Describing a beat as ‘fire’ is par for the course these days, but it seems that Timbaland’s thunderous groove for Nelly Furtado’s 2006 hit Maneater was so hot that it actually caused flame to come out of the studio speakers.
Recalling the incident, Furtado told The Guardian: “It was my first day working on [2006 album] Loose with [producers] Timbaland and Danja. We were in Miami. Timbaland said: ‘I made this beat for you’ and played it super loud. Suddenly I smelled burning, there was all this smoke and a flame shot out of the speaker. Someone came to replace the speaker but it freaked us out: maybe we should put this song away till tomorrow.”
The incident calls to mind songwriter Rod Temperton’s claim that, when Eddie Van Halen was recording his Beat It solo during the making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, his playing was so hot that it set one of the control room speakers on fire. "The speaker is on fire! This must be REALLY good,” he said in a BBC documentary.
Sadly, it seems that the truth isn’t quite so dramatic - Temperton wasn’t actually present when the incident happened - though a flaming speaker was involved. According to Quincy Jones, Beat It’s producer, it occurred when the song was being mixed.
“We knew the music was hot,” he once told Q magazine. “On Beat It the level was literally so hot that at one point in the studio, [engineer] Bruce Sweden called us over and the right speaker burst into flames. We’d never seen anything like that in 40 years in the business.”
Elsewhere in Furtado’s Guardian interview, she confirms that she's a long-time Oasis fan.
“It started when I was 17, with the first two albums,” she says. “I feel like Noel Gallagher taught me to play guitar without him knowing, because I’d play along. My song Turn Off the Light has the same chords as Wonderwall. I’ve seen them in concert two or three times. One in Vancouver was so good I wrote a five-star review in my college newspaper. Liam and Noel got into a fight in the fifth song. They threw the microphones on the stage and the show was over, but them walking out made it extra special. I’ve driven past their childhood home in Burnage and I’d die to see the reunion tour.”
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