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Extending The 23 Skidoo Mix Into The Future: “Love To Love You Baby” by Donna Summer

By Marcello Carlin


Moving from 1975 to 1976, from Eagles to Donna Summer, is a bit like stepping out of a wagon and straight onto a spaceship. Neither did it hinder the success of “Love To Love You Baby” that its American release coincided with the onset of this new DJ invention called the twelve-inch single. It had already been released in Holland in mid-1975 under the name of “Love To Love You” – the initial lyric was Summer’s idea; Pete Bellotte wrote the music and Giorgio Moroder produced. However, the lyric was built upon and extended and Summer became reluctant to record the whole song, except as a demo for other singers. Nonetheless, she also provided a commentary which went beyond words, and Moroder was so impressed by her…exultation, let’s call it?...that he persuaded Summer that the record should be released internationally under her own name.

Somehow a copy found its way to Neil Bogart, the head of Casablanca Records; the story goes that he was attending his wife’s birthday party at a club, or at his home (depending on which source you believe), when he heard the record; bewitched, he contacted Moroder and Bellotte and asked them if they could make it longer (it was reputedly played over and over that night). Once again Summer was not sure about all this, but as an actress – she already had a long history of appearing in stage musicals in Germany – she decided to act the part, and Moroder and Bellotte dimmed the studio lights so that her twenty-three (count ‘em) expressions of joy were done in near-total darkness.

The record was an immediate sensation, and while it is overstating the case to say that it initiated the disco era – the Walter Gibbons mix of Double Exposure’s “Ten Percent” was the first commercially-available twelve-inch single – “Love To Love You Baby” signified and embraced a shift from the operatic sorrow of sixties and early seventies soul towards sustained ecstasy. Isaac Hayes and Barry White had opened up this territory, but with the arguable exception of Millie Jackson’s coruscating raps on her two Caught Up albums this was the first time that a woman had ventured into the territory.

And to understand its full bliss it is necessary to listen to the entire sixteen-minute, forty-seven-second-long version. In its seven-inch edit it was perceived as another “naughty” record in the vein of “Je T’Aime” and “Pillow Talk” and the BBC were initially reluctant to play it (although as it flew up our charts they finally yielded and played it). But I can’t imagine Gainsbourg coming up with something like the full-length “Love To Love You Baby” since there is nothing remotely French about it – despite its being the joint brainchild of an American, an Italian and an Englishman, there is something decidedly German about the track’s decisive architecture.

It patiently builds itself up from a simple ride cymbal, via wah-wah guitar, vocals and bass – and what sounds like a Korg string synthesiser – such that when the various vocal climaxes are reached, there is still a highly virtuosic use of space in Moroder and Bellotte’s arrangement. After the first set of groans and sighs is gently faded out, leaving only the bass, the track then ventures into different waters; a full string section appears, quite unexpectedly – one immediately thinks of Norman Whitfield, and if there is a Kraftwerk  comparison to be found here, it should be remembered that the final mix of The Man-Machine was done in Whitfield’s own studio; see Rose Royce’s subsequent “Is It Love You’re After” for evidence of the influence working in the other direction – and during the exploration of the second theme there are also interludes for searing lead guitar, piano (“Moments In Love” ahoy) and even flute. By the time we reach the major-key resolution of the third theme, we are joined by some refugee Tijuana trumpets. And then, the lady herself returns, ecstatic, emotionally naked.

The track then gradually fades, like an elongated, crimson sunset, but theoretically it could go on forever. There is a substantial degree of influence from the psychedelic moves of the late sixties, but as with most ideas which formulated in that decade but only really came to pass in the seventies, it is the notion of free love which is most pervasive here. This was an extended slow dance for swingers to lose themselves, and yet it is as precise a portrait as Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming (indeed the track could readily fade in from the ending moments of Soon Over Babuluma). The tectonic plates of pop had shifted in a minor but significant fashion, and hereafter this story could only really be about something else.

Date Record Made Number Two: 7 February 1976
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon
UK Chart Position: 4

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