Receptacle for the Respectable

Song facts

“Receptacle for the Respectable” is a song from the Super Furry Animals, on which Paul McCartney is credited doing “carrots and celery rythmn”.

From MTV (about the collaboration between McCartney and Super Furry Animals):

[…] A far stranger relationship developed between the Furrys and the former Beatle. The two forces first intersected in 2000 at an NME Awards ceremony in London when Furry keyboardist Cian Ciaran got drunk and found himself in the men’s room next to the music legend. Their bathroom conversation continued into the ceremony room, and by the end of the night Ciaran had convinced McCartney to let the Welsh band remix some previously unreleased Beatles music.

“One minute Cian is dragging Paul McCartney to a table, and within two weeks four boxes of original Beatles master tapes arrived in our office in Cardiff,” marveled Rhys. “We sampled chunks of John [Lennon] and Paul chatting, and we made loops of George’s guitar and Ringo [Starr]‘s drums. That was extremely surreal.”

The music came out last year on a record called The Liverpool Sound Collage and was used as background music for an installation by British pop artist Peter Blake at the Tate Gallery in London. Pleased by the collaboration, McCartney agreed to guest on Rings Around the World.The only problem was scheduling the time.

“He was always going to fashion shows in Paris and was always canceling on us,” grumbled Rhys. “Also, there was a lot of security involved. It was like trying to make a record with the pope.”

In typically perverse fashion, Super Furry Animals didn’t want McCartney to sing on their record. Instead, they asked him to chew carrots and celery into the mic on “Receptacle for the Respectable,” as he allegedly did for Brian Wilson on the track “Vegetables” from the unreleased 1967 album Smile.

“He claims that was his favorite moment of last year — chewing the celery and carrots to the beat,” Rhys said. “We just didn’t want him to strain his voice, and we didn’t want him to play bass because he’s done that so many times in his life. He’s probably sick of singing cameo roles.” […]

[Paul McCartney] was going to come to the studio and then decided not to for some reason. So, we sent him stereo backing tracks so he could keep time, then he sent the tape back with a message that started with a really dodgy Welsh accent. “Then he goes, “I hope you like it” – the next thing you know you just hear this chewing sound!

Keyboardist Cian Ciarán – From Super Furry Animals share isolated audio of Paul McCartney chewing celery (nme.com), July 21, 2021

From Wikipedia:

The track “Receptacle For the Respectable” reflects the eclecticism of the album as it “undergoes a complete personality change” over the course of its four-minute thirty-two-second duration, veering from prog rock to death metal. The song begins as an acoustic guitar-driven pop song and then shifts into a slower bridge section which leads to an even slower coda which has been compared to the music of Burt Bacharach and The Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile album and features Paul McCartney chewing carrots and celery to the beat. The track ends with a “pantomime death metal” section with Rhys’s “distorted, bellowed vocals” screaming the title phrase. According to Cian Ciaran, the song initially comprised just the first two parts when recorded at Monnow Valley Studios but, by the time the group relocated to Bearsville Studios, Rhys had written and added the third section. While there the band added the fourth section by “pissing about with Pro Tools”, looping the bass from the end of the third section “by accident” to create the musical backing. A fifth, hip hop, section was discussed but the band decided against it, reasoning that “if you’re going to do a fifth bit, you’d probably do a sixth, and before you know where you are, you’re doing a concept album made up of nothing but bits!“. According to the band, the track is the only time on the album where they tried to achieve comedy and “completely went with [their] silly streak“.

Last updated on July 29, 2021

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