In praise of demos, sometimes

FilipNest · 2023-06-15T08:07:15.075Z

Was reading a few album reviews where the songwriters do that awful please stop it thing of boasting about how they wrote and recorded something in 20 minutes and the critics destroy them for it, and felt about the positive times where this instant write record leave trick works and creates something untouchable.

One of my favourite interviews was with Leonard Cohen where he discussed taking months / years to write all the Hallelujah verses and then asking Bob Dylan if he did the same for Like a Rolling Stone and Dylan saying he wrote it in an afternoon.

There’s also this perfect bit in a Kristin Hersh book where she talks about not writing the songs but channeling them in an totally out of control way from another source within / outside her. But also artists like my idol Joanna Newsom who spend years on things and it shows.

Do you folks have any demos or first takes that are just unbeatable and seem to come from a different place? I thought of something like Patty Griffin’s Living With Ghosts record where the label got the demo tape, loved it, got all the A List talent they could do overproduce (Nile Rodgers etc). Then everyone was all OK let’s just give up and release the demos and you can tell why. Her voice is so powerful it almost leaves the acoustic guitar strumming in the dust. It’s unbeatable. I wonder how many takes before she was happy with the demos though.

So yeah, anyone got any demos and rough sketches that had their magic destroyed when you added things? Or quick bits of inspiration that you somehow can never get back to and seems like someone else did them? Or the counterargument that spending yonks on something produces gold.

Sorry that all my examples are from songwriting, a bit of an imposter here in that regard. But music is music and bleeps are just synthesisers singing.

Clancy · 2023-06-15T08:32:10.182Z

Reminds me of Eno moaning that when producing Devo they wanted to follow the sounds on their demos too closely and he had to steer them away from that.

A mistake. Or rather a mistake to hire someone who would clearly want to put a stamp on it. Their demos and early stuff sounds better

FilipNest · 2023-06-15T08:38:02.095Z

Yeah, I’ve heard lots of cases like that where the producer doesn’t get it (though plenty of opposite cases too), the worst related thing (also a good counterargument for recording things on the spot) probably being what happened with Squeeze where John Cale came in. From the Allmusic review of their debut:

It’s hard to envision a scenario more nightmarish than the one that faced Squeeze when they headed into the studio to record their first album. Armed with a promising debut EP called Packet of Three, Squeeze signed with A&M and teamed the group with underground star John Cale, who helmed debuts by the Stooges and the Modern Lovers and would seemingly be a good fit as a producer (not to mention that the band took its name from Squeeze, the final album by Cale’s Velvet Underground, albeit an album recorded long after he and Lou Reed had both left the band). He was anything but. Cale terrorized Squeeze, throwing out all of their existing material and insisting that they write new music on the spot, preferably songs that followed his half-baked idea of positioning the group as a bunch of “Gay Guys,” after his suggested title for the album.

sleepside · 2023-06-15T15:45:19.599Z

Famously, Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen was going to be a full band album before he and his producer decided the demos were better.

Personally, I don’t have the problem of “the song ruined the demo” so much as “This loop would sound better if I changed things – wait, shit, it sounds worse and I can’t remember how to put it back.”