The Artist Explains: Fred Abbott - 'Adrenaline Shot' (Video).
Who: London-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Fred Abbott, until now, is best known as lead guitarist and keyboard player in the recently disbanded Noah And The Whale.
About the Track: 'Adrenaline Shot' is the opening track taken from Fred Abbott's debut solo album, 'Serious Poke' which is out on the 24th July. This is rough around the edges indie rock and roll with a husky country rock twist.
The Artist Explains: “I wrote "Adrenaline Shot" when we working on the Noah And The Whale album 'Heart of Nowhere'. I recorded a basic demo in my house on my laptop and played it to the guys when we were coming up with ideas for that album. It was immediately obvious it wasn't going to work on a noah record, but I must have mentally filed it under "maybe another time..."
I seem to recall that I wrote the lyrics quickly, which is very unusual for me. I've been known to take years to finish lyrics for a song. The song is about the moment that you make a first connection with someone who you know is going to change your life for the better, it's kind of a "love at first touch" song.
Some time after I'd recorded the lyrics I wanted to change the first line. I thought "parking lot" sounded too American. I wanted to change it to "rooftop", which I actually preferred as I've had lots of good times on rooftops. So we went back into the studio at some point and tried to re-record just the first line of the song. But for whatever reason we couldn't get exactly the same vocal sound and it didn't sound right with the rest of the singing. So we just kept parking lot.
We started by recording the drums in British grove studios. The drummer Michael Petulla had been hit in the face by a football before coming to the studio that day and had a mild concussion. Despite being a little disorientated he played a great take. I really let him off the leash on this one and there are some outrageous drum fills on there that most producers would never allow these days!
Once we got the guitars and bass on the track it immediately became obvious that this would be a good track to start an album with. It was loud, punchy and fast. The piano was done on an upright at British grove that is deliberately kept a little out of tune, so that added a nice bit of honky tonk to the second half of the song. The last thing we added was the backing vocals from Mcgoo and Grace Barrett, which lend a bit of class to the track."