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Death, Sex & Money - Where is Lisa Fischer's Backup?

Slate Culture Feed

Slate Podcasts

Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.22K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2015

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You've heard Lisa Fischer singing backup vocals for everyone from the Rolling Stones to Beyoncé. But after decades of touring with rock stars, Fischer lives in a far more humble reality.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

I feel like the normal girl sort of visiting for a very long time in a not normal world and trying to bridge the two worlds together.

0:14.0

This is death, sex, and money.

0:17.5

You're a virgin who can't drive.

0:19.9

The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot.

0:23.3

Are you a man who once said death smiles at this home?

0:25.9

And need to talk about more.

0:28.0

I am a millionaire.

0:29.2

Now, y'all look money hungry, and that's good.

0:31.5

I'm Anna Sale.

0:34.2

Imagine being in your late 20s, building a career as a backup singer, and you get summoned to audition for Mick Jagger.

0:42.0

This is what happened to Lisa Fisher.

0:44.3

You know, I bring my tape, and Mick is sitting behind a desk, and he has the boombox, and he puts the tape in, and he's listening, and I'm kind of standing around, and I'm waiting to see what this is going to be. Because there's no, I don't remember being a piano or anyone there to play it or anything like that. So he's listening to the tape and then he says, well, can you sing along with it? So I started singing along with it. I'm standing and I'm singing. He gets up from behind the desk and he starts coming around to me and starts kind of moving around

1:12.7

and dancing and is kind of not quite freaking me out but kind of freaking me out because I didn't

1:20.3

I didn't know what he was doing. You're singing along to a boombox and he starts dancing around.

1:26.7

Right. Exactly. She got the job.

1:28.8

Lisa's sung back up on every Rolling Stones tour since 1989.

1:33.7

That wailing voice on stage during Gimme's shelter, that's her.

1:37.6

This is from the Stone's 2004 album Live Licks.

1:40.5

Oh, my love.

2:13.7

It's just a holiday. And and some of this corner world. Just the full-on bra-slinging beer, chugging, screaming and shugging, screaming and tits in the air kind of audience.

2:19.4

And it's been interesting to watch this audience grow up and now bring their kids and their grandkids. So it's just been insanely amazing.

2:28.9

But when the tours are over, Lisa comes home to a life that's not quite as glamorous.

...

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