The Story of Making the Blue Album: Difference between revisions

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 Getting signed to a major label was simultaneously the culmination of 4 guys' lofty dreams of music success, and a plunge into an abyss of worry and confusion.
-Everyone was excited and relieved, but the horror stories were in abundance of bands who made albums that were never released, got dropped before they even made an album, and put an album out but were never given the tour support to go out and give it a chance. Weezer had played only a tiny handful of shows outside of L.A., so they were banking everything on the strength of an album they hadn't made yet, as they had no built-in fanbase to impress the record company with. The band felt that it was safest to record the album themselves in their garage rehearsal space, where they had made demos in the past, rather than take the big financial risk of hiring a producer and a big-time studio. The band's A+R man Todd Sullivan convinced them to send some tapes out to producers and consider doing it on that level. I only remember that we were sending a tape to the Cars's [[Ric Ocasek]], based on Rivers and the band's recent love affair with [[The Cars]]' Greatest Hits album. The band were reluctant to say the least, but the die was cast. Tapes were also sent out to Sean Slade/Paul Kolderie and Lenny Kay, to round out the possibilities.
+Everyone was excited and relieved, but the horror stories were in abundance of bands who made albums that were never released, got dropped before they even made an album, and put an album out but were never given the tour support to go out and give it a chance. Weezer had played only a tiny handful of shows outside of L.A., so they were banking everything on the strength of an album they hadn't made yet, as they had no built-in fanbase to impress the record company with. The band felt that it was safest to record the album themselves in their garage rehearsal space, where they had made demos in the past, rather than take the big financial risk of hiring a producer and a big-time studio. The band's A+R man Todd Sullivan convinced them to send some tapes out to producers and consider doing it on that level. [[Karl Koch|I]] only remember that we were sending a tape to the Cars's [[Ric Ocasek]], based on Rivers and the band's recent love affair with [[The Cars]]' Greatest Hits album. The band were reluctant to say the least, but the die was cast. Tapes were also sent out to Sean Slade/Paul Kolderie and Lenny Kay, to round out the possibilities.
 Rehearsals commenced in Los Angeles at Cole Rehearsals on Cole St. in Hollywood. Every day the band went through vocal rehearsals early in the afternoon, followed by full loud band rehearsal, running through all the songs, trying to tighten things up. Several times a week I drove them over to a vocal coach's home studio where they would go through the bizarre vocal exercises that can turn an amateur singer into a professional sounding one...or at least help a guy not lose his voice from singing for hours on end every day. They would emerge from the coach's house an hour later talking about epiglottis issues and chanting bizarre warm up exercises.
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 The excitement and giddiness was tangible, and erupted into a going away bash at the bands longtime rehearsal house at 2226 Amherst Ave. on the evening of Aug 7th. Needless to say the party stretched into the wee-est of hours. We were awoken after about 45 minutes sleep by DGC's Denise MacDonald who picked us up in (Geffen exec) Tom Zutaut's Range Rover and took our ragged forms to LAX. Range Rover? Hey guys, we're in a Range Rover and we're one flight away from making the album!
-NYC: While [[Rivers Cuomo|Rivers]] and [[MAtt Sharp|Matt]] and I had at least been to New York, [[Patrick Wilson|Pat]] and [[Jason Cropper|Jason]] had not. And no one in our little band of rebels had ever spent more than a day or 2 there. Now the city was suddenly ours to explore, from our 2 rooms in the Gramercy Park hotel on 21st St. While ultimately the band knew that if they were ever to make a dime from the album they'd first have to pay all of this back, it was mighty easy to look out the window of the hotel and say "Screw it! Were in New York! Hoo Haa!" Almost immediately, and without warning or explanation, The remarkably trim and essentially underfed Rivers and Matt got memberships at a nearby gym/health spa, memberships which would later end in hilarious financial chaos and confusion. Everyone went into curious explorer mode from day 1 onward.
+NYC: While [[Rivers Cuomo|Rivers]] and [[MAtt Sharp|Matt]] and [[Karl Koch|I]] had at least been to New York, [[Patrick Wilson|Pat]] and [[Jason Cropper|Jason]] had not. And no one in our little band of rebels had ever spent more than a day or 2 there. Now the city was suddenly ours to explore, from our 2 rooms in the Gramercy Park hotel on 21st St. While ultimately the band knew that if they were ever to make a dime from the album they'd first have to pay all of this back, it was mighty easy to look out the window of the hotel and say "Screw it! Were in New York! Hoo Haa!" Almost immediately, and without warning or explanation, The remarkably trim and essentially underfed Rivers and Matt got memberships at a nearby gym/health spa, memberships which would later end in hilarious financial chaos and confusion. Everyone went into curious explorer mode from day 1 onward.
 Work started uptown actually, at S.I.R. rehearsals on 25th Street, where Ric had the band run through their stuff for several days in order to cull out any songs that weren't gelling with the rest. Here, early versions of "[[I Swear It's True]]", "[[Getting Up and Leaving]]", "[[Mykel & Carli]]" and "[[Lullaby for Wayne]]" were tried, but in the end only the 10 final album tracks plus "Mykel & Carli" and "Jamie" were chosen to try at Electric Lady. Ric dragged out his beastly Akai 12 track recorder and the band cut an admirable live demo over 2 days, with final vocals then overdubbed.
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 Mixing finally started a week late, and the album went about 15% over budget, but the results were melting away the worries. This album sounded damn good, by everyone's accounting! The band worked on 11 songs total during the tracking of the album - the 10 that appeared on the album, and "Mykel & Carli", which was left unfinished. In 1994 the band would re-cut "Mykel & Carli" with Brian, in a session that produced the studio b-sides for the Blue Album's singles.
-Finally in late October, as New York was in its most beautiful and melancholy season, we said our sad goodbyes to Ric, who had been a heartfelt and hilarious team leader through it all, having us over to he and his wife [[Friends Of P.|Paulina's]] wicked cool brownstone home for fun, frolic and food on several occasions, and taking us out to see the Blue Man Group back when hardly anyone had a clue what they were all about. But now it was back to L.A. and a long period of artwork meetings, rehearsing, shows, and cursing what seemed like endless delays to the albums release. No one realized just how much red tape there was to slog through, as major label shuffling pushed the albums release ahead, to finally see release on May 10, 1994.
+Finally in late October, as New York was in its most beautiful and melancholy season, we said our sad goodbyes to Ric, who had been a heartfelt and hilarious team leader through it all, having us over to he and his wife [[Friends of P.|Paulina's]] wicked cool brownstone home for fun, frolic and food on several occasions, and taking us out to see the Blue Man Group back when hardly anyone had a clue what they were all about. But now it was back to L.A. and a long period of artwork meetings, rehearsing, shows, and cursing what seemed like endless delays to the albums release. No one realized just how much red tape there was to slog through, as major label shuffling pushed the albums release ahead, to finally see release on May 10, 1994.
 There were some last minute changes as well. Rivers was scheduled to return to New York in November to oversee the mastering process, but there was a problem: "[[Undone]]" was not gonna fly as it stood. The song had originally been based on a sort of conversational overlap concept, where with a stereo separation, one side would lament all sorts of negative thoughts, while the other side countered with all manner of good tempered optimism. This idea had been sort of lost when the band recorded their demos back in late 1992, and I had been asked to come up with an audio collage of samples for the first 2 verses instead. It turned out pretty silly, but for the album Rivers wanted to try and merge the 2 ideas - a collage of samples that collectively had that positive/negative argument going on. I obliged, gathering 200 potential samples of everything from Humphrey Bogart to Christian radio dramas, the Peanuts gang, and story dialogue from "The Black Hole", paring it down to two 15 sample sequences that I played out on a MIDI keyboard, creating the stereo "conversation". In the end, it was this conversation that Geffen didn't want to deal with - over 15 different sample clearances for a debut rock album? Not gonna happen.
-This is when the now-familiar "party dialogue" verses were added. This was done on Rivers's 8 track back in The Garage on Amherst Ave in LA, with band supporter [[Mykel and Carli Allan|Mykel Allan]], [[Matt Sharp]], [[KArl Koch|myself]], and a "crowd noise" sound effect CD. A mix of "Undone" with the samples removed was made to a DAT tape at Electric Lady, which was sent to LA, where Rivers copied it onto two stereo tracks of his 8 track cassette recorder. Then on other tracks, the party noise was put on from the sound effects CD, as well as the hastily scripted conversations between Matt and I, and Mykel and I. Then the newly recorded vocals and party noise were mixed down (minus the guitars, drums, etc) to another DAT tape, which was sent back to New York. The finished party scenes were then "flown in" to the final mix, just in time for the mastering process.
+This is when the now-familiar "party dialogue" verses were added. This was done on Rivers's 8 track back in The Garage on Amherst Ave in LA, with band supporter [[Mykel and Carli Allan|Mykel Allan]], [[Matt Sharp]], [[Karl Koch|myself]], and a "crowd noise" sound effect CD. A mix of "Undone" with the samples removed was made to a DAT tape at Electric Lady, which was sent to LA, where Rivers copied it onto two stereo tracks of his 8 track cassette recorder. Then on other tracks, the party noise was put on from the sound effects CD, as well as the hastily scripted conversations between Matt and I, and Mykel and I. Then the newly recorded vocals and party noise were mixed down (minus the guitars, drums, etc) to another DAT tape, which was sent back to New York. The finished party scenes were then "flown in" to the final mix, just in time for the mastering process.
 The original intended vibe of the "stoked" versus the "non-stoked" on this song was preserved, with Matt playing the part of the impossibly happy dude, and I the out of place tongue tied spaz who wasn't happy to be there. Mykel played the party girl looking for favors, which my "un-stoked" guy couldn't refuse, as he couldn't come up with anything else to do anyway.
 Once Rivers headed back to New York with DAT in hand, the recording work was truly done. He returned a week later, with a golden CD-R in hand of the final mastered album. CD-R's were quite new at the time so this was like the Holy Grail! Anyway, the excitement faded a bit as the weeks turned into months before the album came out, with the art, photo shoots, and record label preparation taking up a lot more time than we had considered. Rivers even managed to squeeze in a Spring '94 semester at LA Valley Community College, while the band rehearsed and played what shows we could get on.