Background and Recording
Following the underground success of the band's second studio album Kerplunk (1992), a number of major record labels became interested in Green Day. Representatives of these labels attempted to entice the band to sign by inviting them for meals to discuss a deal, with one manager even inviting the group to Disneyland. The band declined these advances until meeting producer and Reprise representative Rob Cavallo. They were impressed by his work with fellow Californian band The Muffs, and later remarked that Cavallo "was the only person we could really talk to and connect with".
Eventually, the band left their independent record label Lookout! Records on friendly terms, and signed to Reprise. Signing to a major label caused many of the band's original fans from the independent music club 924 Gilman Street to regard Green Day as sell-outs. The club has banned Green Day from entering since the major label signing. Reflecting back on the period, lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong told Spin magazine in 1999, "I couldn't go back to the punk scene, whether we were the biggest success in the world or the biggest failure The only thing I could do was get on my bike and go forward."
Cavallo was chosen as the main producer of the album, with Jerry Finn as the mixer. Green Day originally gave the first demo tape to Cavallo, and after listening to it during the car ride home he sensed that " had stumbled on something big." The band's recording session lasted three weeks and the album was remixed twice. Armstrong claimed that the band wanted to create a dry sound, "similar to the Sex Pistols' album or first Black Sabbath albums." The band felt the original mix to be unsatisfactory. Cavallo agreed, and it was remixed at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California. Armstrong later said of their studio experience, "Everything was already written, all we had to do was play it."
Read more about this topic: Dookie
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“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
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