The R.E.M. song with lyrics stolen from a gospel record
‘7 Chinese Bros’ is one of R.E.M.’s most beloved deep cuts. The Reckoning album track has been a solid shorthand for die-hard fans and newcomers alike, representing the band at the peak of their early jangle-rock apex. While the title is borrowed from the 1938 children’s book The Five Chinese Brothers, everything else about the track, from its music to its lyrics and its production, was original to the band.
While recording the track, Michael Stipe needed a break from the vocal session. With the band having only just returned from an American tour supporting The Police, the members were exhausted and enthusiastic about returning to the studio so quickly. Stipe was particularly put out, with the singer unable to get a proper vocal takedown. That’s when a distraction was required.
“Reflection [Studios] had a stairwell that went from the Control Room down to Studio A,” producer Don Dixon recalled to Mojo Magazine about the Reckoning sessions. “It had a large landing that Mitch and I had set up for Michael to have as his private domain. We were working on the vocal for ‘7 Chinese Bros’, but Michael just wasn’t into it. He was down in his stairwell. I hit the talk-back to let him know I was coming through to make an adjustment… This was just an excuse to take a look at him, see if I could loosen him up a little.”
“While I was in the attic, I’d noticed a stack of old records that had been taken up there to die, local R&B and gospel stuff mostly,” Dixon added. “I grabbed the one off the top (a gospel record entitled The Joy of Knowing Jesus by the Revelaires), and as I passed Michael on the way to the control room, I tossed it down to him. I thought he might be amused. When I fired up the tape a few seconds later, Michael was singing, but not the lyrics to ‘7 Chinese Bros’ He was singing the liner notes to the LP I’d tossed him.”
“When Michael began to sing these liner notes, he was much louder than he’d been earlier, and it took a few seconds for me to realise what was going on and adjust the levels,” Dixon remembered. “He made it all the way through the song, working in every word on the back of that album! I rewound the tape, we had a chuckle and proceeded to sing the beautiful one-take vocal of the real words that you hear on Reckoning. He seemed more confident after that day.”
The ad-hoc version of ‘7 Chinese Bros’ was promptly forgotten about but not discarded entirely. When R.E.M. began assembling the songs that were to be included in the compilation album Dead Letter Office, they came across Stipe’s alternate version of the song. Giving it the name ‘Voice of Harold’, Peter Buck had this to say about the track in the album’s liner notes: “This is the backing track to Seven Chinese Brothers with, um, well, extemporaneous lyrics added by Michael in one take”.
