Welcome to 2020. When this song was written that date was the realm of science fiction. We’d be living on other planets, have flying cars and could teleport. Yeah, well. T. Rex released Jeepster at the end of 1971. The song’s chords and structure are basically ‘blues’ oriented. But throw in a few pounds of ‘glam’ and the song turns more psychedelic. Songs from that era are just so much fun to mess with. I think it’s how ‘loose’ they are. If you listen to the original there’s a drum beat intro, which starts at about 88 bpm. By the time we’re rolling in the first verse, it’s at about 95 bpm and it fluctuates throughout the song. It gives the song personality and makes it feel alive.
We stuck with the Messin’ recording rules to keep the live feel. The overall idea was to have the instruments doing intersecting ‘riffs’ with the vocals sort of floating on top. So instrumentally we have: six string banjo to carry the main riff, played twice for the stereo effect; twelve string guitar; two mandolin parts; fretless bass; five string banjo for fills and acoustic slide guitar. We have two different tracks for the vocal. One vocal track was spawned by our discussion of working on a Prince song in the future (‘how would Prince sing Jeepster?’) So instead of one vocal track being the ‘main’ track, we blended two together. More tracks also allowed better options to pan the tracks for stereo which allows you to hear the separate parts easier (and it’s fun for headphones).
So here’s Electrostatic Rhythm Pigs covering T.Rex’s ‘Jeepster’.
ChurchHouse Productions Blog 