Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

bill wyman's bass is v cool

someone mentioned Stipe but i was gonna say there's at least a couple R.E.M. records that qualify for this, right?

― alpine static, Wednesday, March 7, 2018 9:24 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that quote Mookieproof posted refers to Monster (as Turrican guessed) but I automatically assumed it was Accelerate...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gKe9Fr2ok

go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band

Ok I Googled "back to their roots" in Goog News and here's what I found:

Of Mice & Men go back to their roots on new material -
“I think what we’re doing right now, which is the most important thing that we can, is really just honing in on the elements of what makes our music sound like our music.”

25 YEARS AGO: BON JOVI RESTART THEIR CAREER WITH ‘KEEP THE FAITH’ -
“We needed to find ourselves individually,” he said. “The Bon Jovi situation was extremely successful, and I was very happy to be in a band of that stature, but there was almost nothing left to write about at that point — we were all just so tired and so burnt out. All we were writing about was bein’ on the road and bein’ in a hotel room and bein’ lonely and talkin’ to your girlfriend on the phone. They miss you and you miss them — that was what our lives were about at that time.
“So to actually take a step back and see what was happening in our lives gave us some more stuff to write about. Plus, all of a sudden I was working with people like Eric Clapton and Tony Levin from Peter Gabriel, and Jon was workin’ with Elton John and Jeff Beck, so workin’ with all these different artists gave us different influences, which we brought back to Bon Jovi. It made it fresh and brand-new, and we were excited to be with each other again."

Every huge artist has their "Keep the Faith"

Future historians will explain all culture - indeed, all of history - primarily through the lens of Bon Jovi's discography.

John F. Kennedy was the American presidency's "New Jersey."

"The Winter's Tale" is Shakespeare's "Keep the Faith."

The Ford Model T is the "Slippery When Wet" of cars.

Stonewall Jackson's famous flank march at the Battle of Chancellorsville was the Confederacy's "Have a Nice Day."

We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually

actually my favorite Bono-ism on this front is referring to Achtung Baby as "the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree."

suck on that, eno

There's some serious g-droppin' goin' on in that Bon Jovi quote

also rofling at Puffin's history lesson through the lens of the BJ discography

Never said by Yes, Tangerine Dream, or Gentle Giant.

This thread should also have room for quotes in the spirit of "we went into the studio with 300 new songs and in the end only 14 made the cut"

ahah, I have always hated these comments.
Especially when you hear how shitty the remaining 14 tracks are, most of the times... makes you wonder what the other 286 sounded like !

Animal Collective: 'We wrote our new album as a rock band'

Asked how it differed from their previous albums, Weitz said: “We all moved back to Baltimore, the last few records we’ve written apart and by sending each other stuff. This time we all wanted to write in the same room together. We went back to our roots and we got a little practice space in this barn on Josh’s [Dibb – fellow band member] mum’s property and it was like being a garage band again.”

This one we wrote as a rock band in a room and we wanted to record it that way.”

and yeah, the original "back to basics" move was the Beatles' Get Back sessions, surely.
Or maybe the Stones' Beggars Banquet, actually.

^^ bonus points for "a barn" xpost

and yeah, the original "back to basics" move was the Beatles' Get Back sessions, surely.

― AlXTC from Paris

wasn't this inspired by the Basement Tapes?

While the band's two albums for Sony have been rockers, Ness says Social Distortion plans to turn it up a notch for its next studio effort.

"I'm about half way through writing the new album and on it I'm going to stray away a little bit from the country and blues influence and I'm digging back to that late '70s feel. It's a personal thing I gotta do. I just want a real hard-edged, stake-our-claim, back-to-our-roots record.

"It's like, 'Hey, you flannel-wearing, pony-tail, pierced-nose kid. I took beatings so you could dress the way you dress and we were doing this long before any of these other people were doing it,"' says Ness.

not an album but an early back-to-basics move: Elvis' 1968 comeback special

yeah, I thought about the Basement Tapes but how was it wasn't really a return to bacics, was it ? It wasn't Dylan going back to his folk songs alone with his guitar...

the unspoken truism here presumably being that layman's-terms descriptions of the recording process are fundamentally dull

like, I'm struggling to think of a plausible summary of one which wouldn't invoke some form of music biz cliche

suspect the audience that things like the OP are written for is now small and stubborn enough that if this kind of thing got excised from the 'big band with new album' narrative entirely they would be sore about it just because it's a thing that one expects to read

ouch sorry : but it wasn't really a return to bacics, was it ?

Some bands get back to basics differently than others.

"For us, we wanted to go back to our roots. So we said, yeah, let's go to a house like the Stones and Led Zeppelin used to do. Let's just do our own project and have some fun.

"So, we rented a house in Spain, a villa overlooking the sea, and that allowed us to make a really free sounding record. I mean, on Hysteria, I remember spending a month recording just one guitar riff. On Slang the emphasis was on the song, the inspiration for it, the vibe.

"We wanted it to have more the feel of classic albums by bands we liked, like the Stones or Zeppelin."

Also, wondering about artists with a very strong and long back catalog but who NEVER did the "back to basic" move : Prince (I'm not too sure about his 90s output) ? Bowie ? Stevie Wonder ?

yeah, I thought about the Basement Tapes but how was it wasn't really a return to bacics, was it ? It wasn't Dylan going back to his folk songs alone with his guitar...

― AlXTC from Paris

as good an explanation as any for why the "basement tapes" don't suck but every single "back to basics" record it inspired does

Wasn't Hours Bowie's Back to Basics?

I'm sure Bowie did this, he tried virtually everything else post-Scary Monsters.

Was Tin Machine not back to basics? I don't know, I try not to think about Tin Machine tbh.

Tin Machine is "let me try just being a member of a band," not "back to basics."

And how's life is right about the different styles of "back to basics." Renting a villa in Spain is not "basics."

Indeed the Grohl example is actually more on point. Not to be Cap'n Save-a-Dave, but I think they did do a fair amount of ridiculously luxurious home recording for a while - bringing a mobile rig to his house. There is a documentary n shit about them recording at home and then taking a dip with their kids an all, but at a very high level of pro quality, not grungey in the slightest. So for them, going to a studio might constitute "basics."

Globally famous bands do play club shows, but IME they rarely play at 1:15 AM to just their boy/girlfriends and the bar staff, for nothing but drink tickets. THAT would be a daring return to "basics."

He is looking forward to working with his group Tin Machine, which will get back to recording its second album when the tour ends later this year.

It's back to basics time, Bowie insists: "I need revitalisation, I needed to get small. I needed to do what I do best and that is be excited about music. That is when I do my best work, when I am excited about something unusual or obscure or out of the way."

Slam dunk.

"For the first time in a long time I'd actually taken the trouble to write the songs before we went into the studio," he says. "So I spent a lot of time crafting them in a very reactionary, old-fashioned, traditional way. I just wrote proper songs, applied myself to them and the lyric, and kept them extremely simple.

"When I went into the studio, I had positive ideas of how the songs were to sound which is unusual, especially for the '90s. Just about everything has been done in the studio in more of an experimental fashion, much like the middle to late '70s. The last time I wrote songs per se was the early '80s."

(several years later for Hours)

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/932737/Rush-gets-back-to-basics-with-Vapor-Trails-album.html

"We wanted to return to the basics with this album," Lifeson said.

"I spoke with Geddy about that and he was keen to the idea. It was a conscious effort to downplay the keyboards this time. We all agreed that an organic approach to the music would be a good thing this time around."

I like that within a few utterances of "back to basics" there is generally a delightful tautology, couched in humblebrag. We all felt compelled to start playing music again that was music played our way. The band got back together and we became a band again. The goal of making this album was to just put together a collection of songs, the best we could write and maybe the best we've ever written.

Also, wondering about artists with a very strong and long back catalog but who NEVER did the "back to basic" move : Prince (I'm not too sure about his 90s output) ? Bowie ? Stevie Wonder ?

And I'm guessing there's some acts who've pulled this stunt more than once.

some of these quotes are hilarious, good work guys

I think the Dylan Back to Basics album is John Wesley Harding, but probably he would be too cool to give that type of quote

I do seem to recall him saying something about how Basement Tapes is how recordings should be done, barefeet on a carpet with cats running around or smth

hmm oh well I guess then in the 90s he did release GAIBTY and World Gone Wrong:

“That’s why I recorded two LPs of old songs, so I could personally get back to the music that’s true for me.”

ahah ok for Bowie ! I'm not too familiar with his post "Scary Monsters" output either !
Like for the "we had 300 songs" quotes, I wonder if the acts who say these "back to basics" things really believe them or if they feel and know it's ridiculous/cliché/bullshit !

"We've been expanding our sound a lot in the last few records as far as using more atmospherics and more synthesizers in opening up the sound, which is great, but there is something about the very early Deftones records that is just very stripped-down and raw, just four guys in a room making a racket, and that is something that I miss.

"If I were to make a Deftones record right now, it would be just the drums, the bass, the vocal and the guitar and just us making the most obnoxious music we can make."

^I don't think this is the way it turned out for the subsequent Deftones album.

Luzier and the original band members - lead singer Jonathan Davis, guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer and bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu - worked with producer Ross Robinson on the CD, the group's ninth studio effort. Robinson oversaw Korn's early releases, including its self-titled 1994 debut and its 1996 pop breakthrough, "Life Is Peachy."

For the new album, Robinson stripped Korn's sound.

"When he got involved, I got excited," Luzier said. He and the band, along with the metal group Disturbed, will co-headline the Music as a Weapon V tour, which stops at the Ted Constant Convocation Center in Norfolk on Tuesday. "It was like a family reunion for them, because he started it all with them. He had the idea, 'Hey, let's get rid of all the fancy studio stuff. You guys are a little bit too comfortable.' He wanted to go back to where it all started, which is in a 12-by-13 room with no Pro Tools or electronics. He wanted to go back to just four guys in a room, jamming."

Also who's the next big act who will do it ! I guess T. Swift is very close...

“We’re not going to make bedroom Styx records, we’re going to do it right. The way it should be with five guys looking at each other and feeding off of that energy that can only be created by five guys in a room.

“Passing files around, yeah we’ve done that for various things, but it’s not the way to make a Styx record. That magic that’s lost now in most recordings is you don’t have that thing that happens when people rub against each other. We all know how to make great records and how to do that, and it costs money.”

"We are a band who have toured a lot and, even if I say it myself, we're pretty good at it, and we've always been pretty good at not only getting stuff translated onto stage but actually making it better, because inherently I think Simple Minds are a live band.

"For this album the approach to the recordings was like the early days. It was band-like, with everyone in the same room as opposed to lots of computers, and because the album was recorded almost in a live way it meant that the translation was much more immediate.

"We then used the computers to enhance it and stuff, but fundamentally it was four or five guys in a room playing, and that is what it is live."

"It's almost better than sex, this LP," he says with evident relish. "Instead of relying on the computer, we just got to be five guys in a room, just kicking ideas around. Hang on, hanging around with a bunch of five guys ain't better than sex! What am I talking about?"

i wish simple minds would get back to the basics of being a pretentious arty post punk band

xp: that's Stone Roses, btw.

I like how basically (ah!), the common evil is "the computer" (and overdubs etc in general).
Does it mean that acts that started with computers and a lot of production never get back to basicss ? Or do they come back to computers after going "natural" ?
Maybe Depeche Mode would be an example of this ?

https://www.stereogum.com/2306908/chiptune-band-anamanaguchi-wrote-a-rock-album-in-the-american-football-house/music/

“Crazy sounds come from normal-looking houses,” Anamanaguchi’s Peter Berkman says. “We made the decision to be physically in the same room for nearly every step, writing everything as a group instead of editing and tweaking files over the internet.”

Ultimately, Anamanaguchi recorded Anyway with in-the-red psych overlord Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Sleater-Kinney) at his Tarbox Road Studios in upstate New York, straight to tape using vintage analog gear.

“We wanted to swap our social diseases in person.”

straight to SSD using digital VSTs

Story about the 15 anniversary of the last STP album with Weiland mentions the problem with the opposite of this aesthetic:

“I would never want to make a record like that again,” said Robert DeLeo. “It was literally the three of us in a place and Scott over here somewhere else and sending over vocals. We took on the role of producing that record and, as a producer, when those vocals were coming over, they were not satisfactory. They just weren’t… It was literally making a record without having four guys in a room, you’re doing four different versions of a song to figure out what key is the best because the communication and the people surrounding Scott, it had come to that point.”

https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-troubled-story-behind-stone-temple-pilots-sixth-album

It was literally making a record without having four guys in a room

Lol at this actual quote.

Robert DeLeo, quit trolling the "Aging rock act on new album" thread

Bono, perennially laid back and loquacious, suddenly becomes energised when he talks about U2's recent writing sessions.

"It was just the four of us in a room, trying a new song and going, 'What's that feeling? Oh right, that's chemistry'.

"We had it when we were 17. We've had it over the years but you lose it sometimes, [especially because] the way music is assembled these days is not friendly to that chemistry.

"But isn't it strange that it's just got to the moment when just bass, drums, guitar and a loudmouth singer sounds like an original idea.

"That's where we're at in 2025."

'What's that feeling? Oh right, that's chemistry'.

he's such a twat

Yes a very original idea about which we have 708 examples of itt

I think this is the one to beat:

Call it mythology, call it world-building, call it four guys in a room chasing the cosmos.

“We hit the mountaintop with The Battle at Garden’s Gate,” Sam tells me. “That was everything we wanted to do creatively at that point. So the natural next step was going back to where we started—just four guys writing and recording together with as little overthinking as possible.”

“Just four multimillionaires in a room, man.” (xpost re: U2)

I have to say that the late Jon Hassell's "just a man blowing into his non-effected trumpet" spin on this concept turned out one of his best, however unusual of him. (Fascinoma, 1999)

Was reading wikis about Squeeze albums before bed last night (you know, as one does), and found this about Some Fantastic Place

Some Fantastic Place marked another change for the band, in that Difford and Tilbrook, who typically write lyrics and music separately (with Difford usually giving Tilbook completed lyrics to write the music for), went for a relatively simplistic approach, sitting down together and writing the majority of the album as a team. The duo credited this approach with revitalising their working relationship, bringing about a "big jump" in their creativity level. Tilbrook commented: "It was like discovering a new partnership, because suddenly we were able to bounce ideas back and forth off each other."[2]

Tilbrook had recently built a recording studio near his London home, so the band visited the studio everyday, both rehearsing and recording the record there.[5] The studio was allegedly located in Blackheath above a welder's shop.[7] The writing took approximately two months, and "for two or three of the songs, [the band] sat in the same room with each other." Difford explained: "Glenn created an environment, and to leave our homes and go and work together was something new. It was good to sit in the same room and be inventive. It makes things simpler; you don't have to wait for the results. It's quite inspirational."[5] The studio was relatively small, which Tilbrook felt worked for the band just as he hoped it would, noting the "really good vibe."[6]

Compared to previous albums, more open debate concerning the song arrangements occurred between members than on any previous Squeeze album, which Difford called "a lot of to-ing and fro-ing" and believed helped make Some Fantastic Place one of the band's better albums. Each band member had strong ideas on how they wanted the songs to be, and they stood on firm ground when they believed they were right. Difford enjoyed this experience "because it showed that people really cared."

Did you hear the one about the band comprised of quadruplet brothers who went back to basics?

"We wanted it to just be four guys in a womb."

Or that band made up of very small people who practice inside an electronic vacuum cleaner: Four Guys in a Roomba.

I did like "Everything in the World," Squeeze's best single since the early '80s and it got actual airplay on my college station. Maybe the revitalization worked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkj66DTDz-g

going on a brief wikipedia skim of all the horrible bands that were around during my high school days, and came across this doozy for gym class heroes' 2011 album "the papercut chronicles ii":

"We're about 12 demos deep. All I got to say is it's definitely going back to the essence of Gym Class Heroes, which is four dudes sitting in a room, vibing off each other and making organic, dark metal."

just release the demos you cowards

lol President Keyes

When asked about its sound, the singer kept it vague. “It’s the sound of four men, who feel like their lives depend on it. I remind them, they do,” he said. “Nobody needs a new U2 album unless it’s an extraordinary one. I’m feeling very strong about it.”

[...]

“[There are] songs to make up to, songs to break up to, and U2 makes a very unique sound when we play together. The sound of a room is what we’re going for,” he added.

I would not be surprised if U2 were the band that had said this the most - no evidence for that, just a feeling

Kevin March of Guided By Voices

Thick Rich and Delicious are pretty much myself, Doug, and Mark Shue in a room playing live, no click tracks or anything. It’s our chemistry onstage that is being recorded and captured forever.

When we get in a room together, something magical happens.

Well, it paid off!

okay kevin march

but mostly i find it nice that calstars isn't here to weirdly/ferociously shit on doug gillard

I don't like Doug Gillard's guitar playing either tbh.

Well screw ya, I'm gonna hype Doug Gillard a little more:

Search out the records he did in the band Gem with Tim Tobias, Todd Tobias and Eric Vogt. Albums "Sunglare Seranades" and "Hexed" and the 12" original recording of "I Am A Tree." All very good stuff.

Ned would appreciate this, just heard the Rifftrax crew talk about the MST reboot and how great it was to all get together in a room to write like the old days.

Just a guy and three bots in a satellite.

"The last few records are a lot more produced, a lot more nipped and tucked," says the band’s surf-dude lead guitarist Chris Shiflett, sat alongside the bespectacled and bookish Mendel on the same sofa when I speak to them separately from Grohl. "And this one was not at all. It was great – we used whatever amps were on hand, whatever pedals, and didn’t have option paralysis."

Mendel agrees. "And honestly the last handful of years have been a difficult period for us," he adds, "getting punched in the face a couple of times. So there’s this rough wobbly defiance to the new album, that, to me, sounds like our band."