Recording
Early in 1993, the members of R.E.M. convened a four-day meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, to devise a plan for the next two years. The group settled on a plan for 1994 through the end of 1996, which included recording a new album and touring behind it. Drummer Bill Berry was particularly eager to tour (which the band had not done since 1989), and was insistent that the album "rock". The band agreed that after Out of Time and Automatic for the People they did not want to make another slow-paced album.
Later that year R.E.M. began recording its ninth album. Preproduction took place at Kingsway Studio in New Orleans under the supervision of Mark Howard, who had previously worked on Automatic for the People. The band wrote 45 songs for the record, including "a whole album's worth of acoustic stuff" that the band demoed, according to guitarist Peter Buck. Howard recalled that the sessions were more experimental for the band; he said, "The bass had a tremolo sound on it. It was a more inventive session for them." The studio did not have a control room, so Howard recorded Michael Stipe singing lyrical ideas while lying on a couch. Howard said, "Being able to put those vocals down helped him write the lyrics to a lot of songs on Monster." Once the sessions were complete, Howard played the recordings to co-producer Scott Litt, who had worked with the band since their fifth album Document.
In February 1994 the band moved to Crossover Soundstage in Atlanta, Georgia. At Crossover, most of the album's basic tracks were recorded live, as if the band were playing in concert. Litt said, "I thought since they hadn't toured in a while, it would be good for them to get into that mind-set--you know, monitors, PA, standing up". The sessions were hampered by a number of events, including Berry and bassist Mike Mills falling ill on separate occasions, Buck and Stipe leaving to visit family members, and the deaths of Stipe's friends River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain. The band wrote and recorded "Let Me In" in tribute to Cobain, and dedicated the album to Phoenix, whose sister Rain sang background vocals on "Bang and Blame".
In late April 1994, the band relocated to Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, but recording was disrupted because Stipe suffered from a tooth abscess that required medical attention. Unlike previous album sessions, by the time production had moved to Ocean Way Recording in Los Angeles, California, the band was behind schedule. Litt attributed the delay to recording live at Crossover, which lengthened the mixing process; he told Rolling Stone, "We're trying to figure out how raw to leave it and how much to studiofy it." At the same time, Stipe was still writing when the band was supposed to be mixing the record. Tension arose between the band members, who were staying in different locations in Los Angeles and would rarely be in the studio at the same time. Tensions came to a head when the group was recording at Louie's Clubhouse, Litt's home studio in Los Angeles, where years later Stipe recalled, "We broke up . . . We reached the point where none of us could speak to each other, and we were in a small room, and we just said 'Fuck off' and that was it." The group had a meeting to resolve its issues; Mills told Rolling Stone, "We have to begin working as a unit again, which we haven't been doing very well lately."
Read more about this topic: Monster (R.E.M. album)
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)
“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)
“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!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)