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Oral History: 'Peter Gabriel III' At 40 no-self-control-oral-history-peter-gabriel-iii

No Self Control: An Oral History Of 'Peter Gabriel III'

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In honor of its 40th anniversary, the Recording Academy talks to the musicians and engineers who brought the former Genesis frontman's third solo album to life
Ryan Reed
GRAMMYs
May 31, 2020 - 6:00 am

Peter Gabriel's first two albums are full of brilliant moments: the cinematic 7/8 saunter of "Solsbury Hill," the spooky art-funk atmospheres of "Exposure," the creepy-crawly grooves on "Moribund the Burgermeister." But they showcased a songwriter searching for an identity, working with famous producers (Bob Ezrin on his 1977 debut, King Crimson's Robert Fripp on his 1978 follow-up) and exploring new sounds on each song—seemingly to find one that might stick.

That moment arrived in 1980 with his third solo project, another self-titled set best-known by its lavish, Hipgnosis-designed cover art. (In this case, the image of Gabriel's half-disintegrated face earned the nickname "Melt.") Working with producer Steve Lillywhite, producer Hugh Padgham, synth player Larry Fast, drummer Jerry Marotta and a tightly knit ensemble of other players, he crafted a sonic space that, four decades later, remains distinctly his: Songs like "Games Without Frontiers," "No Self Control" and "I Don't Remember" fuse bleak, paranoid lyrics with expansive arrangements (loads of marimba and saxophone) and production techniques that somehow still sound modern.

40 years later, Gabriel's key collaborators reflect on the studio experimentation, happy accidents and deep friendships that fueled an art-rock masterpiece.

Gabriel had a background in progressive rock—a very uncool movement in the era of punk and New Wave. So Lillywhite, who cut his teeth working with hip, edgy bands like XTC and Siouxsie and the Banshees, was shocked the former Genesis frontman would be interested in collaborating.

Steve Lillywhite, producer: Up until that point, I'd worked with these New Wave bands [like XTC], and Peter was the first artist who came to me. His manager actually phoned me up and said, "Steve, Peter Gabriel is interested in you working with him." I thought it was a friend of mine joking! I thought it was someone winding me up.

I remember Peter in Genesis wearing a [fox's] head [onstage], and that was really not cool. And, of course, we all knew he was a public school boy, which made it not very Joe Strummer. [Laughs.] I'd produced XTC's [1979 album] Drums and Wires [with Hugh Padgham as engineer]. Peter heard "Making Plans for Nigel" or something and liked what he heard.

Hugh Padgham, engineer: Steve and I had really hit it off and become friendly. [Drums and Wires] was very well critiqued, and I think that's where Peter had heard of us, particularly Steve. Peter's manager at that time was Gail Colson, and she got ahold of Steve, and Steve said to me, "You won't believe it—I've been asked if I'm interested in working with Peter Gabriel. What do you reckon?" I was a huge Genesis fan. I had some friends who went to the same school as Peter, Charterhouse. The original drummer in Genesis, John Silver, went to the public school I went to. We all sort of thought Genesis was our own band in a way. For me to end up with Peter—and after that end up working with Phil Collins and Genesis—I was, as you can imagine, like a pig in shit. [Laughs.]

Steve accepted the offer, and we were all very excited. We started off recording it using a mobile recording studio owned by Virgin Records called the Manor Mobile. At that point, the Townhouse [studio, where Padgham was house engineer] was brand new. We went down to Ashcombe House, where Peter lived near Bath, England and started the recording there with this mobile truck. Ashcombe had a barn that we did the recording in. I remember it was muddy and rainy. It's a hazy memory, but that must have been the first place I met Peter.

Gabriel's production team was, indeed, brand new—as were some of the album's core musicians (including guitarist David Rhodes, who became a staple of Gabriel's future creative team). But two of the record's most essential performers, synthesizer/processing wizard Larry Fast and drummer Jerry Marotta, were already members of his touring and studio band.

Jerry Marotta, drummer: Peter was a band guy. He'd been in Genesis. I don't think he had much experience with musicians. I never figured out [why Gabriel recruited him]—maybe [bassist/Chapman Stick player] Tony Levin had something to do with it. I don't think it mattered once we got past the first date stage. We just got along well, and it was a good working situation.

Larry Fast, synthesizer player: We'd already encountered each other way back, going back to the early Genesis tours. I did have the first two Synergy [solo] albums under my belt, and those were the days when an electronic instrumental album could chart pretty high as well. [Laughs.] Obviously Peter is more interested in creativity and artistic sentiments than somebody who did well on the charts. We had some overlaps: The label I was signed to, Jem Records, was very instrumental in breaking Genesis in the U.S. through import records. They were fundamentally important to making sure the band got heard because the distributing label Charisma had early on—I don't think they knew what to do with the band. That led to meeting not only with the band members and getting to know Peter a bit, but also the management group for Hit and Run, which would be handling Peter in his solo career as well as Genesis when he left the band. I had a lot of encounters there. I was already beginning to tour as an adjunct member of [prog-rock band] Nektar at that point.

Gabriel's core studio team also included bassist John Giblin (subbing in for regular low-end master, Tony Levin, who was busy filming the Paul Simon movie One-Trick Pony), percussionist Morris Pert and his old Genesis bandmate Phil Collins, who played drums on a few cuts. (More on that later.) And for Gabriel, a dark and innovative sonic vision was starting to crystalize around these versatile players.

Fast: Some of it is an exploration of what the possibilities might be, but he'd explored the ground already with his first two albums. They were really good records in their own way, but there were [other] ideas I heard Peter speak about: We sat down before the first album, and we had a nice meal and talked through a lot of conceptual possibilities. One of the things he mentioned was the idea of no cymbals, which I thought was terrific. It's exactly the way I'd been working in electronic music, particularly in the pre-sampling days. There were no cymbals, and they eat up a lot of sonic space. Peter had speaking about wanting to do that on the first album, but it didn't materialize. I suppose somewhere in conversations that came up and was nixed. Moving on to album two, I don't know if he brought it up again, but same deal: another strong-minded producer in Robert Fripp with a sound of his own. Cymbals were there.

Both Steve Lillywhite and Hugh Padgham were perhaps a little down lower in the hierarchy than a Robert Fripp or a Bob Ezrin, and Peter had had some success under his belt, and they were creative enough to say, "He's the artist. He's the creative one. Maybe we should try some of this." It stuck. And it was a great idea.

Lillywhite: Peter did not want to be complacent on this album. When we met, I said, "What sort of sound do you want on this album?" Right away, he was like, "I don't want cymbals." For me, it was like, "Oh, my god." I'd been starting to experiment with no cymbals on songs. But sometimes I would overdub cymbals because of the sounds I was looking for.

Padgham: I remember distinctly that was rule number one from the beginning: There was gonna be no cymbals on the record. I can't remember any other particular rules. From a rock point of view and a drummer's point of view, it's like cutting off half their arms to ask a drummer not to play cymbals or hi-hats. It was probably quite difficult.

Phil [Collins, who appears on a few songs] sort of took it very much in his stride. Phil is mister fanatically keen, especially in those days. I think Jerry probably found it harder. If I remember, we set up fake cymbals or bits of cardboard or something just so it didn't appear so weird to him.

Marotta: It took me awhile to get used to the fact that I couldn't hit a cymbal when I played something. At the very most, I may have thought, "This is nuts and it's not gonna work." Take the cymbals away and in time, someone will see, "We've gotta put some cymbals back up." But I became very comfortable with that very quickly. I don't remember the moment I got it, but I just got it. I'm obsessive-compulsive, and I have an addictive personality, so if I start doing something, I'm doing it all the time.

I didn't invent that [idea], but I sure did it more and more—to the point where people would get weirded out [in sessions]. When I was playing on other people's records, they'd be like, "Hey man, do you think you can hit a cymbal occasionally?" But who says you have to crash a cymbal at the end of every fill or going into the chorus? Who came up with that concept?

A vibe was emerging: heavy rhythms, experimental effects, heavily processed synthesizers, dark lyrical imagery. But Gabriel, a very un-prolific songwriter, didn't have all his songs finished when the sessions began.   

Fast: Most of the songs were somewhat defined, at least the instrumental tracks, and that goes back to the first album. The working mode would be that we'd go into the studio for the day, and all the musicians would gather in a little room off the main studio, and Peter would sit down at the piano with all of us clustered around with clipboards and notebooks and music paper on our laps and play through what the song was going to be. Often the lyrics weren't completely formed yet, but he'd know where he wanted the chorus, what the melody was going to be, but he was working out the poetry of the song in some cases. That didn't really change. The only difference, by the third album, Peter had already created the drum machine and quick multi-track eversions of these things on cassette. I'd come over for the rhythm tracks after the other guys were already cutting them, and I already had a cassette of about 14 or 16 potential songs for the record. I was familiar with what they'd be, but they'd be recut with the musicians to create the backbone or spine of the song.

There were a couple [songs] that were the beginning of Peter using a drum box. That was something I had. It was a small synthesizer kit company called PAiA, and that was actually owned and founded by a friend of mine who's another synthesizer designer. They had a kit that, to the best of my knowledge, was the first programmable drum box. All the ones prior to that, they were really intended for lounge music and things, so there would be a button you'd push for a cha-cha rhythm or a foxtrot rhythm. It was an accompanist box. Some of them were so corny and square that they were kinda hip in their own way. But [programmable beats] didn't exist until this little PAiA box.

They were electronically generated drum sounds, but it had computer memory in it. You'd push a button and get the metronome tick, and you'd play your drum part and hit the stop button, and it would loop it and remember the drum pattern. It was very small—about the size of a cigar box—and inexpensive. I got one just to play with during the scened album, and Peter became aware of it around the time the second album was finished. He was enthralled with it. [Fast reached out to the company and had them custom-build one for Gabriel.] I remember bringing it to Peter, and about six or eight months later, when the third album cassette tracks were showing up, there was the box used as the spine of a lot of tracks. For Peter, it was a real creative breakthrough because things started being based more on the rhythm.

After their early sessions in Bath, the crew moved into the residential Townhouse studio in London, where their experiments—encouraged and often facilitated by the team of Lillywhite, Padgham and Fast—continued through the album's completion.

Padgham: We were trying to be really experimental. One of the staff had just had a baby or something, and she brought it in one day to show off to everybody. And we said, "Can we borrow your baby for a bit?" We brought the baby in the studio, and it started crying because it was missing its mum, and we were recording it. We slowed the tape down so that it sounded like an old man crying. Then we distorted it and stuff like that. We were doing weird, experimental shit.

Fast: What was really important with Steve and Hugh is they could facilitate Peter's ideas—they could gently point out, as many of us would when something wasn't so practical. But sometimes radical thinking: It's not like doing surgery; it's making records. So why not try it? Why not try to be creative? They gave Peter the space to be Peter. That was so important, and they were also able to help him make an idea even better. The third one was where Peter really hit his stride.

Lillywhite: Peter was enjoying the energy of what we were doing. If we took it to five, he'd say, "No, push it to 10." It was a real art school project.

Of course, the most iconic experiments—the gated drum sound on "Intruder"—helps the album endure as what Lillywhite calls a "sonic flagpole."

The short version: Studio Two at the Townhouse featured a recording console from a new company, Solid State Logic (or SSL), offering compressors and noise gates on every channel. They also featured a "reverse talkback mic," which allowed easier communication between the engineers/producers in the control room and the musicians in the live room. One day, Padgham accidentally—or perhaps by fate—opened the talkback mic at the precise moment Collins was tuning his drums before a session. The sound—a fast shutdown of the drum's natural decay—offered a distinct punch that eventually became one of the defining production techniques of the 1980s. Collins famously utilized the sound on his 1981 solo debut, Face Value, which Padgham engineered and co-produced.

Padgham: We heard this incredible sound suddenly coming through our loud speakers in the control room. The reverse talkback mic circuit had a very, very heavy compressor on it. The effect was remarkable on the sound of the drum that came through. I think we were all in the control room together: Peter, Steve, me, Larry Fast probably, and whoever else. And everybody just went, "Wow, that's bloody incredible!"

Fast: I missed school that day. [Laughs.]

Unfortunately, the reverse talkback mic was rooted to the monitors, not the console, meaning there was no way of recording this jarring sound. Padgham came to the rescue, having the studio's maintenance engineers figure out a workaround in the console.

Padgham: Just for kicks, I went, "Let's see if we can compress it even more." The same button that turned the compressor on effectively turned the noise gate on as well. The noise gate under a certain threshold would cut it off before the decay finished. That's where we all went "wow" again where the sound suddenly shut off. You had this enormous sound, and suddenly it shut off to nothing.

Lillywhite: When the drummer was drumming and we'd put on the talkback mic to talk to him while he was still drumming, it sounded like the best drum sound ever because of the compression on the talkback mic. We got Hugh to plug that talkback mic into the desk. Like I said, if we said we wanted to take it to five, Peter would say, "Take it to 10."

Padgham: Phil came up with a drum part that would enable us to hear the sound shutting off as he was playing. If you play something too quickly, the noise gate never had time to shut off. It would just be open the whole time. In those days, because we didn't have any looping—nothing was digital at all. The only way of him playing in time so it would consistently shut off was to play to a metronome—a good, old-fashioned metronome. We found a tempo that worked, put it into Phil's headphones, he played the drum pattern that worked with all the closing noise gates for about seven or eight minutes, and Peter wrote the song around it.

Lillywhite: In those days, Phil was as good a drummer as anyone in the world. The fact that he can do something like "Intruder," which is so metronomic. That's what I love about Phil as a drummer. There are some great drummers in the world: [Dave Matthews Band's] Carter Beauford is a fantastic drummer, but there's one thing Carter can't do: Carter cannot be Ringo, whereas Phil Collins can be Carter Beauford but also Ringo.

Padgham: It's basically a story of happy accidents. Steve was there, Phil was there, Peter was there. We all sort of took the credit for it, I suppose. It doesn't matter who invented it or didn't invent [the sound].

One of the record's most rewarding experiments came on the dynamic, unnerving "No Self Control," which they built by subtraction rather than addition. The song featured a winding arrangement—inspired in part by Steve Reich—full of eerie Kate Bush backing vocals, steady layers of marimba and highly processed vocals.

Lillywhite: That song originally had drums and everything—every sound you hear at any point—on the multi-track all the way through. When we mixed it, we sculpted it. It was like, "Let's take as much out as we can to make it sound good at the beginning." So we took everything out and left just the marimba and Phil Collins' live bass drum, which we gated so you couldn't hear the rest of the drum kit. [Laughs.] We did about 20 or 30 seconds of the song at a time, with Hugh Padgham at the back of the control room with his headphones on, editing it to the bit before. But we never listened to it—we just trusted him that he did the edit right. I sat at the mixing desk getting the next bit, going, "OK, what should we do now? Let's do this. Let's bring in that." I remember we spent the whole night doing the mix. For the big playback at the end, we brought people in from outside because we knew we had something great. It was like a sculpture. The whole time we recorded it, it had been this big, solid rock. It absolutely came to its beauty in the mix. It was fantastic. Everyone who listened to it was like, "Oh, my god." That was the song everyone loved, loved, loved at the time.

Many of the song's interesting effects were created using the "$9.95" speaker, dubbed as such by the band because Fast purchased it for that price at Radio Shack.

Fast: Radio Shack made a little box—it was basically a transistor radio that had no tuner in it. So it was just a little tiny speaker, a little nine-volt battery, a volume control and an input jack. I could just plug that into anywhere on the modular synth, turn it on quietly in the control room and put it up to one ear like a single-sided headset. I would also use it to set my delay times, reverb depths and other things while waiting to do an overdub so I wouldn't be wasting time. Studio time was expensive! I was doing some processing on Peter's vocals on something, and I had it plugged into the output of something, and Peter's vocals were coming in through a Moog filter or something. They said, "What do you got?" I turned it up, and it was all distorted and horrible-sounding. Peter went, "I love that! Let's use that! Let's put a microphone on it!" I said, "We'll plug it into the board and clean it all up.' He went, "No, no, no!"

Lillywhite: Every single sound on "No Self Control" at the very beginning is the $9.95. Larry used to sit at the back of the control room, working on sounds. He would say, "Check this out, guys." We'd listen to it though the speaker and go, "That's good." Then we'd plug it into the mixing desk, and it sounded average and boring. It was this plastic distortion. On "No Self Control," Peter held the $9.95 up to his mouth, him moving his mouth [makes wah-wah noise] with a microphone there. It was a bit like a poor man's Peter Frampton or something. Peter was holding the thing there, and we retreated it. All the [mouth sounds] is the $9.95. It was the cheapest speaker you've ever heard, but it had this beautiful analog distortion just from the plastic of the speaker.

Fast: We used it a lot. It got really beat up. It was in a little plastic case that fell on the floor a bunch of times. It was held together with gaffer tape. I have it preserved—it's like an archived item. It doesn't get used anymore. I bought another one after that album because the other one was getting too beat up. We processed vocals, synth lines, even drum things. It was exactly like that same thing with the cymbals: How do we conserve sonic space while creating a big sound?

GRAMMYs

Pictured: Fairlight CMI co-developer Peter Vogel in the Manor Mobile with the prototype of the digital synthesizer/sampler used on 'PG III.'
Photo courtesy of Larry Fast

The third Gabriel album didn't have any singles in the commercial stratosphere of "Sledgehammer," but it did spawn a few minor hits, including the chilly, electronic "Jeux San Frontieres," which landed at Number Four on the U.K. charts. That song also featured a memorable backing vocal ("Jeux sans frontières": the song title in French) from a kindred creative spirit, Kate Bush.

Fast: It's based on the "Jeux San Frontieres" TV show, this multi-national game show competition. Instead of war from these various countries, many of which had been combatants during WWII, they would just have games for national pride. So they're "games without frontiers and war without tears." It all factors in. But Peter was drawing these analogies between the shooting wars and the kind of games that are in the words.

I was reading a book in the studio: Michael Herr's Dispatches, which was one of the first reexaminations of how ugly the Vietnam War had been. Peter was fascinated by it, and I don't know if he bought a copy or borrowed my copy, but a couple of the images showed up. One of the most vivid ones was an American G.I. pissing on a dead Vietnamese soldier. And it was a reflection of, "What have we become as Americans that that could happen?" That image found its way into the lyrics, except Peter used "goons in the jungle" instead of [the derogatory] "'g**ks' in the jungle."

As usual, the band went nuts on the recording: jamming the groove for minutes longer than the final version, bashing on instruments, doubling the tape speed of the final section.

Marotta: We kind of played the song and then got into a jam, and that jam went on. It went on to a point where the song was over and we were just having fun. I do remember smashing a milk bottle and either me or Steve Lillywhite wandering around the room screaming and breaking things with a microphone in our hands.

Fast: I did a panel appearance at the Audio Engineering Society Convention with Wendy Carlos, and we were talking about recording. One of the things she'd come up with for [her 1968 album] Switched on Bach and some of the earlier albums was a technique called "hocketing," which took a complex line and exploded it into a lot of separate sonic sounds and played separately and re-combined for a much richer sound that kept the listener's interest. I thought, "If that worked for Mozart and Bach and worked for Haydn," I wonder if we can apply that to something Peter's got?" I broke out a few of the parts in a similar manner on a number of turnaround points. For a simple song, it has a lot of synthesizer overdubs that you wouldn't normally think would be done. It's very fussy and precise—it's more of the way I built electronic records than the way rock records get recorded. But it worked. And he liked it, which was the most gratifying part.

Lillywhite: By the time we finished the album, "Games Without Frontiers" was more like, [groans]. It was like, "We get it. OK, Peter. It's got a chant, and a cute lyric and Kate Bush," but the weirder ones for me resonate with me.

Fast: Everybody was falling all over [Kate Bush]. [Laughs.] I don't know if it was Steve or Hugh—of course, they were huge fans—but it was a huge race getting out to the control room to see who would get there first to adjust her microphones or fix her headphones. She came with at least one of her brothers, sort of her family bodyguards. She was just charming, just wonderful. She did exactly what everyone hoped we'd come up with.

Padgham: I think everybody fancied her really, particularly Peter. I ended up doing some stuff with her on [Bush's 1982 album] The Dreaming. Anyone involved in the sound of Peter's album she wanted as well. She was as much star-struck by him as he was with her. She was literally, musically speaking after that, trying to become the female version of Peter Gabriel, I think.

She was great. She's pretty crazy, as well. She just used to smoke spliff—joints—the whole time. She probably didn't on our sessions, but when I worked with her afterward, I was amazed that anything got done, particularly. She was so sweet, and she had this little tiny voice like this [imitates pixie voice].

Though Lillywhite was nominally the producer and Padgham nominally the engineer, they took an all-hands-on-deck approach to record-making. But it was still a crucial album (and "Games Without Frontiers" a crucial song) for Lillywhite's personal confidence, proving that—even at the young age of 23 or 24—he could earn the respect of a full studio team.

Lillywhite: There was a real person moment on this involving Robert Fripp. Kate Bush is in the studio singing on "Games Without Frontiers," and Robert Fripp is in the control room because he'd come to do a guitar overdub on something. He's gone from producer to session guitarist, but if you know anything about Robert Fripp, he's very confident and full of himself. He's like the alpha male in the room. Kate's doing "Jeux sans frontières," but it doesn't sound great, so I'm coaching her to get the vocal how I want it to be. I hear this voice from the back of the control room, saying, "I'm sure she's got it right by now." I'm shaking inside. This is a real play by him because he's been the producer. I just completely ignored him, pressed the button and said, "Can you try that again please?" It was just a fleeting moment, and no one knows about this except for me. But as a producer, it was a pivotal moment in me keeping to my guns and getting what I wanted.

"I Don't Remember," the album's fourth single, pre-dated the recording sessions and was played on Gabriel's previous tour. It's the album's only appearance from Levin, who dominates the track with his monster Chapman Stick, a string instrument that allows players to simultaneously perform bass lines, chords and melodic lines. (On this track, Levin sticks to the low-end.) It's also one of two tracks featuring XTC guitarist Dave Gregory, who describes himself as a "Genesis fanboy" who was beyond intimidated by the bucket list studio experience.

Dave Gregory, guitarist: The date was October 16, 1979. I remember that was date was printed on my memory. I was in awe of just being in the presence of this man I'd admired for a long, long time. He couldn't have been nicer—a decent man, no pretension about him at all. After we'd gotten over the initial embarrassment and handshakes and cups of tea and basic chit-chat, we got down to to work. He said, "Here's the song I'm having trouble with. I've had a couple guitar players in here, but they've not quite nailed the song I'm looking for." He said, "I'm wondering if we could work on an alternative tuning." The big guitar riff just goes "bang bang bang" and it's this downbeat with a long, ringing chord. I listened to it and thought, "Getting power out of that chord will probably require an open tuning."

We sat around the piano, and I said, "Can you show me the notes you played, and I can see if it's possible to tune the guitar to it?" Unfortunately, it was a six-note chord, and it meant that I had to retune the guitar to the most bizarre tuning alteration I've ever used. I'm winding away, thinking, "Oh, no. This [string] is going to pop at any time." This was a test for the guitar, but it coped OK. I didn't break any strings. When the part modulated halfway through the verse, it was just a simple matter of moving my thumb and two fingers up three frets. It still worked.

GRAMMYs

Pictured: Guitar tuning that Dave Gregory used on "I Don't Remember"
Photo courtesy of Dave Gregory

It was just a couple of hours. I was nervous as hell, as you can imagine. The studio assistants, one of whom who was a German lady named Marlis Dunklaus, was very helpful and reassuring. She could tell I was nervous. We had the amp set up in the stone room, which is where Phil Collins' famous first album was recorded. I was sitting there next to this amplifier, listening to the headphones as the track started. All that was on there was a guide vocal, Jerry Marotta's drums, Tony Levin's Stick, and some keyboard. That was it. It was very, very sparse, but it sounded amazing, just those basic elements. I thought, "I'm gonna f**k this up if I play over this. This is too good. What am I doing here?" [Laughs.] It took a few passes. It wasn't a first-take miracle by any means. I've listened to the song many times since then and thought, "I could have done that so much better if I hadn't been so nervous." There are a few wobbly moments that aren't quite in the pocket. I'd only been a professional musician for six months, and it was a bit intimidating.

Gregory also played a simple part on "Family Snapshot," one of the album's most progressive, elaborately arranged tunes, featuring a scene-stealing solo from saxophonist Dick Morrissey.

Fast: The whole back half of the song was part of an instrumental that grew out of soundcheck jams on the second album's tour. But it wasn't really a song. It didn't firm up until the tour and the third album's writing.

Marotta: It's got that epic [quality]. We were playing it, and the sections were kind of there, but we didn't know where to put them. As we played them, I had the idea, "Let's start here, go here." We played that, and Peter liked it. That solidified it.

Gregory: He said, "I'll play you the part on piano." I just want some electric rhythm guitar in the second verse. I had my notes there and wrote the changes down. They ran the track, and I played along, but I thought, "Oh, my god. Something's wrong. What's happened?" I said, "Sorry, guys, this sound's like it's in a different key." They all remembered, because they hadn't revised the track for a number of weeks, that they'd changed the key so it suited his voice better.

We did start work on a third song, "Bully for You." He said, "I haven't done much of this yet, but see what you can do with it." I was kind of tired—it was late afternoon. I was sort of playing along to what they had on tape and wasn't getting very far. It required a bit more thought because it wasn't straight-ahead chords. Then the phone rang, and it was XTC's manager, who said, "David, don't go back to Swindon tonight. We're been booked for "Top Of The Pops" tomorrow. We'll meet you at the hotel [in London] and go to the BBC tomorrow." My fate was decided. They were talking about coming back in the morning to work on this song. I had to say, "Sorry, guys. We're promoting 'Making Plans for Nigel,' and I've got to do the most important pop show on British television." I couldn't believe I was turning down a studio opportunity with Peter Gabriel to do the television show "Top Of The Pops." I must have arrived! This time last year I was driving a van around Bristol delivering mail, and now this!

GRAMMYs

Pictured: [From left to right] Hugh Padgham, Steve Lillywhite, Peter Gabriel and Atlantic A&R John David Kalodner at Townhouse Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, London
Photo courtesy of Larry Fast

The team recruited Paul Weller, guitarist of mod/punk band the Jam, to record a guitar track for "And Through the Wire," one of the album's most straightforward, rock-flavored moments.

Padgham: He was a sort of angry young man. I remember it was very funny when we asked him to come do a session. In the Townhouse, there were two studios, and the Jam was in studio one when we were in studio two. He came down to the session, but he didn't have a guitar. He'd never done a session, but he didn't think he had to bring a guitar! He turned up, and there were no guitars around.

Lillywhite: With "And Through the Wire," one of the problems is that the guitar was overdubbed and wasn't played with the band. It has this sort of overdubbed thing to it—it's not in the DNA of the recording. A lot of the electric guitar that David Rhodes did is fantastic—the "Intruder" acoustic against those drums, the long-note sustained stuff in "Biko" and "Games Without Frontiers." But the worst thing about [the album] is the rock guitar. I'm sorry to say. "And Through the Wire" and "Not One of Us" don't have that classic, mysterious thing. Rock music probably needs cymbals. Maybe that's why there's something a little disconcerting about them.

Penultimate track "Lead a Normal Life" is the farthest vibe imaginable from "rock." Over a chiming piano line and stark marimba riff, Gabriel channels the isolation one might experience in a mental hospital. 

Fast: "Lead a Normal Life" was built by subtracting things until there was virtually nothing left but the essence of the song: a single piano line and a little wispiness. If you heard the original rhythm track, you'd recognize it was the same song melodically, but it's hard to believe the transformation.

There was a big band recording. I don't remember if everybody was live on it, but it was a huge Phil Collins drum [piece], with Morris Pert on percussion, a full bassline. Linearly, it's all there. I have reference mixes over the four or five months that this album was going, and each one becomes more sparse. It's the exact opposite of what most bands do, and that's one of those creative Peter things that was facilitated by the team around him—by Hugh and Steve and me throwing in my ideas. Peter kind of led the transition: "What would it sound like if we took this out?" Until there was almost nothing left.

Lillywhite: "Lead a Normal Life": Oh, my god! Incredible. The second U2 album had the song "October" on it, and it has a similar sort of feel. It really gets you, that stark thing. When I listen to this, it's like I'm in a mental hospital. That's what you want from a record, isn't it? To paint a picture that's just mind-blowing.

Marotta: That was fun to play live because the idea was to annoy the audience by playing that little riff [hums melody] over and over again to make people uncomfortable.

And the album ends with the anthemic "Biko," a sort of eulogy for the South African anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko, who died in police custody in 1977. The arrangement is thrillingly minimal, each note and beat vibrating with emotion — from the chanted choruses to Fast's climactic solo on "synthesized bagpipes."

Lillywhite: I don't know whether the bagpipes are such an ethnic sound for Africa. It is [a strange combination], but maybe we couldn't think of a better sound to do those sort of pads.

Fast: We had to reverse-engineer the story on that. As it turned out, the drone was a through-piece along with the drums, and there was the big surdo drums and electronic pattern on the PAiA that formed the core of the song. But it had these breaks where there was nothing there. I was playing around with melodic structures over a drone. In the patches, I was working with these narrow-width pulse waves, and it started sounding like a bagpipe if I detuned it enough with harmonizers and things. We said, "That sounds pretty good," and then we tried to figure out how it tied in to this story about Stephen Biko and South Africa. After a little bit of research, it turned out that during the Boer War in South Africa between the British Colonial, Dutch and German forces, one of the Scottish military units was very instrumental. So we went, "OK, there's our hook!" So we had a historical legitimacy to using a bagpipe sound other than "That works musically."

Gabriel isn't always an "easy" collaborator. His slow, often tedious process of analysis and reflection doesn't appeal to everyone. But for the main contributors on his third LP, it's part of the magic that makes him tick.

Marotta: We were very close-knit, kind of a family dynamic. We were around each other a lot, and it could get frustrating. Everybody loved Peter and would do anything for Peter. Everybody at some point wanted to kill Peter. He'd have these ideas he'd want to do, and the last thing you'd want to say to is "You can't do that" because that's exactly the thing he'll want to do. But in a nice way, not in a nasty way. I remember we played a big festival in France, like 180,000 people. And they said, "Whatever you do, don't throw yourself into the audience because from the moment you're in the audience and they're passing you around, we may never see you again. Just don't do that." And, of course, he threw himself into the audience.

Fast: He's one of the few artists where I learned things from him. There are a lot of talented people I've worked with over the years. They'd usually bring me in to layer a little extra something into what they're already doing. But with Peter, it was challenging—learning how to approach things differently, think of things in an unconventional way. He's really good at that, and that's why he's the talent that he is.

Lillywhite: It was a coming-of-age for me as a producer.

Padgham: It was a magical time. It freaks me out that it was 40 years ago.

Gregory: After we'd finished for the afternoon [after his session], we all went to the canteen and had dinner. We had a nice chat around the dinner table, and the subject of touring internationally came up—passports and all that. Someone said, "What occupation have you got on your passport?" Peter said, "I think mine says 'musician,' but when I renew it, I'm going to change that to 'humanist.'" I thought, "That's very interesting because that's exactly who he is." He's such a decent man. They say, "Don't meet your heroes," and that's good advice. But with Peter Gabriel, you make an exception.

Yesterday Once More (Twice Over): An Oral History Of The 1994 Carpenters Tribute Album, 'If I Were A Carpenter'

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The Strokes in 2001

Source Photo: Anthony PIdgeon/Redferns

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'Is This It' At 20: How The Strokes Redefined Rock the-strokes-20th-anniversary-is-this-it-album-roundtable

'Is This It' At 20: How The Strokes Redefined Rock

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For the 20th anniversary of the Strokes' groundbreaking, industry-shaking 2001 debut album 'Is This It,' GRAMMY.com pays tribute to the band and release with an industry round-table tribute featuring the artists and music biz professionals they influenced
Ilana Kaplan
GRAMMYs
Jul 29, 2021 - 1:28 pm

The Strokes were impossible to ignore in the early aughts: they were synonymous with rock and roll. Formed in 1998, the band  —  comprised of Julian Casablancas, Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond Jr., Nikolai Fraiture, and Fabrizio Moretti — led the indie-rock revival, shaping a sound and ethos other artists would try to emulate. The group’s common thread happened to be Casablancas: He began performing with guitarist Valensi and drummer Moretti while teenagers attending school in Manhattan, later adding childhood friend and bassist Fraiture into the mix, as well as guitarist Hammond Jr. whom he knew from a stint at boarding school. Combining the grit of downtown New York with the glamour of rock and roll, The Strokes helped redefine alt-rock when there wasn’t necessarily a unified vision. And it all started with their 2001 debut album, Is This It. 

After their debut EP, The Modern Age, ignited a record label bidding war in early 2001, it would be Is This It that would put them on the map. Initially released in Australia on July 30, 2001 (and later in the U.S. on Oct. 9), the record quickly sparked a frenzy and eventually a garage rock resurgence. Influenced heavily by The Velvet Underground and '70s art-rock, Is This It had a no-frills approach to its Brit-pop-influenced sound. It made creating music with your friends "cool" again, and it wasn’t long until other bands followed suit.

The album, produced by Gordon Raphael, earned widespread critical acclaim and helped establish The Strokes — and vocalist Julian Casablancas — as power players in rock. The group’s second single "Last Nite" would become their first to enter the U.S. charts and peaked at No. 5 on Billboard’s Hot Alternative Songs. While the album wasn’t GRAMMY-nominated, arguably, Is This It provided the foundation of credibility that the band needed to eventually win awards. 

Years and albums later, the band finally took home a coveted GRAMMY Award: Their first record in seven years, their sixth studio LP The New Abnormal, earned them their first GRAMMY win for "Best Rock Album" at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards Show. 

For the 20th anniversary of the band’s debut album, GRAMMY.com pays tribute to The Strokes with an industry round table tribute featuring artists the group influenced and industry professionals who worked with them.

The Strokes Shaped New York’s Culture In The Early Aughts

Nick Marc (DJ/Promoter/Music Curator/Consultant at Tiswas NYC, Take Me Out and more): It was the beginning of a new millennium and people were ready for something new and The Strokes fit the bill. They were cool, from New York which is attractive, especially if you are stuck in suburbia, and they were different from everything else going on at the time. To top it off, they wrote great songs which, while buzzing with energy, were accessible. It was time for a reboot and The Strokes provided it and broke the door open for all the bands that followed.  

Jim Merlis (former publicist for The Strokes): The band had a huge impact on New York’s culture, and it wasn’t just their music. The band really gave back to the scene by taking New York bands/artists like The Moldy Peaches, Regina Spektor, Longwave, and The Realistics on the road with them. No two of these bands sound alike, yet they all made sense opening for The Strokes.

Robert Schwartzman (film director and bandleader of Rooney): When I moved to New York and went to college there, for that first semester, The Strokes were playing shows in New York, and they were the "it" band, I guess you could say. But it wasn't all over pop radio, they were the "cool" guys showing up at parties in New York, and I started to become close with those guys because my cousin Roman [Coppola] directed their music videos early on. By proximity to knowing people in their circle, I just got to hang out and spend time with them. They were almost like big brothers, where I really looked up to them musically, 

Gordon Raphael (producer of Is This It): As soon as the first songs from The Strokes were released there was a visceral and palpable change in youth culture and music culture, pretty much worldwide. An entire generation that grew up hating their older brothers’ rock and roll, suddenly went out to purchase their first leather jackets and guitars, then formed their own bands. 

Marc: There was already a burgeoning scene in NYC before The Strokes came along but with their emergence, they became the focal point of something that had been bubbling under the surface for a while. It’s not like there wasn’t already an alternative/garage rock scene before The Strokes came along but they were the ones who brought it to the masses. They brought a sense of excitement, energy and danger that was missing in music at the time. Most of the alternative music pushed by the labels at the time was fairly dreary to be honest, "dad rock" as it was called at the time, and The Strokes were definitely an antidote to that.

Ian Devaney (lead vocalist of Nation of Language and member of machinegum): My parents spent their young adult years going to see bands like Talking Heads, The Clash and Blondie. For my friends and me, [with The Strokes,] it felt like this was a chance to have our own version of that. There was a sense that, whatever magic those older bands had that could still capture young imaginations decades later, The Strokes were carrying a bit of that magic with them as well. Being a teenager in suburbia, pop-punk and emo really felt ascendant around that time, but none of that ever resonated with me. The Strokes allowed me to see something else happening in music that felt like it was worth aspiring to. 

Merlis: Not only was their music great, it sounded cosmopolitan and very New York City. There hadn’t been much of a music scene in New York over the twenty years prior to them with a handful of good bands here and there. The city was desperate for something cool, especially as [Mayor] Giuliani was turning the City into a safe, Disney-themed town. The band sounded cool and looked it. It also certainly helped that most of the national media is based here. 

Jake Faber (drummer for Sunflower Bean): The Strokes came into my life right as the band was starting. I was at a crazy point in my life where I was trying to do a semester of college at SUNY Purchase, while rehearsing almost every day of the week in Long Island with Sunflower Bean, on top of the beginning of new romance and friendship in my life in Brooklyn. As you can imagine there was a lot of driving around the New York metro area, [and] Is This It soundtracked almost every minute of it. [It] sonically brought it back home for me as it was kind of like The Velvet Underground, but rockier and so poppy. It totally filled the void that one can feel when driving around New York every day for months on end, tending to the most exciting things that have ever happened in my life (at that point) all while wondering "is this it?"

The Strokes Were Polarizing: You Either Loved Or Despised Them

Eric Ducker (writer and editor; wrote the band’s first-ever cover story in 2001): When it comes to the New York rock revival, The Strokes weren’t the best band (that would be TV on the Radio), or the best live band (that would be Yeah Yeah Yeahs), or even the first band (that would arguably be Jonathan Fire*Eater or The Mooney Suzuki), but at least initially they were the best at making it seem like being in a band with your friends was the most fun thing in the entire world. In the years that immediately preceded them, a ton of people in rock bands — from nu-metal mooks to post-Fugazi indie rockers and British gloomsters — seemed totally miserable.

Devaney: Their music just makes it so much easier to put up with everything about living in New York that is irritating and tedious. It's like a kind of urban mindfulness — reminding you that you chose to live here for a reason, and the filth and the difficulty are actually character-building and romantic. 

People still move to New York from very pleasant places that are very far away specifically to place themselves inside the world that exists in these songs. Play a song from Is This It in a crowded dive bar late at night and people lose their minds — it's the apex of their notion of what New York life would be.  

Ducker: Part of the reason The Strokes became a great New York band was because you either loved them or despised them. Or, you pretended to despise them but secretly loved them. For such an argumentative city where everyone thinks they know best and are always happy to tell you why you’re wrong, a band you can be super passionate about holds a lot of appeal.

The Strokes Created A Template For Bands In The Early Aughts

Schwartzman: They were a part of this new world of this cool, edgy slice of music that they had injected into the young music scene like on the alternative rock side of things that was a breath of fresh air, in a way, for that genre of music. At that time, alternative music didn't have a real identity. The whole world they built just had this great consistency: They knew what they were and they stuck with it, and people, I think, really appreciated that. 

[The Strokes] were this British sensation. It was amazing. They conquered the music scene overseas, so they brought with them this amazing kind of cred from having won over that side of music fans and magazines. All those bands out of England that followed, you could hear direct influences: the vocal style and the same kind of sound and sonic approach to how they produce those records. 

On the radio at that time, it was like P.O.D., Linkin Park, Puddle of Mudd—that stuff all over the radio—and then you had the strokes, paving this new road, amongst all these bands that were very, very different musically. I thought that was just so cool, to be young and aspiring in that whole alt-rock world, and see how they were kind of shaking up that whole scene. They really turned alt-radio on its head because they were this odd-band out. But they really brought in a whole new wave of influencing a lot of bands. I remember when we were out touring, you would hear all these bands, and you would be like, "This feels like a Strokes-clone band." There are indie bands that followed that were straight-up cut from the same, old cloth. They sang like Julian, all low and droney [with] those prickly guitar parts that were kind of bouncy. 

Marc: It would be safe to say The Strokes broke down the doors for not just fellow NYC artists such as the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, The Rapture and the whole "garage" revival. That fact alone helps cement The Strokes’ legacy.  

Ducker: In the years after Is This It, some of the acts that would become the biggest rock bands in the world were able to replicate what The Strokes did, but with their own specific twist. To reduce it to the most basic level, Kings of Leon were the Southern Strokes, The Killers were the Las Vegas Strokes, Vampire Weekend were the "Ivy League Strokes," Phoenix became the "sophisticated French Strokes," and so on. The Strokes reformatted a template that other acts built off of, even as The Strokes themselves seemed to pretty quickly lose interest in it. 

Is This It Left Lasting Impressions On Artists And Music Industry Professionals

Ducker: When the promo for Is This It came in (original artwork, leather glove on naked butt), I think I had heard The Modern Age EP already, but I hadn’t gone to any of their Mercury Lounge residency shows. At that time there wasn’t social media or blogs to drive buzz for artists. For The Fader’s staff, much of that buzz came from what London-based culture publications like The Face were into, and they were already fully on-board for The Strokes. I was vaguely anticipating Is This It, but it wasn’t until I heard the advance that I quickly realized that this was a group and an album that I could, and would, love intensely. That CD didn’t get pulled from the office stereo for a long time.

Marc: I first bought Is This It when it came out in the UK, but after seeing them live on numerous occasions over the previous year or so as well as already owning their debut EP, I was already familiar with much of their material. What struck me first was how vital it sounded compared to the rather pedestrian nature of most indie artists at the time, and it signaled a welcome shift in the direction of indie-rock music. Its accessibility struck me too. I knew I had heard a game-changing record, and even back then, I believed Is This It would be regarded as a groundbreaking debut album that would stand the test of time. 

Merlis: A former intern of mine when I was at Geffen Records, Ryan Gentles, was their manager. He sent me their three-song Modern Age EP. Within the first note, I knew it was really special. I remember standing up and pacing with excitement. I called Ryan immediately and asked how I could be involved.

Devaney: "The Modern Age" is one song that has particularly stuck with me through the years. The title is bold — you automatically feel like you're listening to something generation-defining — and just by tuning in, you're included in the moment. It hasn't really changed either: The moment may be different, but putting on this song, or any song off of this album, makes you feel like the city is the place to be. 

Julia Cumming (lead vocalist and bass player of Sunflower Bean): When I was in high school I would watch the MTV $2 Bill performance [of “Is This It”] on YouTube often. I just accepted it as the pinnacle of a great rock performance. As a bass player, and as someone who always loved the bass the most in songs, "Is This It" really made me think about what rock bass lines could be and how I could always work harder to make them more creative and special. 

Marc: There remains a certain charisma concerning The Strokes, and they have joined that plethora of classic acts as icons of popular indie/rock/music all the while remaining relevant. I still DJ and it is safe to say that pretty much any track from Is This It still brings the bodies to the floor, but especially "Last Nite" and "Someday," which remain bona fide classics. Both those songs enjoy a crossover appeal that many "rock" songs don’t these days. 

Schwartzman: I went on the road with them. They brought Rooney on tour with this band called Sloan. It was a dream bill for us. Watching them play every night was so awesome. Hanging out with those guys on their tour bus [and] having that band camaraderie was amazing. We were young, like 20 years old, opening for The Strokes. I mean, it's crazy.

The Unity Of The Strokes And Their Vision Has Helped Them Remain An Integral Part Of The Rock Canon

Marc: I feel The Strokes were maligned for their privileged backgrounds which I always felt was unfair as they did work really hard. They were out every night in the early days handing out flyers, promoting their shows and building their following. They did not take anything for granted. They were obviously well-rehearsed as they were tight as hell!  

Cumming: The Strokes are a band, truly and simply. Most popular music today is made alone in bedrooms with laptops, or with teams of songwriters coming together to make the most addictive product possible. Bands like The Strokes show that there will always be something inexplicably important about musicians just playing together, writing songs and being united in a vision. That’s all a really great band can do. 

Ducker: Sometimes having cool jackets can take you pretty far, but if you write songs that people want to sing when they’re drunk-but-not-too-drunk, plus you have cool jackets, you can go a lot farther.

Merlis: One of the things that was rarely discussed about them was how hard they worked. They practiced constantly, played shows regularly, not only in New York but in Boston and Philadelphia. Toured nationally with the Doves and Guided By Voices, all before the album came out. They never waited for their big break; they created it.

Marc: I do not think The Strokes, or the NYC scene they emerged from, would or could happen now. I have always had a theory that The Strokes and the whole NYC scene that followed was the last truly organic scene before social media became prevalent. It was before the days when we lived life online. The Strokes and their contemporaries relied on traditional promo routes, such as flyers, posters, mailings and such, rather than the social media-based promotion of today. Any given night of the week in the early 2000s in the East Village there would be various band members making the scene at any of the numerous parties or bars pushing their next show and that gave rise to a certain comradeship. 

Ducker: A lot has been said about the death of the rock band in the 21st century and rock’s lack of cultural standing over the past decade. I don’t totally agree with that, but I think after The Strokes, people in successful bands realized again that it was a pretty awesome job to have — if you could get it.

Every Moment Flame On: A Guide To The Expanded Universe Of Robert Pollard & Guided By Voices

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Jimmy Eat World

Photo: Christopher Wray-McCann

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The Story Of Jimmy Eat World's 'Bleed American' jimmy-eat-world-bleed-american-20th-anniversary-jim-adkins

It Just Takes Some Time: The Story Of Jimmy Eat World's Breakthrough 'Bleed American' At 20

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On their fourth strike, 'Bleed American,' Arizona quartet Jimmy Eat World simplified their sound, swung for the fences, broke into the mainstream, and opened the doors for a new generation of alternative and pop-punk bands
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
Jul 23, 2021 - 6:06 pm

Second chances are hard to come by in the music business, and the 1990s alt-rock gold rush was no different. For every Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots success story, there were bands like Fig Dish and For Love Not Lisa, whose albums failed to launch.

And yet there was Jimmy Eat World, an emo-punk band scooped by Capitol Records right out of high school in '95 only to be dropped after two albums in. Fast-forward to 2002, and the band is performing their breakout hit, "The Middle," on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." Then "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Then "Saturday Night Live." The song's uplifting lyrics—"Don't write yourself off yet ... It doesn't matter if it's good enough / For someone else"—sound almost like a masterclass in self-motivational life lessons.

"The Middle," from Jimmy Eat World's fourth album, Bleed American, which celebrates its 20-year anniversary this month, shot to the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 all-genre chart and made the four then-twentysomethings from Mesa, Arizona, darlings of late-night TV and MTV. While it's easy to read into the lyrics two decades later, the song wasn't written as a kiss-off to their former label. But it was the ultimate about-face, the "phoenix-like rising from the ashes of being dropped," as Steve Martin of Nasty Little Man, who orchestrated the publicity campaign for Bleed American, puts it.

"Where they had gotten in their development, and the musical zeitgeist of the time, were just so aligned," Martin tells GRAMMY.com. "Even if they hadn't been [aligned], it was such an undeniable collection of songs."

For Bleed American, the band went for simplicity. While the album peppered elements from their previous releases—the barbed post-punk guitar riffs from the band's 1996 album, Static Prevails, giving the title track its teeth, the jangly atmospherics from Clarity (1999) chiming in the background of "Hear You Me" and "Cautioners"—the scaled-back approach marked a significant change to their sound. Still, the songs on Bleed American are also front-loaded with hooks that get straight to business: The band reaches both the bludgeoning chorus of "Bleed American" and the bouncy singalong of "The Middle" in 35 seconds flat.

"I think I started finally getting Bruce Springsteen and the Everly Brothers after we made Clarity," lead vocalist and guitarist Jim Adkins says. "I started recognizing that simpler construction, simpler arrangements, [the] everything-you-need/nothing-you-don't type of songwriting is actually really, really challenging and worth pursuing."

Before they made Bleed American, though, they had to get out of their contract with Capitol. Adkins estimates the band sold maybe (his emphasis) 10,000 copies combined of Static Prevails and Clarity. The pairing was a mismatch, according to the band. The label treated Jimmy Eat World like a development project, while Adkins says Capitol was set up to "drop the hammer on the thing that's moving 15,000 to 30,000 [records] a week." So, when the label dropped them in 1999, it was a relief. It was also a chance to rebuild.

In reality, the band simply continued with business as usual. They were already operating as their own European distributor, buying copies of Clarity at wholesale prices from the college department at Capitol and shipping them to Germany; the move paid off when 400 people showed up to their first gig in the country, as Jimmy Eat World were touring to save up money to record Bleed American. Toward that end, they also released Singles, a compilation of their seven-inch singles and one-offs, on the now-defunct independent label Big Wheel Recreation in 2000.

With demos of new songs like "Sweetness" circulating online and in industry channels, the band settled in at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles with producer Mark Trombino, whose confidence in the band was so high, he waived his fee until the group worked out a new label deal. And sure enough, representatives from major labels began showing up at their recording sessions to see what the buzz was all about.

"It was a very welcomed change," drummer Zach Lind says. "You go from feeling kind of like the red-headed stepchild to being in a position where you have a little bit of leverage, whereas before, we didn't really have any leverage."

Jimmy Eat World 2.0 signed with DreamWorks, an artists-first label created by music industry veteran David Geffen with filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose roster also included Elliott Smith, Morphine and Eels. Retooled with a new label, new management, and their new album's title track as the first single, the band hit the promotion circuit hard in the summer of 2001, playing dates on the Warped Tour as well as headlining club shows.

"When 'Bleed American' started happening, things changed quickly," bassist Rick Burch tells GRAMMY.com. "The venues got bigger. We weren't driving ourselves in the van anymore; we had a bus driver and a bus, so we could do far more gigs for a longer stretch, and we were playing in front of more people than we ever had before."

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed all that. Although the song was doing well on alternative radio, "Bleed American" "just fell off the face of the Earth" after 9/11 happened, according to Lind.

As Americans regrouped in the aftermath of the world-changing event, so, too, did Jimmy Eat World. They rechristened the album as Jimmy Eat World and transitioned to pushing "The Middle," which was on deck as the second single.

Written in response to a fan email sent to the band's Aol. account in the '90s, "The Middle" addresses themes like alienation and low self-confidence. Its perspective outlines a position of rallying and understanding how someone's teenage years are only a small part, e.g. "the middle," of a person's journey. Radio embraced "The Middle," but what really put the song over the top was the video and its subsequent spins on MTV's "Total Request Live" countdown show.

Paul Fedor, who directed the music video for "The Middle," pitched the theme: A classic dream sequence where you show up to school, work—or in this case, a house party—naked. But in this instance, the roles are reversed. The protagonist shows up to a party fully clothed, while his peers dance and cavort in their underwear. Just as he succumbs to peer pressure, he meets someone just like him. It was a simple concept, but it could have easily gone wrong.

"I think we just decided, 'Let's lean into this and do it and make sure it's done right,' make sure it's not overly gratuitous or inappropriate in a way that feels creepy," drummer Lind says. "So, we tried to thread that needle. I think there was a little bit of apprehension, but once we decided to go down that road, and once we were done with it, we felt really good about it."

As their popularity rose, Jimmy Eat World's touring schedule broadened. They played the main stage at several European festivals to a "sea of humanity," according to Burch, and recorded a sold-out performance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., for the Believe in What You Want DVD. The touring bubble insulated them from seeing just how big things had gotten.

"We were just touring, and it all felt like kind of the same way it felt working with Capitol," frontman Adkins says, "[like] we were totally getting away with something. 'This isn't real. We're just taking the ride for the funny stories while we have the chance.' It didn't sink in that, 'Oh, wait, this is actually connecting with people. This is something that is really getting out there.' It wasn't until maybe a record later or two records later we realized actually how big it was."

In summer 2002, as the album's third single, the fan-favorite "Sweetness," peaked at No. 2 on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart, Jimmy Eat World signed on to open the Pop Disaster Tour co-headlined by Green Day and Blink-182. The two-month jaunt grossed $20 million at amphitheaters and arenas, according to Billboard, and the bands wasted no time in hazing each other.

"We hired some male strippers to storm [Blink-182's] stage during their song 'All the Small Things,'" bassist Burch remembers, with a laugh. "The audience just loved it. They thought it was part of Blink's act, and the Blink guys loved it, too. We actually ended up helping them, giving them a cool element to their set that everyone was stoked with. It wasn't distracting to them at all."

Green Day, however, flexed their "vast resources" mercilessly. "When they came out on stage, the first thing they did was shoot super soakers," Burch recalls. "The next layer was boxes of dehydrated mashed potatoes. [When you] combine that with the water, it turns into glue." Then their crew deployed Ping-Pong balls and glitter bombs from the overhead lighting trusses.

"That starts raining down," Burch adds, "and when the glitter meets the mashed potato glue, it's a very strong bond. Even to this day, there's bits of glitter adhered to the guitar I was playing."

When the dust, and some of the glitter, settled on their nearly two-year campaign for Bleed American, the members of Jimmy Eat World had come home to platinum plaques and an album that continues to rank high on "best of" lists; readers of Rolling Stone voted the album one of the 10 Best Pop-Punk Albums of All Time. Bands tagged with the "emo" label in the years that followed, like Panic At the Disco, All Time Low and Fall Out Boy, owe a big debt to Jimmy Eat World for crashing the gate to mainstream acceptance.

"The way that Bleed American just opened doors for us was maybe one of the most satisfying experiences of my life," Lind reflects. "In the wake of all the frustration and banging our head against the wall at Capitol, it just felt like everything aligned perfectly, and I think we were lucky to be able to experience that in that way, because I don't think a lot of people get that moment in their life."

Saves The Day's Chris Conley Talks 20 Years Of Through Being Cool

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Artwork for For The Record episode on The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers'

The Rolling Stones in 1972

 

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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Inside The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50 rolling-stones-sticky-fingers-50th-anniversary-record

For The Record: Inside The Wild Ride Behind The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50

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'Sticky Fingers,' the Rolling Stones' chart-topping 1971 album, is an essential and dangerous rock and roll project that marked a rebirth for the iconic band
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
May 16, 2021 - 3:58 pm

The succession of high-profile drug busts and tragedies that shadowed the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s came to a head with the 1971 release of the band's 11th U.S. album, Sticky Fingers.

Recorded amid the disastrous Altamont concert aftermath and between famously debauched concert tours of the U.S. and Europe, Sticky Fingers is every bit as raw as the band's lives were at the time. The smoky barroom swagger of "Sway," the twitchy riffs and raspy vocals of "Bitch," and the grooving yet grimy "Brown Sugar" reflect just how wild the rock and roll ride had become for the band.

A drug bust in 1967 that ensnared Mick Jagger and Keith Richards was a prelude to the years that followed. Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool two years later, less than a month after the Stones fired him for excessive drug use, which had led to dwindling involvement with the group; he barely showed up to sessions for Let It Bleed, the band's 10th U.S. album, which was released in the months following his death.

Eager for a fresh start and desperate for cash, the Stones played a now-legendary concert at Hyde Park in London and hit the U.S. for their first tour in two years during the latter half of 1969. Chaos followed the band, culminating in a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in the hills between Livermore and Tracy, California. Billed as a sort of West Coast Woodstock, with a lineup featuring Jefferson Airplane, Santana and the Grateful Dead, the concert instead punctuated the end of the hippie peace-and-love era.

Clashes between members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, which was hired as concert security at the event, and audience members created an atmosphere so charged, the Grateful Dead chose not to perform, even though they had helped organize the event. One biker assaulted Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin while others took aim at concertgoers like Meredith Hunter, who was stabbed to death in front of the stage during the Stones' performance.

The tragedy followed the triumph of the first recording sessions for Sticky Fingers, which had begun four days earlier at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Florence, Alabama.

Inside The Rolling Stones' 'Sticky Fingers' At 50

Opened earlier that year by a group of session musicians known as the Swampers, who had backed Aretha Franklin on "Respect," the studio was hungry for its first hit. With the Rolling Stones, they got two: "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses," the album's two singles, were tracked at Muscle Shoals, alongside a faithful cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move," between December 2-4.

"Brown Sugar" has the distinction of being one of the most controversial songs to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked in May 1971. Musically, the song is a Stones master class that builds on a signature Richards guitar riff. By the time Bobby Keys blows his climactic saxophone solo, the guitars are playing off each other, percussion and piano are clanging away underneath, and Jagger is howling his head off.

The song's lyrics, however, are another matter. Although Marsha Hunt, a British actress of African descent, with whom Jagger fathered a child in 1970, is credited as the muse behind "Brown Sugar," the song is rife with allusions and outright explicit references to slavery, sex and drugs that were indefensible even half a century ago. In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger called the lyrics "a mishmash" that combines "all the nasty subjects in one go." He appears to have cooled on his lyrical concept over the years, though; in the same interview, he said he "never would write that song now."

At the other end of the spectrum, the country-tinged "Wild Horses" and the album-closing ballad "Moonlight Mile" show a more introspective Jagger, wistful and longing on the former and road-weary on the latter. Acoustic guitars provide the foundation for both songs, as well as "Dead Flowers" and "Sister Morphine," while tremulous guitars and ascending horns accent the otherwise sparse, pleading soul of "I Got the Blues."

Read: Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': For The Record

Sticky Fingers also marked several key personnel changes in the Rolling Stones universe. The ouster and subsequent death of Brian Jones led them to hire guitarist Mick Taylor, of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, who refueled the band's energy.

Taylor stepped into the role fully on Sticky Fingers, providing nuances like the chiming harmonics on "Wild Horses" and setting the jam-band template with his extended guitar solo on the seven-minute "Can You Hear Me Knocking" over a single-chord vamp. He played all the guitars on "Moonlight Mile" after an increasingly unreliable Richards failed to show up to sessions at Stargroves, Jagger's English countryside home, and often nodded off while high on heroin when he did. Taylor would have to step up more in the coming years as his bandmate's habit grew.

The end of the group's relationship with record label executive Allen Klein and his ABKCO label also gave lift to the band and began the modern era of the Rolling Stones. Sticky Fingers was the first album released on Rolling Stones Records, which debuted the iconic lips-and-tongue logo, designed by John Pasche.

Despite landing right in the middle of what many fans consider their golden era—the four-album run from 1968-1972 that also included Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St.—Sticky Fingers marked a rebirth for the Rolling Stones; the album's legacy and impact would continue to evolve in the decades to come.

Sticky Fingers reentered the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 in 2015 following a massive reissue campaign. The Deluxe reissue includes alternate takes, such as "Brown Sugar" recorded with Eric Clapton on guitar and an extended version of "Bitch," alongside live tracks recorded in 1971. The Super Deluxe reissue adds a bonus 13-song live recording from a gig at the University of Leeds that same year.

And while the band members' personal habits veered further off the rails in the Exile on Main St. period and throughout the '70s, "the Rolling Stones" as a corporation grew into a recording, touring, promotion, and merchandising machine. By the end of the decade, the Rolling Stones were a stadium act—and they haven't turned back since.

The Doors' Self-Titled Debut: For The Record

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Artwork for For The Record episode on Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Stadium Arcadium'

Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007

 

Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty Images

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For The Record: Inside Red Hot Chili Peppers' Masterpiece 'Stadium Arcadium' At 15

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Released in 2006, 'Stadium Arcadium,' Red Hot Chili Peppers' four-time GRAMMY-winning masterpiece, is an ambitious project from one of the most daring rock bands of their generation.
Jordan Blum
GRAMMYs
May 9, 2021 - 10:07 am

By the mid-2000s, Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP) were deservedly enjoying the most commercially and creatively successful period of their 20-year career. After all, they'd triumphed over their tumultuous and tragic early years—which, however, musically venerated and influential, included multiple lineup changes and bouts with drug abuse—to achieve massive artistic and mainstream prosperity via Californication (1999) and By the Way (2002).

Admittedly, not all fans were pleased with the group substituting some of their beloved, raucous playing and risqué subject matter with more accessible approaches; yet, it's hard to deny that both albums were significant for their high quality and myriad industry accolades as well as for how they embodied the band's mostly shared sense of healing and growth. (This was particularly true for guitarist/backing vocalist John Frusciante, who'd conquered his heroin addiction and rejoined the group with newfound confidence and ingenuity in 1998).

Feeling immensely prolific and capable, the Chili Peppers, following the two-year tour for By the Way, reteamed with Rick Rubin, who produced their previous four albums, in September 2004 to embark on their most ambitious and diverse project thus far: Stadium Arcadium.

Recorded at The Mansion in Los Angeles, where the group also laid down Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991, Stadium Arcadium, a 28-song double album, incorporated virtually every style the quartet had ever done. Naturally, that flexibility and inventiveness led to some of the most extensive songwriting and captivating arrangements they'd ever made. As a result, Stadium Arcadium is best viewed as an incredibly rewarding and varied tribute to the group's history.

Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Stadium Arcadium' At 15

Of course, double albums had been a popular music tradition for decades: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (1966), Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), 2Pac's All Eyez On Me (1996)—the list goes on. It was almost inevitable that the Chili Peppers would issue one, too. (In fact, they'd intended to release Stadium Arcadium as a trilogy, dropping six months apart, before deciding to put out everything at once, the band told NME in 2006.)

In his July 2006 interview with Total Guitar, Frusciante revealed they had no reservations about attempting such a feat, either: "We don't just make music … for our own pleasure; we make music for our audience. We write 28 songs that we think are top-notch, that's what we want to give to the public … We're putting out what we believe is worthy." To his credit, every track on Stadium Arcadium earns its place and contributes to the greater whole.

It's also worth noting that making Stadium Arcadium was more congenial and collaborative than By the Way, due mostly to the repaired relationship between Frusciante and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Due to his melodic prowess and characteristically adaptable methods, Frusciante was often seen as the heart of the Chili Pepper's sound around this time. That was especially evident on By the Way, on which he desired to move further away from the edginess of the band's past and toward the harmonious arrangements of groups like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and his own fruitful solo discography. Consequently, Flea, who wanted to emphasize their prior funk and punk elements, felt somewhat uninvolved and unappreciated to the point that he contemplated quitting after the band finished their By the Way World Tour; the two worked out their differences by the time Stadium Arcadium got underway.

Speaking to Kerrang! in May 2006, Frusciante admitted, "It's more of a band now. I don't force my ideas on people as much as I did." Flea concurs, clarifying that creating Stadium Arcadium was a healthily democratic and communal process. In a 2007 chat with MTV News, vocalist Anthony Kiedis noted, "There was very little tension, very little anxiety, [and] very little weirdness going on … everyone felt more comfortable than ever bringing in their ideas."

Read: Nirvana's Era-Defining 'Nevermind': For The Record

Those creative peaks and compromises undoubtedly make Stadium Arcadium such an all-encompassing victory. In fact, it became the Chili Pepper's first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and earned them four GRAMMY Awards at the 49th GRAMMY Awards in 2007: Best Rock Album, Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, and Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, the latter two for album opener "Dani California." (Producer Rick Rubin would also win the GRAMMY for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical that night.)

Fifteen years later, Stadium Arcadium endures as one of the quartet's most representative and striving projects. Divided into two parts—the engaging "Jupiter" and the comparatively esoteric "Mars"—it logically continues the contemporary rock templates and earworm songwriting of By the Way and Californication. Specifically, the ironically sunny elegy "Dani California," which centers on the same character from the title tracks off the aforementioned predecessors, is undeniably catchy and tightly composed, while "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "Stadium Arcadium" are lovingly poppy and symphonic. Later, the acoustic guitar strums and radiant harmonies of "Slow Cheetah," "Desecration Smile" and "Hey" border on folk rock, whereas "So Much I" is peak alternative rock smoothness.

Of course, the real brilliance of Stadium Arcadium is how it peppers (no pun intended) more modern flavors with comprehensive doses of wide-ranging nostalgia. In particular, tracks like "She's Only 18," "Animal Bar" and "Turn It Again" harken back to the heavier funk and metal motifs found on earlier RHCP albums such as Mother's Milk (1989) and One Hot Minute (1995). Similarly, songs like "Charlie," "Hump de Bump," "Warlocks" and "Readymade" recall the frisky funkiness of Freaky Styley (1985) and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987) via playful horns, resourceful percussion and Flea's trademark slap bass vigorousness. RHCP even recapture a bit of their early rap rock sound, a genre they helped define on albums like Blood Sugar Sex Magik, on "So Much I" and "Storm in a Teacup," among other tunes.

Although Kiedis, Flea, and drummer Chad Smith excel throughout the album's two-hour runtime, it's perhaps Frusciante who shows the most range and advancement throughout Stadium Arcadium. From start to finish, he implements some truly exploratory vocal and guitar techniques, retaining his recent minimalism while tapping into a newfound appreciation for double-tracked recording and the flashiness of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai and the Mars Volta's Omar Rodríguez-López, the latter of whom he'd collaborate with throughout the decade. "We Believe" finds Frusciante employing angelic backing harmonies, quirky psychedelic licks and echoey progressive rock weirdness. His supplemental singing is also sublime on "Torture Me," "Stadium Arcadium" and "She Looks to Me." Meanwhile, he flexes his improvisational soloing skills on "Strip My Mind," "Wet Sand," "Hey" and closer "Death of a Martian" to conjure the emotional heft and fuzzy theatrics of Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have long been one of the most daring and diverse bands of their generation; each album and phase has its unique touch and deserves its own audience. Even so, Stadium Arcadium, an all-encompassing magnum opus, offers just about everything one could possibly want from a Chili Peppers record—and then some. It sees the quartet expanding upon their stylistic past while commemorating their newly restored bond; all the while, Stadium Arcadium amplifies the idiosyncratic essentialness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as both a collective force and individually distinctive musicians.

Beck, Morning Phase: For The Record

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