“I knew we had something pretty special,” guitarist and singer Norman Greenbaum says of “Spirit in the Sky,” his groovy and altogether irresistible psychedelic hard rock gem that dominated AM radio upon its release in 1969. The tune was a worldwide phenomenon, hitting number one in half a dozen countries (it reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart) and selling over two million copies. “That was an awful lot of records back in those days. It was pretty big.”
Often cited as one the greatest “one-hit wonders” of all time, “Spirit in the Sky” boasts a recipe of ingredients one might need AI to cook up, not the least of which is its hypnotic, fuzzed-out boogie electric guitar riff that grinds steadily throughout the song. Combined with a righteous, handclapped groove, rapturous background vocals and spiritual lyrics that sounded hip instead of preachy, the song struck a nerve with the public months before George Harrison’s gospel smash, “My Sweet Lord.”
Even John Lennon mentioned the track as one of his favorites in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone.
“Wow, John Lennon! That gave me a shiver,” Greenbaum says. “I liked his tunes, too, but I never got a chance to tell him.”
Greenbaum had been plunking around with the music for “Spirits in the Sky” as early as 1962, when he performed acoustic gigs in coffeehouses as a student at Boston University. “I played it a bunch of different ways,” he recalls. “I knew it sounded like something, but I just didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t have any lyrics, so I put it aside. It sat around for a while.”
By the mid ‘60s, he had moved to Los Angeles, where he formed Dr. West’s Medicine Show and Junk Band, a wild-and-woolly outfit whose mix of comedy and found instruments (the drummer literally played car parts and trash cans) had a moment when their 1967 novelty folk song, “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago,” reached 52 on Billboard. The band soon broke up, and Greenbaum went back to playing solo gigs in L.A.
Something about the music he had begun writing in Boston haunted him, but he was still unable to complete the song. Then he happened to catch country singer Porter Warner singing a gospel number on TV.
“That hit me, yeah, like ‘I can do that,’” Greenbaum says. But what really clinched the deal was seeing a greeting card with American Indians sitting around a fire in front of a teepee. “They were looking up, and there were the words — ‘Spirit in the Sky.’ I thought, Let’s see if that becomes something.”
Around the same time, Greenbaum had attracted the attention of producer Erik Jacobson (best known for his work with the Lovin’ Spoonful), who signed him to Reprise Records. The two began working together at Coast Recorders in San Francisco, where Jacobson brought in guitarist Russell DaShiell and bassist Doug Killmer from the band Crowfoot, along with drummer Norman Mayell from the band Sopwith Camel.
At these sessions, “Spirit in the Sky” took on a new life when Jacobson encouraged Greenbaum to explore a psychedelic rock direction for the song. Fortuitously, Greenbaum now had just the guitar for the job, a Fender Telecaster customized with a built-in fuzz box.
“I asked a friend to work on the guitar, and he surprised me with the fuzz device,” he says. “It was only as big as a nine-volt battery. I could flip a switch and activate that sound.”
The modification worked like a charm. Suddenly, the opening lick that Greenbaum had played for years on an acoustic guitar sounded huge and gnarly — downright cosmic, in fact.
“I went, ‘Wow, now that’s something!’ Once I heard that fuzz-tone riff, I knew it was a hit.”
Basic tracks went by with relative ease. “I don’t know how many takes we did,” Greenbaum says. “It sure didn’t take a week, I know that.”
Once he laid down riff and rhythm parts (played through a Fender Twin Reverb), he welcomed DaShiell to take over with not one but two searing solos. In addition, DaShiell added a key sonic ornament in the form of echo-enhanced boinks and dive bombs.
“I didn’t give him any kind of direction about what to play,” Greenbaum notes. “I just asked him to use a clean tone, because at the end of the ‘60s, that was different from what every lead guitarist on the Sunset Strip was doing.”
He felt confident that the completed track was a winner. The label folks weren’t convinced.
“There were lots of negatives,” Greenbaum recalls. “One, it was too long for AM radio. Two, it was about Jesus with a fuzz box. Three, it didn’t make any sense — there was nothing like it. I never thought about any of that stuff. This was just me being creative.”
The only market where the song got airplay was in L.A., but after a few weeks spins were waning. And that’s where the tale could have ended were it not for a crafty Warner Brothers promo exec who told a station program director the label had 20,000 preorders for the single.
“After that, the song went back on the playlist, and it was number one in two weeks,” Greenbaum says. “From there, it took off.”
Not with everybody, however. Greenbaum had finally gotten around to writing the song’s lyrics (in all of 15 minutes), but some lines rubbed devout Christians the wrong way. The lyrics “Never been a sinner / I’ve never sinned / I got a friend in Jesus” drew the most criticism. The line goes against the Christian tenet that no one is born without sin.
Greenbaum, who was raised Jewish, was caught off guard by the blowback. “Well, obviously I wasn’t Christian and, you know, stuck with that. So I kind of went beyond it,” he says. “To me, I was just saying, ‘I never did anything that bad.’ Eventually, millions of people didn’t care.”
Following up the song’s success proved difficult for Greenbaum. While the album Spirit in the Sky reached as high as number 23 on the Billboard Top Albums chart, the guitarist’s follow-ups, 1970’s Back Home Again and 1972’s Petalumafailed to chart.
“We toured quite a bit at first,” he says, “but I fell into the ‘one-hit wonder’ hole. A lot of booking people got wary.”
But the spirit of “Spirit in the Sky” wouldn’t die. Thus far, the song has been featured in numerous movies, TV series and commercials, and it’s a staple on oldies radio.
“It’s embedded in people’s minds,” Greenbaum says, “and it gets passed down from generation to generation. I hear from people who want it played at their funeral services.”
One of the more notable send-offs occurred in 2005, when the ashes of famed gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson were blasted out of a cannon at the writer’s home in Colorado. “Spirit in the Sky” provided the ceremony’s soundtrack.
“That was arranged by Johnny Depp,” Greenbaum says. “I always thought it would be interesting to talk to him about that, and I finally got the chance when his band, the Hollywood Vampires, played around here. That was incredible.”
Norman Greenbaum’s album Spirit in the Sky will be reissued on vinyl on June 13 by Craft Recordings. The LP can be pre-ordered here.
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