland as I would picture her to be on Broadway, very bawdy and expressive and I would yell with vibrato in my voice: \u2018Hellooooooooo!\u2019<\/p>\n

I would do this to warm up and occasionally break the tension when we had a long night. Doug was a big fan of it. I was a big fan of \u2018Cabaret\u2019 so naturally I said:<\/p>\n

\u2018Liza Minnelli.’<\/p>\n

\u2018Liza with a Z?\u2019 They asked.<\/p>\n

Now to further illustrate how \u2018crazy\u2019 became infectious, I should point out that Rob Cavallo did not choose to comment on this with words but instead he picked up the phone near the board and made a phone call. I heard him talk to someone briefly and then hang up. He then said \u2018I love Liza Minnelli.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fast forward to two weeks later, we are in the same tracking room at Capitol Records where we had just done a string and horn session with the amazing David Campbell. And we have Liza Minnelli live in\u00a0New York City\u00a0in another studio. It was amazing that Rob pulled this off and he said that she was very happy to do it. The guys were very excited. As soon as we started talking to her I got pins and needles. I\u2019m a huge Liza Minnelli fan, because growing up she was our grandma\u2019s favorite performer. I was exposed to theatre and musicals from a very early age\u2026I was exposed to showmanship. To me, Liza Minnelli was the only voice that could have portrayed Mother War. Someone very strong, someone that had loved and lost, someone that had been through so much in her life and survived. There was no one that could beat her and she was so amazingly sweet, funny, charming\u2026and she had a flawless voice. She kept doing takes on her own just to make sure she got it right, even though her worst takes are better than others\u2019 best takes. We can\u2019t wait to meet her in person.<\/p>\n

– Gerard Way, Black Parade Special Edition<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Mama\u2019 was a very special song to us, so we had some of our parents come out and track some vocals on the ending, we could have them on the<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","crio-premium-page-header-override":0,"crio-premium-page-header-select":"","crio-premium-page-header-background":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,21,39,40,13],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cabaret","tag-inspired-the-black-parade","tag-liza-minnelli","tag-mama","tag-mother-war","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowedplaces.net\/theblackparade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}