Crowd Cheers

I love listening to all of your albums and I noticed that on some tunes you sampled screaming fans - "Finest Hour," "Read My Lips" – is that true you taped them in the Stadiums during some soccer matches? Thanks for all of the screams, they made the songs sound like live songs. Manuela

"Dear Manuela, Thank you for your question regarding the sampling on crowds during football
(I will never be able to bring myself to call it "soccer") matches. As you are probably aware this is really Nick's theatre of expertise, and indeed he has spent many long and mostly fruitless hours in the cold football stadia where he stalks his quarry, the correct crowd cheer. This fact is made even more incredible when one learns that contrary to popular belief Nick Rhodes is not a football "fan", indeed he actually HATES the game with a passion. The reason for this profound dislike is that Nick's beloved great uncle, Dr. Edmund Bates, affectionately known to all and sundry as "Cheesy", while accompanying his great nephew to a local derby Aston Villa versus Birmingham City in 1973 was hit squarely on the nose by the match ball after a Villa defender's errant goal line clearance. The blow caused a severe nasal heamorrhage to occur, spattering the eleven year old future keyboardist's denim jacket with a stain which would prove to be immoveable by elbow grease or detergant, biological and otherwise. I might add that after the event Dr. Bates never fully recovered from the blow and suffered until his dying day from rhinitis, more commonly known as "runny nose"; his friends, sadly took to calling him "Sneezy."

So if you see a disguised sound recordist with a somewhat pained expression on his face while pointing his microphone at the crowd as they chant, you will now know that it is none other than the estimable Nick Rhodes, in the process of catching the, so to speak, "Yeah" to put in our songs. Simon"