Recording
After two weeks of rehearsals, during which Norton spent days with Grohl in his hotel room "stripping the songs back to their absolute basics", the recording sessions begun on November 18, 1996 at Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington. After six weeks of work, the band took two weeks off from recording. Grohl returned to Virginia and wrote several new songs, recording two of them, "Walking After You" and an acoustic version of "Everlong", by himself at WGNS Studios in Washington, DC. The band (minus drummer William Goldsmith) relocated to Hollywood's Grandmaster Recorders in February 1997, and for a period of four weeks re-recorded most of the album with Grohl performing the drum tracks. It started with only "Monkey Wrench" as Grohl and Norton felt the drums needed more work, but eventually Goldsmith's drums remained on only two tracks, "Doll" and "Up in Arms".
According to Grohl, Goldsmith's drumming had good moments, but his performances mostly did not fit what Grohl had conceived for the drum track, so the frontman decided to redo them himself. Goldsmith even asked if he should go to Los Angeles, but Grohl dismissed this by saying he was only performing overdubs. Once Mendel told Goldsmith the situation, Grohl said that despite replacing Goldsmith's tracks, he still wanted him as a bandmember, but the disgruntled drummer decided to leave the Foo Fighters instead. Speaking about the tension surrounding the departure of Goldsmith, Grohl in 2011 said, "There were a lot of reasons it didn't work out... but there was also a part of me that was like, you know, I don't know if I'm finished playing the drums yet." He would also state, "I wish that I would have handled things differently..."
Even though Foo Fighters are an American band, the word 'Colour' in the album title is always spelled with the British spelling. This was a nod to producer Norton, who is British.
Read more about this topic: The Colour And The Shape
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“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)
“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)