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‘I’m not calling God a slob’: how Joan Osborne made One of Us

‘Conservative religious groups took great exception. I was getting death threats and people were picketing my concerts’

Rob Hyman from the Hooters came to my show at a club in Philadelphia and said: “You’re amazing.” He told me his friend Rick Chertoff, a producer and the boss of the Blue Gorilla label, was looking for artists and said: “I think he’d love you.” At that point in my career, I’d heard a lot of stuff from guys in bars at the end of the night, but I got Rick’s number. We were working in this little crawl space studio that Rob had above his garage in Philly when Eric played us a demo of One of Us, which he was intending to send to the Crash Test Dummies. I’d just discovered a 1930s singer called Nell Hampton on an album of Appalachian folk songs and was playing it the studio, so Rick suggested placing a snippet of her at the start.

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