‘I was working as a cook when it went to No 1’: how Norman Greenbaum made Spirit in the Sky

‘He had a whole raft of songs about goats and chickens’ … Norman Greenbaum in his early days. Photograph: Henry Diltz/Corbis/Getty Images

Norman Greenbaum, singer, guitarist, songwriter

Spirit in the Sky started as an old blues riff I’d been playing since my college days in Boston, but I didn’t know what to do with it. After I moved to LA, a guy I knew came up with a way of putting a fuzzbox inside my Fender Telecaster, which created the distinctive sound on Spirit in the Sky.