Quote:
Originally posted by hourglass
I guess I'll continue my current tact of digging up old stuff and makin' people feel - well - old. 
I recall reading a statement from Nuno in GftPM magazine way back when... It went something along the lines of the label wanted them to work with a name producer so they brought in MW. Upon his arrival, Nuno claimed MW's comment was "what's there for me to do?" seeing as how much was already done on the record...
In scouring the old posts for guitar info pertaining to my other thread, I came across the listing for the McIntosh poweramps which had been used for this record, as well as Skid Row and some other stuff...
So I'm wondering - how much of that statement was right?
I know some of the stuff is easily attributable to Nuno - and he readily admits to the ground buzz on the vocal mic for "When I First Kissed You" since it was recorded in a bedroom on a 4-track...
Michael - do you have any recollections on doing this record? As it's one I was heavily inspired by both guitar-wise and production-wise I'd be interested in anything you have to offer on its production.
I always liked the interplay between the rather laid-back drums and the over -the-top guitar work. Something which was certainly lacking on some of their later efforts.
This one seemed to hit just at the right moment, tho - which also strikes me as odd since that same interview mentioned that this record was pretty much done (maybe he just meant written...) before the first one even came out.
Another thought on this record - it's always inspired me to try the "fade out & back in" thing like at the end of "When I'm President." I've never gotten it that perfect, tho.
ryan |
Sorry for the late reply, been slammed in the studio the last few weeks.
Anyway, when producing a band, psychology is a big part of getting great results out of musicians. Some are very open minded and you can make suggestions about musical changes or ideas and they will pick it up and make it their own. Others don't want a lot of ouside influences, because they are scared it would take away from their creativity or credit. In those cases, if you want to achieve a certain result, you have to plant a "creative seed" which, in a few days will turn into the result you are looking for, but it still seems like it was all the idea of the musician him/herself. The downside, of course is, that the musician looks at it as if he did ALL the work and the producer "didn't really do anything". The logical next step for those kind of musicians is to produce their next album themselves, their ego telling them they don't need a producer and, like in the above mentioned case, they might fall flat on their face, and come up with an album that doesn't sell anywhere near what the previous one did.
In terms of the record "beeing done before it was recorded" Nuno is probably referring to the writing of it. It is true that on Pornograffitty we didn't need a lot of pre-production, because the material was very good and very well written, but so was the material on "3-sides to every story", which Nuno produced himself and didn't sell a tenth of what Porno did. A couple of the demos actually made the final album (like "When I First Kissed You") and on one song (can't remember which one) we even kept a drumtrack from a demo and built up on that. So the demos were really well done, maybe that's what Nuno was refferring to, but it still was a lot of work (some obvious, some not so obvious to him) to put the record together.
In any case, the combination producer/band turned out a great album, which seemingly couldn't quite be repeated on later records. In this business egos can be wonderful, but they also can be a curse.
