Kurt Cobain became very unhappy with how polished their massive breakthrough Nevermind was. For their 1993 follow-up album, Cobain wanted it to sound muddier, more distorted, and less pop. The band was extremely focused and worked hard, with two or three takes for each song. The album came out and it was a success and…
Perfectionism would be a problem that would basically end Guns N’ Roses, but in 1987 it helped them create the perfect album. All the band members wrote different tracks; Axl recorded each line one by one; Slash discovered his guitar sound; and 18-hour days from an engineer all combined to get it to sound perfect.…
Dave Grohl recorded the first Foo Fighters album all by himself. For the second record he had put a band together and started to work differently. The producer of the record polished up their sound and Grohl wrote much more from the heart. He wrote about his marriage crumbling, his frustrations with the band and…
Blink-182 were at the height of their popularity when it came time to record the follow up to Enema of the State. The recording sessions were extremely difficult as each of the three band members had very different ideas of what the group should sound like. The record label was also actively involved and, in…
In 1983, Mötley Crüe were the kings of the Sunset Strip. They signed a big record contract and released an album that immediately got them in trouble. Shout at the Devil reached the ire of Tipper Gore and countless other parenting groups. This only made them more popular and soon their mix of glam and…
Sublime was poised to have major success by 1996. Their indie releases had created a huge amount of buzz and now they had a major label, a big-time producer and amazing songs. Sadly, lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose before he could see how successful the record would be. Producing giant hits…
Eddie Van Halen was tired of not having control. He was mad at producers, record labels and managers so he built his own studio. From there, he started to record 1984. He wanted synths on the album, he wanted every song to be a bit different and he wanted, more than anything else, no cover…
This is the album that turned Tool into a prog-metal band. They had toured straight for two years and had become much better musicians and were ready to put those skills to the test. Maynard James Keenan tried to erase some of the negativity in his life before writing this album and, for the first…
Billy Corgan said that he wanted to create an album that would be the ’90s version of “The Wall”. He decided to use different producers than the Pumpkins had previously worked with to create a very different sound than 1993’s Siamese Dream. The album ventured from hard rock to synth-based to even a full orchestra.…
MTV started to create a buzz for Def Leppard before Pyromania hit stores in 1983. The band could feel the momentum and went into a London studio and worked on choruses, riffs, and bridges that they would take to uber-producer Mutt Lange who basically built them into songs. This was also a transition for the…