‘Some kid had credited a column of life advice in the Chicago Tribune to the writer of Slaughterhouse-Five. It then spread on a new invention called the world wide web. I thought it would make a great spoken word song’
In 1997, my music supervisor Anton Monsted and I decided to make a charity album with remixes of songs from my films. I was working on a new version of Rozalla’s rave banger Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good) that, for Romeo + Juliet, we had turned into an ecclesiastical song with vocals from Quindon Tarver and King’s College Choir.
Around this time, a graduation speech apparently by Kurt Vonnegut offering life advice was spreading on a new invention called the world wide web. It was what we would now call viral – but it was also a hoax. Some kid had taken a column by a smart, respected columnist called Mary Schmich, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and instead credited it to the Slaughterhouse-Five author.
We thought it would make a great spoken word song. We found a voiceover artist, Lee Perry, to impersonate an imagined Vonnegut and spent a great deal of time getting it right, so that it felt naturally spoken and rhythmic.
