Thread by @TheWrongtom

30 years today since Unfinished Sympathy came out, and it's only really just occurred to me that the greatest dance single of all time has a pun for it's title. Anyway, who fancies joining me to look at what makes up this track..? Of course you do

The topline was a song written by Shara Nelson before the Blue Lines recording sessions. They developed it with her for the LP. Massive Attack met her in the 80s through Adrian Sherwood who'd recorded various tracks with Shara, like this one

Side note: Shara also worked Jah Wobble on his electro-funk-dub LP Neon Moon with Ollie Marland. Here's opening track Love Mystery

And, if I'm not mistaken, Shara worked with the Massive Attack crew back in '88 when they were still The Wild Bunch. Here's their skeletal cover of Burt Bacharach's The Look Of Love

Ok, samples. The monstrous rolling break, the backbone of Unfinished Sympathy can be heard in all it's un-chopped glory on the soundtrack to Gilbert Moses' blacksploitation classic Willie Dynamite

A personal dancefloor favourite throughout the 90s

And the "baaay-beeeeee..." vocal in the background is snipped from Mahavishnu Orchestra's LP Inner Worlds

Perhaps by chance, that same Mahavishnu vocal appears on Gangster Chronicle by London Posse, produced/released around the same time

(Both LPs also sampled the same guitar riff from Ike's Mood by Isaac Hayes. In my head they tread similar sonic landscape)

Back to Unfinished Sympathy and it's arguably the strings which elevated it from a great song to legendary status. Thank orchestrator Wil Malone for that. Here's an early record by Wil, from his eponymous LP from 1970

I had the honour of meeting Wil Malone while we were working on the 2nd Hard-Fi LP which he orchestrated/conducted. A hilarious moody man, infamously, who seemed particularly grumpy when I brought up his production of the 1st Iron Maiden LP

LEYTON MASSIVE

A bonus for me was I got to mess with the strings when it came to producing my dub versions, which was fun. They're all over the end of this one, and there's a blurry shot of Will conducting the orchestra in the clip

Wil wasn't exactly new to the Bristol sound in 1990 of course. In '88 he supplied strings for Neneh Cherry's Manchild, produced by her husband Cameron McVey. I'd assume, that's how Malone came to be involved in Unfinished Sympathy, correct me if I'm wrong.

Wait. U don't know the link between Neneh and Massive Attack? Well, it goes deep but the earliest example of them together is on this mix of McVey's single Looking Good Diving, produced by SAW, remixed by Wild Bunch, and became the basis of Buffalo Stance

And that's not even getting into Neneh's previous Bristol bands Rip Rig & Panic and Float Up CP. She also co-wrote The Hymn Of The Big Wheel with the group and Horace Andy

In fact a lot of Blue Lines was produced in McVey and Cherry's home studio

I have to raise my tea to producer/engineer Jonny Dollar who was the catalyst behind Unfinished Sympathy getting a full orchestra. He worked on Raw Like Sushi and Blue Lines, so I'm pretty sure he's the reason Malone got the call. He sadly died in 2009. That's him on the left

And just so everyone gets their dues, the orchestra on Unfinished Sympathy was led by violinist Gavyn Wright, who you can watch here with Penguin Cafe Orchestra performing Air á Danser

Lastly, the video. Directed by Baillie Walsh with a steadicam in 1 uncut shot down Pico Blvd in LA. He's made some great videos including Kylie's Slow, and his doc Mirror Mirror, an unflinching portrait of trans legend Consuela Cosmetic. Watch in full here

And that's how a Massive Attack "Unfinished Sympathy" works. Til next time...