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

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 ?

was Cressa the fifth guy?

Yeah, poor 00s bands that started out trading protools files from opposite coasts, and then got blog buzz and had to figure out how to perform together in the same room

Re: the Beatles and Get Back -- decrepit, aging rocker George Harrison was something like 26 when they recorded it. (Although I guess the spirit of the thread is "a bit older than when they released their early stuff.")

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/interview-kirk-hammett-discusses-metallicas-death-magnetic

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it—St. Anger being the fire and Death Magnetic being the phoenix.

Since Dylan was in high school rock 'n' roll bands before becoming a folk singer, maybe going electric was his first back-to-basics move.

For Bowie, what about Pin Ups?

Dylan put out a couple of folk covers albums in the 90s, sort of a throwback to his debut record

And for someone his age, doing Sinatra homages is a return to basics of a sort

though he said in interviews that he did not like sinatra growing up and has only grown and appreciation for standards now

Or do they come back to computers after going "natural" ?
Maybe Depeche Mode would be an example of this

surely the electronic version of this is : 'we dug out all our old analogue equipment/modular synths for this album ... '

Flaming lips did this with embryonic

Also, see every band that records an album at Toerag Studios.

Isn't this every Rick Rubin-produced band, where he tries to get them to pretend they're the band that made the early work that everyone loves? That or stripping everything down to voice and guitar/piano.

Rick Rubin + Metallica:

"They'd fallen into a trap of using the studio more as an instrument and punching in parts to get the perfection they were looking for than they were getting through raw performance power. It was about getting them to not try ideas by editing them together with a machine, but to try playing them in different orders to see what they felt like. And they really ended up getting back to being a band.

"Anytime Lars would want to sit at the computer and try and write, I would insist that he and the band would all play together. (Laughs)

this is a good thing for bands to do
maybe not so good for the quality of music

Brimstead otm

Embryonic was actually good though, at least my memory says so (xposts)

Hmmmmm.

"....well, this time we decided we wanted a certain sound so we went to Chicago and recorded in Steve Albini's studio"

possible overlap with Rubin approach here

Toerag Studio/Liam Watson = UK version to Steve Albini

yeah I'm sure the Manics must have said something like that re: Journal for Plague Lovers (a very literal attempt to plumb their past) xp

Madness vs Toerag :

How did making this album compare to your previous album Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da?

“The album that really snapped us out of full-on 80s nostalgia was the Norton Folgate album, which was the album before Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da and we made that at this tiny studio in Hackney. It’s a great studio and such a good vibe so we went back, there’s something great about the whole band being in a room together which changes the atmosphere. This album is about the atmosphere and not technology. We tried to get away from computers and back to the songs.”

Four Guys In A Room is definitely a thing...

But Copeland says that was always the plan – to record an album like rock bands always did in the days before electronic files made worldwide collaboration as easy as hitting send on an email with a digital track attached.

“It was all recorded old-school, four guys in a room blasting away at each other,” he says. “And I think you can hear it on the tracks. I think there’s an X factor you get from mutual inspiration.”

It’s very similar to how he, Sting and Andy Summers recorded most of their songs in the Police in the ’70s and ’80s, he says.

four guys in a room blasting away at each other

No-one's recorded like that since 1962, of course.

God Only Knows (How Much He Hates Us All)

Summer Days... And Summer Nights!

(I know that's Megadeth, but it's all I got)

this is only thread adjacent but all the same, Shabaka Hutchings joins the recording without headphones cadre:

So for instance, one of the things that I did was have everyone not use any headphones or separation, and tell everyone that we want to be playing as if it’s the introduction or the outro of any particular song. We want to hold that space. Just to get them into a mold of how they engage together.

https://www.stereogum.com/2258591/shabaka-hutchings-perceive-its-beauty-acknowledge-its-truth/interviews/qa/

The album’s recording process was fully analogue: recorded on tape, mixed on an analogue console and cut directly on to the acetate used to make records.

And 99.9% enjoyed by people listening on laptop speakers through a digital interface

OTM