Recording
In September 1983, Simple Minds travelled to Rockfield Studios, near Monmouth in Wales, for three weeks to work on some new material; Lillywhite accompanied them for the last two weeks to meet the musicians and suggest some modifications to their music. This material consisted of around six tracks developed during a session the band had spent at a recording studio called The Chapel in Lincolnshire in January, and other initial samples recorded in London's Nomis Studios before their performance at Phoenix Park. At Rockfield, most of the tracks were dramatically changed, as they had begun as demos consisting only of work by Mick MacNeil and Charlie Burchill, with some drum and bass machine sounds overlapping. With drummer Mel Gaynor now having fully integrated himself into the band, the songwriting was beginning to be influenced consistently from all group members.
The group relocated to Townhouse Studios in London by October, by which time their updated material retained "only a bassline or keyboard melody from the original four-track demo". As a producer, Lillywhite differed from Peter Walsh on the previous album by going with "the feel of the moment" rather than following "any preconceptions about he wanted the album to turn out". He tried to emphasize musical unity between the band members; for instance, he pressed Jim Kerr to write lyrics for songs as soon as he could, such that his vocal melodies were influenced by the instrumentation. "On their earlier records, everyone's parts didn't really bear much resemblance to everyone else's," discussed Lillywhite. "Mick would be fiddling away like this, Charlie would be going like this, then Jim would come in and sing something completely different to what the other two were doing. Whereas I now think Jim is taking some of the melodies from the guitar and the keyboards, which he didn't use to, which makes it more like a song."
Burchill likened Lillywhite's producing style and manner to that of the film director Werner Herzog. Generally starting studio work at eleven o'clock in the morning, the band found the recording process repetitive, as each track was meticulously refined and sharpened through multiple iterations. With this leading to the group becoming tense and distracted, Lillywhite occasionally asked the band members to vacate the studio while he worked on mixing. The album's working title was Quiet Night of the White Hot Day, which eventually survived as a lyric in the complete album's seventh track "White Hot Day". The recording process drew to a completion with Lillywhite and the band adding some finishing touches to "Up on the Catwalk"; Jim Kerr sang some additional lines that had been stored in his notebook instead of name-dropping some extra famous people towards the song's end. Minor imperfections in phasing and pitch were then corrected to complete the album.
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Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
—Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)