Accidents and studio magic are what gives a recording their identity and voice!
Accidents in the recording studio can either be an unintended mistake or a result of experimenting with sounds and instruments. Often they produce the sound on the record that makes them embraced by the public.
To quote David Bowie: “A mistake is a mistake, even if you repeat it. But when you make it a third time, that’s style.”
Fred Again… : “Jungle”
The distorted bass made “Jungle” as compelling as its heavy sampling of Elley Duhé’s “Immortal” and Daft Punk’s “Revolution 909″.
But Freddie explains that the bass effect came from a dodgy one-quarter inch cable plugged in via a voice memos app on his iPhone.
He demonstrated it after revealing the effect on TikTok. DJ Sistek gasped, “Omg that’s genius!”
Metallica: “Master of Puppets”
The final guitar solo on the 1986 track sends Metallica tribute bands crazy!
On it, Kirk Hammett’s finger slipped off the neck, pulling the top string off with it, resulting in a high-pitched squeal.
It was a great moment, loved by fans and the band alike.
The Rolling Stones: “19th Nervous Breakdown”
The global success of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in 1965 led The Stones on a relentless round of touring the world, including two American tours in six months.
As the band wound up in Los Angeles on December 5, an exhausted Mick Jagger told the band, “Dunno about you blokes, but I feel about ready for my 19th nervous breakdown.”
While in Los Angeles, Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the song, to be about a spoiled socialite with distant parents (“Your mother who neglected you owes a million dollars tax/ and your father’s still perfecting ways of making sealing wax”) and showered her with toys.
Bass Bomb
During the recording, at RCA Recording Studio on Sunset Boulevard, when it came to the outro, producer Andrew Loog Oldham suggested to bassist Bill Wyman, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end there, some kind of a lick that will fill up the space between the vocals and the band,’”
Wyman remembered. “I just bounced the string with the top of my finger on the pickup, and ran my finger down the string. That is what created that so-called ‘dive-bombing’ sound.”
It was a perfect sonic painting of someone’s mental energy collapsing while in the recording studio.
Pearl Jam: “Rear View Mirror”
Pearl Jam’s early days were marked with drummers arriving and leaving in a revolving door within a year.
Things got tense during the making of the Vs. album with Dave Abbruzzese arousing the ire of singer Eddie Vedder because of his penchant for collecting guns.
According to the book Five Against One, Abbruzzese had problems laying down the tracks, which irritated producer Brendan O’Brien, and put the pressure on him.
Against The Wall
Things came to a head during the recording of “Rearviewmirror” where you can hear the drummer throw his stick against the wall.
Later he punched a hole through the snare drum and threw it off the side of a cliff.
Russel Morris: “The Real Thing”
Russell Morris’ epic debut single “The Real Thing”, was never to run 6 minutes 20 seconds.
When sessions began at 7pm in the summer of 1968/9 at Armstrong Studios in Melbourne, it was to be a conventional three minute track.
But as backing band The Groop banged away, producer Ian “Molly” Meldrum realised that something special was happening and signalled at them from the control room to keep going.
Ten Minutes
The tape broke after 10 minutes. After that, Meldrum went into the effects room of the recording studio and went on to add to the craziness including a Hitler speech and an atomic bomb.
Up in EMI Records’ headquarters Sydney, panic set in when the budget spectacularly blew out from the $300 budget to $10,000 — twice what a full album cost in those days!
An exec was despatched to hightail it to Melbourne, seize the tapes and sack Meldrum.
Brooding
Morris told Mixdown that before he was booted out, a brooding Meldrum dosed himself with brandy, kidnapped the tape and escaped to the park opposite, crashing on the fence on the way.
They went looking for him with torches as night fell, and found him hiding under a bush.
The ‘”Oo mama-mow-mow, oo mama-mow-mow” bit which launched a thousand sing-alongs wasn’t to be on the final product.
Substitute
When songwriter Johnny Young played the song to Meldrum and Morris, he hadn’t finished it, and substituted the oo mama-mow until he came up with the right lyric.
For Mixdown’s full report on the session, keep reading here.
Kanye West: “Runaway”
The irresistible piano riff that made “Runaway” a live highlight, and the second single off the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album (2010) was an accident, co-producer Jeff Bhasker revealed in a YouTube interview.
During recording, West wanted a “ping” bell sound on beats two and four on the snare drum.
As Bhasker searched for the correct note on his MIDI keyboard, he experimented with different octaves. That created the riff.
So On Fire
“Kanye picked up on that, he said ‘That is so on fire’,” and I said ‘You should use that because it will bring a stadium to its feet!’”
It fitted the personal nature of the song, with Ye lamented about broken relationships and his confrontation with Taylor Swift at an awards night.
Bill Withers: “Ain’t No Sunshine”
Bill Withers was a 31-year old factory worker making toilets for 747 airplanes when he wrote “Ain’t No Sunshine” in 1971.
He was inspired by the alcoholic characters in the 1962 movie Days Of Wine And Roses played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon.
Forgot
As the tape rolled, Withers forgot some lines. The recording studio budget was tight, so he repeated the words “I know” 26 times to get over the gaff.
Everyone in the recording studio (including Booker T & The MGs and Stephen Stills) told him to keep it, as it suggested the song’s narrator was kicking himself for the relationship collapsing.
The Beatles: “I Feel Fine”
In 1964, The Who and The Kinks were liberally using feedback onstage but John Lennon was adamant that their “I Feel Fine”, released that year, was the first time it was used on record.
It was caused by Paul McCartney plucking the A string on his bass, and Lennon’s guitar, which was leaning against McCartney’s bass amp, picking up feedback.
Pickup
McCartney recalled: “John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pickup on it so it could be amplified …
“We were just about to walk away to listen to a take when John leaned his guitar against the amp.
Voodoo
“It went, ‘Nnnnnnwahhhhh!’ And we went, ‘What’s that? Voodoo!’ ‘No, it’s feedback.’ ‘Wow, it’s a great sound!’”
They asked producer George Martin, who agreed, “Well, I suppose we could, we could edit it on the front.”
Ike Turner & Jackie Brenston: “Rocket 88”
It was right that the first real rock and roll record, Ike Turner & Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” (released in 1951 as Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats) featured the first known distortion.
This was achieved by stuffing newspaper into a speaker which had fallen out onto Highway 61 (or left out in the rain) played by Willie Kizart.
Marty Robbins: “Don’t Worry”
The first record to feature the fuzz sound was by an American country singer in early 1961 – and due to bad technology.
A recording studio console equipped with Langevin 116 tubes sent from a New York factory to Quonset Hut recording studio in Nashville had no less than 35 improperly calibrated output transformers.
Misjudged
The studio’s engineer Glenn Snoddy later told NAMM’s Oral History program, “Prior to making the transformers, they misjudged the windings somehow or other, and there were 250 volts going through the winding instead of the transformers.
“One malfunctioned at the exact time that Grady [Martin] was playing his guitar solo through it.”
Six String
Martin was playing his Danelectro six-string baritone electric, model UB2, on country superstar Marty Robbins’ “Don’t Worry”, when the transformer on his bass channel broke and gave the fuzz sound for 20 seconds at the 1:20- mark and towards the end of the song.
There was a debate in the studio as to whether to recut it “properly” but Snoddy was so excited by the sound that he insisted it should stay.
“Don’t Worry” entered the US Top 40 in February 1961 and stayed in there for 12 weeks.
Within a few years it was the sound that every guitarist around the world would ape.
Led Zeppelin: “Rock and Roll”
“Rock And Roll”, a standout on Led Zeppelin IV and among the most hard hitting of the Zep catalogue, was never supposed to happen.
They were in the Headley Grange mansion working on “Four Sticks”, and getting nowhere with it because of its complex percussion.
Drum Intro
Frustrated John Bonham impulsively broke into the raucous drum intro to Little Richard’s 1957 belter “Keep A-Knockin'” (trivia: 170 bpm), to which a smiling Page joined him on a riff borrowed from Chuck Berry.
It was just supposed to relieve tension. But someone pressed play in the control room.
A Long Time
When the Zeps played it back, they realised they had something there. Robert Plant wrote the lyrics to it, the line “It’s been a long time since the book of love” a reference to The Monotones’ 1958 hit “Book Of Love”.
It was originally called “Been A Long Time” but Plant changed it to stick it up those who’d sneered that Zeps had lost their toughness on all the soft songs on Led Zeppelin III.
The Beatles: “Hey Jude”
At around the 2:58 mark in “Hey Jude”, Paul McCartney hits a bum note on the piano, and either he or John Lennon mutter “Fucking hell!”
Pink Floyd: “Wish You Were Here”
On the 44 second mark of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” (1975), you hear singer and guitarist Dave Gilmour cough and sniffle.
The cough was so raspy he gave up smoking the next day.
Clarified
Gilmour has clarified he never smoked cigarettes. When he was 14, his father promised him if he didn’t smoke until the age of 17, he’d teach him to drive.
Gilmour told Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon he didn’t smoke at 17 but his father forgot the deal and he never got his driving lessons.
Pack Of Cigs
“You might think that would send me immediately off to buy a pack [of cigarettes],” Gilmour said. “But it didn’t. I never smoked.”
He meant he never smoked tobacco…
Hozier: “Too Sweet”
The accident wasn’t made when the Irish superstar cut the track, but rather afterwards.
In March 2024 when his Unheard EP came out with four songs that hadn’t made his Unreal Unearth album, there were no plans for “Too Sweet” to be a single.
But when Hozier was being interviewed on the How Long Gone podcast, the EP was played to the podcast crew.
Snippet
A snippet of “Too Sweet” accidentally went out on the podcast.
Hozier’s management pulled it down, but it was too late. Fans had heard it, and made it a TikTok smash.
“Too Sweet” went on to become #1 in seven countries, including Australia, the US, the UK and New Zealand.
The Police: “Roxanne”
One of the most infectious laughs on a rock record was at the beginning of The Police’s “Roxanne”, right after the piano intro.
Sting had accidentally sat on the piano when it hit a chord, and he is listed on the credits of the Outlandos d’Amour album with “butt piano”.
The Yardbirds: “Heart Full of Soul”
In 1965, Jeff Beck joined The Yardbirds, replacing Eric Clapton who’d got into a huff when they recorded the poppy “For Your Love” with a harpsichord.
With “Heart Full of Sound”, the riff immediately suggested an Eastern or Indian sound.
Sitar
A sitar player and tabla player were brought in. Alas, the sitar player couldn’t cut it so Beck got the while-my-sitar-gently-weeps sound by bending the higher notes on his guitar using his own Sola Sound Tone Bender.
He helped popularised the genre called “raga rock”.
Beck explained: “The sitar player couldn’t get the 4/4 time signature right; it was a hopeless waste of time.
Fuzz Machine
“So I said, ‘Look, is this the figure?’ I had the fuzz machine, a Toneblender [sic], going.
“We did one take, it sounded outrageous. So they kept the tabla player, who could just about make it work.
“They rushed that out, and the rest was a rollercoaster ride.”
Keep reading about the Tone Bender here.
