John Lennon's voice features on a record by a Cardiff musician
A musician from Cardiff has used a sample of John Lennon on his debut album after getting permission from Yoko Ono.
It’s something of a coup for Gizmo Varillas, the 27-year-old whose family are from Spain but who moved to Cardiff when he was five. The Lennon estate very rarely grants permission for Lennon’s voice to be sampled, but the singer-songwriter who grew up in the Canton area of the city, managed to persuade the wife of the late-Beatles’ guitarist to allow him to use a sample of a Lennon interview on his song No War - which features on his debut album El Dorado.
“He was a huge inspiration of mine - an idol for what he stood for,” said Gizmo, who now lives in London. “I didn’t set out to write an anti-war song, not did I consciously set out to use a sample of John Lennon. All of this happened as I started writing the song and it developed from there.
“The song evolved as I wrote each individual line. Line by line it revealed itself, and then when I reached the middle eight I was thinking to myself what else could I add to the song. “The song is called No War and who expressed that message better than John Lennon.”
By: David Owens
Source: Wales Online
