What's that noise in Fleetwood Mac's Tell Me Lies?

September 20, 2006 9:56 AM

CheeseFilter : Fleetwood Mac - what's that noise?

On Fleetwood Mac's "Tell Me Lies" or "Little Lies" as it's called sometimes, there's a noise at the beginning of each chorus (first instance is about 45 seconds in, just after the drum fill, then when the backing singers sing "tell me, tell me lies")

Sounds like someone dragging a piano across the floor, or wedging open a tea chest with a crowbar - "bdurrrp" or something similar.

So MeFites - wtf?

posted by snailer to media & arts (8 comments total)

I am going to guess. I think it's Lyndsey on guitar. He plays with his fingers, with his nails, in a really weird style and i would say this is him possibly scraping his nails on the strings or the like.
posted by poppo at 10:02 AM on September 20, 2006

I hear it... sounds like a synthesizer sound to me.
posted by kimdog at 10:06 AM on September 20, 2006

weird that i never noticed that, although i try to avoid listening to that tune ... it sounds to me like it could be a low piano string being hit with something ... or perhaps a percussion instrument

there's weirdness going on in the instrumental break, too ...
posted by pyramid termite at 10:23 AM on September 20, 2006

It sounds to me like they got Chewbacca to help out with the background vocals.

Actually, I'm sure it's a synth sound of some sort. I'm almost positive that that's a Yamaha DX-7 marimba we hear throughout the track. The DX-7 was the industry standard synth for a few years during this period and was all over every track on the radio. It came with a bunch of odd noises. If you can find a site that features audio samples of DX-7 patches, I'll bet you can find that sound.

It's definitely not fingernails on guitar strings
posted by wsg at 10:52 AM on September 20, 2006

This site looks like a good place to start.
posted by wsg at 10:55 AM on September 20, 2006

From live performance experience, the noise is absolutely the product of Christine McVie on the DX-7. Without question, I watched for it because I had wondered that myself and was hoping against hope that it'd be obvious who was responsible for it (I actually thought it was a drum rumble) and there it was.
posted by Dreama at 11:53 AM on September 20, 2006 [1 favorite]

Wow, Dreama's answer is what continually amazes me about this place. Give 'em a checkmark for future readers please.
posted by poppo at 12:36 PM on September 21, 2006

Synchronicity: Just popped FM's "Greatest Hits" into my PC's CD player to hear this for myself, and "Little Lies" automatically cued up in Winamp.

Behold the awesome powers of AskMefi!
posted by CMichaelCook at 11:33 AM on September 24, 2006