Once Upon A Time in The West (album) - History

History

Hard-Fi were approaching a new stage in their career. Commercially successful, the West London four-piece worked on a second album. Stars of CCTV was eventually followed by the eagerly anticipated Once Upon a Time in the West.

After recording their debut, it sold over 1 million copies worldwide and soaring to #1, it spawned the radio mainstay hit singles: "Cash Machine", "Hard to Beat" and "Living for the Weekend".

Nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize and Best British Group at the 2006 BRITs, Hard-Fi had become, in a matter of months, one of Britain's biggest bands. According to some reports their first major tour sold out in a record 15 minutes. They played London's Brixton Academy for five consecutive nights - making them one of the few bands to do so alongside The Clash, Bob Dylan and The Prodigy.

Straight after the tour had finished they had released In Operation which highlighted their gig at the London Astoria on a CD/DVD format, it was now time to go back into the studio with a number of demos. Although the band were offered to work in the Abbey Road Studios, however they decided after searching for a studio that would suit them, that they would keep their "Cherry Lips" studio, which earned its name from the colour used to paint the walls. The band expanded the studios to have more space.

The album was pretty much written, the band had a demo of nearly every song on the demo. The band had about ten songs that he thought were suitable for the album among many more but Richard Archer decided that he wanted to spend at least a year concentrating on those ten, re-working the songs and just trying to improve them. To help them improve the songs, the band would play new songs live to see some reception towards what they had been working on and then seeing what they could add or take off.

Through a video podcast, which was broadcasted through YouTube, MySpace and iTunes, the band uploaded episodes of how things were going, offering a taste of what was to come and what recording was like among other things such as Ross giving a step to step guide on how to make the perfect cup of tea.

"The label were breathing down our necks as soon as we started this album. When we were recording, the label wanted it yesterday. They didn't want to take any chances. We built our own studio for the sessions so everything took a little longer than expected. We were in there working, experimenting with our new setup and the label weren't hearing anything. They started freaking out and talking about pulling the plug and putting us in a new studio with a new producer. I had to tell them to get a f**king grip."

The first single from the album was "Suburban Knights", released on 20 August, which had its first play on 18 June 2007 at 19:20 (BST) on Radio 1. Once Upon a Time in the West was finally released on 3 September 2007. The band launched the album on the midnight of release at Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street, London with a performance of a selected number of songs followed by a CD signing. The following day the band performed at Maida Vale Studios to a small audience who earned their tickets through Radio 1. On 9 September, Once Upon a Time in the West went straight in at #1 in the Album Charts, giving the band their second consecutive #1 album.