‘Hamburger Lady’: The scariest song of all time?
Throbbing Gristle, formed in 1975, is considered a pioneer of industrial music, blending avant-garde, electronic, and experimental elements. The group’s original members included Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, and Chris Carter. Their provocative work in music and visual arts challenged societal norms and influenced underground genres.
Throbbing Gristle didn’t just innovate and intertwine existing genres; they also invented one: industrial music: “It was a way of life, the way that we worked,” explained Carter. “Everything that we did was industrial to us. It was more of a concept rather than a sound. I mean, nowadays, it’s taken very literally as being industrial–sounding. The industrial sound that we had was only part of the whole industrial movement that we had going then. It didn’t have to be industrial–sounding as such.”
Their industrial music often featured disturbing and confrontational themes, central to the infamous ‘Hamburger Lady’, a song frequently regarded as one of the scariest in all of music history. The lyrics describe a burn victim referred to as the ‘Hamburger Lady’ who is hospitalised with severe burns. The song combines bleak, atmospheric sounds with P-Orridge’s haunting spoken word performance.
The lyric was written by a friend of the band, Al Ackerman, who was a doctor and mail artist. Ackerman treated ‘Hamburger Lady’, who earned the black nickname due to her injuries. “He sent this letter because it really had a huge effect on him,” explained Tutti. “This long description of this woman that was in such a terrible state with burns. It impacted on us quite a lot, and that’s when Gen put down his letter to the track itself. And the sounds with it were to give a kind of feeling of being in a semi–conscious state like she would be, on the verge of the pain relief going away, which is what he was saying to us about it.”
To create the disorienting effect in ‘Hamburger Lady’, one crucial element was Tutti’s guitar. She had purchased the guitar for £15 from Woolworths but found it too heavy, so Carter modified it by sawing it down to a stick. They produced an industrial drone using a slide and the Gristleizer, contributing to the song’s unsettling atmosphere. “I’d crash and bang it and all kinds of stuff,” Tutti recalled.
Meanwhile, the haunting high-pitched tone that recurs throughout ‘Hamburger Lady’ was generated by P-Orridge using a duck-call whistle in combination with a Gristleizer and Roland Space Echo. “There’s a drone, the duck horn, the vocal and a heartbeat as well, which was the modular,” recalled Carter. “It’s pretty basic. But it is quite unsettling, I guess. It’s got this feeling of menace about it.”
The overall impact of ‘Hamburger Lady’ is one of discomfort and tension, which was characteristic of Throbbing Gristle’s pioneering and confrontational “anti-rock” approach to music. This track also arguably played a significant role in shaping the direction of Throbbing Gristle’s next album, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, released in 1979. This album continued the group’s exploration of dark and unconventional themes while also drawing inspiration from American lounge exotica composer Martin Denny. The album included tracks like ‘Hot On The Heels Of Love’, which were also influenced by the electro sound of Giorgio Moroder.
