‘Conservative religious groups took great exception. I was getting death threats and people were picketing my concerts’
Joan Osborne, singer
We were working in this little crawl space studio that Rob had above his garage in Philly when Eric played us a demo of One of Us, which he was intending to send to the Crash Test Dummies. Rick immediately said: “No, you’re going to give that song to Joan.” He was very insistent. The chorus reminded me of the sort of question a kid might ask a parent: “What if God was one of us?” So when I sang it I played up that kind of innocence.
The lyrics play with deeper concepts like the good Samaritan or the Buddhist view that God is in all of us, but conservative religious groups took great exception because it flew in the face of their view that humans are inherently sinful and nothing like God. I was getting death threats and people were picketing my concerts. Thankfully that was a fleeting thing.
One night we were watching a documentary about the making of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album and she became curious about four-track recording. I had a four-track so she said: “Record something.” I’d been playing a guitar riff all day so recorded it in a song structure and she asked me to sing it. But I didn’t have any lyrics. Then she fell asleep, and I found I had the voice of Brad Roberts from the Crash Test Dummies in my head. The lyrics just tumbled out.
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