There was a time, not so long ago, when having the UK Christmas Number 1 meant an awful lot to bands and artists. And, back in 1996, it was the Spice Girls who sat atop the festive chart with 2 Become 1, their first big ballad.
Their two previous singles - Wannabe and Say You’ll Be There - had also hit the top spot, but 2 Become 1 showcased a softer side to Scary, Sporty, Posh, Baby and Ginger. Much of the tender mood is set by Greg Lester’s nylon-string acoustic guitar work, and he recently looked back on it in a conversation with Vertex Effects.
Lester says that, when he was drafted in, the musical reference point he was given was British singer-songwriter Des’ree, who he’d worked with previously and had had acoustic-tinged hits earlier in the ‘90s with the likes of Feel So High and You Gotta Be. On 2 Become 1, you can hear little flourishes from him at various points, but it’s his solo that has embedded itself in the memories of a generation of pop fans.
Lester remembers that he took several guitars along to the session so that songwriters/producers Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard had plenty of tonal options. “They opted for the Chet Atkins [a Gibson acoustic guitar with electronic pickups], because they wanted nylon string,” he recalls.
Discussing the origins of the solo itself, Lester says: “It was quite exciting - in most sessions in those days it was always rhythm. There was an idea there, and most of it was on a keyboard. It was actually very well conceived but it didn't sound guitaristic at all.”
So, Lester set about putting his own sonic stamp on it. “I tried to make it as guitaristic as I could and make it mine in a very short amount of time,” he remembers.
What’s more, although the majority of the solo melody was in place, the ascending scale that finishes it and leads into the final vocal bridge was all Lester’s own work.
“They said, ‘Well, that's all we've got, but if you could round it off and complete it, that would be great,’” he recalls. “They had the melody lines up to the bit at the end which was when I [played the scale] and they just thought ‘that's great’, and it worked.”
As in so many cases, then, success was achieved by not overthinking. “It was keeping it simple and trying to keep it breathing and keeping the space there,” says Lester. “I was sort of marking time on that penultimate bit… and the scale just came out!”
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